See Metallica’s Lars Ulrich Talk Rolling Stone’s Metal List
Lars Ulrich will celebrate Rolling Stone‘s 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time list this weekend on his Apple Music Beats 1 radio show, It’s Electric. The Metallica drummer will play songs from his favorite metal and hard-rock albums – including tunes by Black Sabbath, System of a Down, AC/DC and more – explaining why they made his list, and he’ll be interviewing Rolling Stone Senior Writer Kory Grow about the big list. To hear it all, tune in on Sunday at 6 p.m. EST; the show will also be rebroadcast at 6 a.m. EST Monday morning.
For the show, he’s put together a playlist of some of his favorite songs, including Motörhead’s “Overkill,” Rage Against the Machine’s “Guerrilla Radio” and Guns N’ Roses’ “It’s So Easy.” A full playlist of his songs is below.
During the taping, the drummer went deep on why some of the songs are his favorites. When discussing his love for Deep Purple’s Made in Japan, he explained that the band, whom he inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, changed his life at a young age. “My dad took me to see Deep Purple,” he said. “I was nine years old and it forever changed my life. The album is Made In Japan, and it came out in late 1972 and is the absolute classic Deep Purple album from their August 1972 shows in Japan. … Every show is different, every version of the songs in a live setting is always different. Different lengths, different solos they were always trying to challenge each other or one up each other, always pushing each other.”
He also sang the virtues of Rage Against the Machine. “When I think of greatest rock and metal albums of all time, The Battle of Los Angeles is always at the top of my list,” he said. “[It’s] one of the angriest, most energetic records. Also a very deep record, both musically, lyrically, attitude-wise. They’re so original. There’s nothing else that sounds like them. Morello’s original approach to guitar playing and the way Zack spits these words out it just sounds like he believes every word that’s coming out. It has a deeper resonance than a lot of other stuff, especially in harder rock where the lyrics over history have been slightly cheesy or not very meaningful.”
And he took advantage of being able to play whatever he wanted. “Take all this in: Apple has a radio station that goes all over the world at the same time called Beats 1,” he said. “Right now we’re live on that station. Everybody all over the world tuning into that particular radio station are listening to [Kory] and I and Steffan [Chirazi, sidekick] talk, and in about 15 to 30 seconds from now, they’re going to be listening to Mercyful Fate, ‘Satan’s Fall’ and you know what? There’s no fucking escaping that.”
For more about Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time list, tune in to Rolling Stone Music Now on Sirius XM’s Volume channel today at 1 p.m. EST. Judas Priest’s Rob Halford will be calling in to talk about his list, published this morning, with the editors who put the list together. This broadcast will also be available later as a podcast.
Listen to songs from Ulrich’s picks below.