Lars Ulrich Needs His Ears Checked, Says Lulu Has “Aged Extremely Well”
One ticket to the alternate universe where that headline is true, please! Drummer Lars Ulrich is once again defending Lulu, Metallica‘s Super Collider-level miss of a collaborative album with the late Lou Reed.
In Reed’s posthumous book, The Art Of The Straight Line: My Tai Chi, Ulrich discussed the album and very much does not get why no one liked it.
“What the fuck is it about ‘Lulu’ that it got that kind of reaction? I can’t quite figure it out, but years later, it’s aged extremely well. It sounds like a motherfucker still. So I can only put the reaction down to ignorance … It took our fans to a place I wish they would go more often. Maybe it would be a better time to release it now with what’s going on outside in the world, the chaos. I don’t know, but I am very proud of this record … James [Hetfield] and I would be figuring out ways through a piece of music and then Lou would look over and go, ‘That’s it. I’m not doing another fucking take of that.’ That’s not the way we usually worked, but it was so beautiful and great, the whole thing.”
Metallica thinking that Lulu is sort of some sort of grand intellectual or musical statement isn’t a new trend. In 2020, guitarist Kirk Hammett told Marin Independent Journal that he regarded the collaboration very highly.
“It was a real accomplishment as far I was concerned. We were there to help Lou Reed fulfill his vision, and I think we did that 100 percent. This was not a Metallica album and it was not a Lou Reed album. It was Lou Reed and Metallica together, doing something completely different.
“It’s not for everyone. But ‘Junior Dad’, I think, is one of the best things we’ve ever been associated with, in terms of real art and literature and music coming together. That, to me, is a real accomplishment, just as much as ‘Ride The Lightning’ is.”
I would say that none of this makes sense, but Metallica just bought a record pressing plant and I’m writing about Metallica buying the record pressing plant.
