Metallica’s Lars Ulrich on Lemmy: ‘His Spirit Will Always Live in Us’
Few bands have cited Motörhead and Lemmy Kilmister as an inspiration quite as loudly as Metallica. Whether that meant dressing like Kilmister to perform as “The Lemmys” at his 50th birthday bash, recording a medley of Motörhead songs or simply welcoming the gravel-voiced bassist onstage to play any number of his songs, they always waved Lemmy‘s flag high. Lars Ulrich — long fabled to be the president of the U.S. chapter of the Motörhead Fan Club (“Let’s call that an unofficial title,” he says, laughing) — was first struck by the power of the group’s music when he heard them as a teenager. Here, he looks back on the influence Lemmy Kilmister had not just on Metallica but also on him personally.
When I heard Lemmy had died, I was home at the tail end of a family Christmas celebration. I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday who knows Motörhead’s manager very well and he told me that things were not well and maybe I should consider going down to L.A. to see him and pay my respects. The cancer was very aggressive, and it was end stage and there probably wasn’t a lot of time left. That was at 1 p.m. and then I guess I heard the news around 6 p.m. That was crazy.
Lemmy is probably one of the absolute primary reasons that I wanted to be in a band. It’s that simple. I got introduced to Motörhead’s music in 1979, when Overkill came out. I was in a record store and the double bass intro to “Overkill” started, and I never heard anything like that in my life. The subsequent ride that this music took me on was to a place I had never been. It was really exciting and really invigorating. It felt fresh and different.
I became pretty obsessed with them for the better part of the next few years after that. The first time I saw them was in the spring of 1981, when they were supporting Ozzy, who was kind of breaking as a solo artist, and Motörhead was opening. So this was obviously an incredible bill, but for me to get a chance to finally experience Motörhead … So me and my friend Richard Burch — whose name is immortalized on the back of Kill ‘Em All for saying “Bang the head that doesn’t bang” — him and I followed Motörhead around California: San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and they also played one of their own shows at the Country Club in L.A.
Getting a chance to see them that often was an amazing thing, but more so, we actually got really close to them. We got a chance to meet them and hang out with them. And that’s because of Lemmy and his graciousness. He was so open and approachable, so the antithesis of a rock star; he wasn’t full of shit or unapproachable, hiding behind masks or whatever. None of that existed. He had this presence and this aura of all the great rock stars of the Sixties and Seventies, but at the same time, he was this incredible down-to-earth, easygoing, easily approachable guy. So me and my friend Rich were just hanging out and we ended up in the back of the bus drinking beer, hanging out, listening to tall tales and wild tour stories and being a part of all the shenanigans that followed a rock & roll tour around at that time. It left a deep impact on me, because rock stars up until that time seemed to come from someplace else. They were larger than life; you weren’t on the same level as them. You weren’t worthy. You couldn’t even picture yourself even engaging with Robert Plant or Paul Stanley, Elton John or Rod Stewart.