A recently surfaced interview from 1986 features Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich discussing the band’s secret to success. The interview, dated September 26, 1986, took place just months after the release of their highly successful album ‘Master Of Puppets.’
During the conversation with the Swedish radio show Rockbox, Ulrich revealed the career secrets he and frontman James Hetfield believe in:
“Me and James had been sharing a house in San Francisco for about three years where we had the garage converted into a sort of rehearsal studio type of thing. Since we live together and all that, it’s easier for us to write when we feel like it instead of saying, ‘Okay well, we write at Monday at 2 o’clock.’ So it’s easier to write when you feel like doing it because me and him live together when every one of us would get an idea we could just take it out on the studio right away and work on it when it felt like it was time to work on something.”
There Is Another Secret To Their Success
Throughout their career, Ulrich was not the only person to reveal secrets of success. Metallica’s manager, Peter Mensch, has unveiled what he describes as the ‘simple’ key to the band’s record-breaking year.
Since the release of their 10th album, ‘Hardwired… to Self-Destruct,’ in November 2016, the thrash metal icons have consistently topped Billboard’s annual Hard Rock Album and Top Rock Album charts and earned an estimated $66.5 million. They have received support from the Q Prime organization, led by Mensch and his business partner Cliff Burnstein. The manager revealed what seems like a simple method:
“It’s really simple. We like each other and we respect each other. That’s the bottom line. My partner and I have a line: ‘You get the acts, as a manager, you deserve.’ There are acts that could be as smart as Metallica, or likable, but don’t respect what we have to say. We have a peculiar bunch of acts that we all like talking to, that we think are smart, they think we’re smart, we give them advice, they comment on our advice, we go back and forth and we come up with a plan.”
You can hear the interview below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-DiKxI5ch8&ab_channel=TurbulentRoar
