Beyond being metal royalty, Metallica unwittingly deconstructed the idea of the rock doc in 2004 with “Some Kind of Monster,” which showed the splintered and discontent band going through group therapy while recording their 2003 album “St. Anger.” The band has received the documentary treatment once more, as Jonas Åkerlund’s “Metallica Saved My Life” debuts on June 11 at the Tribeca Film Festival. This film is more of a victory lap, focused on the megafans who have found their tribe and a joie de vivre through the group’s heavy sound. And Åkerlund, who has collaborated with the group since their ‘90s videos like “Turn the Page” and “Whiskey in the Jar,” is the perfect director to film the band as fans see them.
Lars Ulrich — Metallica’s outspoken drummer who stoked his own musical obsession by following bands like Motörhead, Diamond Head and Iron Maiden in his youth — spoke with Variety about the new generations of fans, dealing with rock star adulation and the joy he gets from Metallica memes.
With such a fervent fanbase, is there a trick from going to Rock God to normal guy mode once you leave the stage?
I can’t tell you that there is one specific thing. I think if you try to answer that question with the utmost sincerity, what it boils down to is the DNA makeup of the four people in the band. You always have to acknowledge the luck of the draw or the energy of the universe or however you want to paraphrase that. We’re very lucky that the four of us are individual personalities and our collective Metallica personality. We’re all first and foremost music lovers. We always feel like the best is yet to come. We’re always looking ahead to the next opportunity to do something creative or something unexpected, or something that’s going to challenge us or turn us on musically.
With that mindset, you keep yourself in check. We certainly keep each other in check and have kept each other in check along the way. We’re just lucky that we prioritize being in a band. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people start in rock and roll bands, and then they wither out and end up in solo careers — or they burn out. At the end of the day, we love being in Metallica more than the alternatives. Certainly, as you get older, you have to put more and more time into making it work, hearing and respecting everyone’s needs and all the checks and balances. But ultimately we love creating music. We love connecting to others through music and certainly, I think that it’s clear in the film, we’re fans ourselves. The best songs still haven’t been written, your best album still hasn’t been recorded, and your best show is still ahead of you rather than behind you.
Metallica has taken some big risks, like changing up its sound for The Black Album and releasing the “Some Kind of Monster” film. Fans have followed you even as you switch things up. Do you think that having this fanbase liberates you in taking big swings?
I don’t think it was ever a choice. I would like to believe that we dictate our own narrative, and one of the key pieces of the individual and collective DNA in Metallica is curiosity. We’ve always wanted to turn over rocks and look at new ideas and challenges. If curiosity is a significant part of our DNA, another part is the fear of complacency, a fear of fear, of getting stuck. The claustrophobia, “Oh my God, we’ve got to keep evolving. We’ve got to keep growing. We gotta keep trying different shit.” The fear of stagnation, of ending up on autopilot, a fear of repetition, of just getting stuck. So we’ve always pushed ourselves into new and different creative endeavors. Whether it’s the films or doing stuff with symphony orchestras or playing with different producers or new approaches, it’s to make sure that we always keep it fresh and there are always challenges in front of us. When “Ride the Lightning” came out, the fourth song, “Fade to Black,” had acoustic guitars on it. There were definitely some raised eyebrows and people in the very hard-rock end of the community wondered what we were doing. But I would like to think that very early on, we stated that we were not to be boxed in, and we were not to be doing always what was expected. We would not be the band to churn out the same record over and over again, just in a different sleeve with different cover art. We were gonna do everything that we could to prevent that from happening.
As new fans discover your band, are there any surprising trends that you see? Everyone loves a huge record like “Master of Puppets,” but are there any deeper cuts speaking to new fans that you might not have anticipated?
The biggest surprise is the diversity and lack of a uniform answer to the question. When you talk to 10 people, 20 people, 50 people — and we do talk to a lot through meet and greets and interacting with fans — everyone’s got a different story. Everybody’s got a different album that they latch on to. Everybody’s got a different song. Everybody’s got a different reason for getting into the band. Certainly back in the day, in the ‘80s or the ‘90s, the answers were maybe a little more in sync, in unison. The net wasn’t cast as wide as it is now, but nowadays it’s a rite of passage for 13-year-olds to bring their parents, or parents bringing their kids, to the shows. You never know which way, with younger people picking up on stuff through word of mouth, or then others picking it up through algorithms on their streaming platforms or whatever. I talk to fans that say, “My favorite song is off ‘72 Seasons’” or “My favorite song is something off of ‘Death Magnetic,’” and you kind of sit there and wait for somebody to say “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” They’re like, “What’s ‘Ride the Lightning’? Oh, that’s one of your early records? I’m more into the new stuff.” I think it’s the beauty of it, especially when you’ve been around as long as we have. Look at the “Stranger Things” phenomenon from a couple of years ago.
Many Metallica fans are so artistic themselves. Do you ever share funny Metallica memes with the band that come your way?
We have a band-only text thread that’s just for the four members, and there are definitely some fun things that we see in this day and age with everybody being so creative. There was this “Star Wars” one going around a week or two ago which was really funny. There are some conversations between Darth Vader and a whole thing that builds up, and then they’re talking about the dark side. Then all of a sudden it goes into “Darkness imprisoning me!” — that whole thing from “One.” I think it had its origins on TikTok. We love people’s creativity, and to see so many fans reinterpret our songs, whether it’s on guitar or drums or singing them and obviously taking them into different genres. Sometimes you mix a little AI in there and then something fun spits out. It’s a lot to keep track of because this happens hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day. But there are some fun ones that get into our band-only text thread for the four of us to enjoy and appreciate.
Watch the trailer for “Metallica Saved My Life” below.
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