Interesting article on Lars
Arrogant
Music: Heavy-metal rocker bangs the drum
What is the heavy-metal drummer's poison of choice? Amid backstage clatter,
it is easy to imagine Metallica's Lars Ulrich wanting a pick-me-up to
prepare him for his gig in a couple of hours. A beer, perhaps, or a
whiplash: vodka, a shot of irony.
In the event, Ulrich lopes up wielding an evil-looking pint of what looks
like synthetic orange squash. It transpires that this is a vitamin
supplement to combat a sniffle he has picked up on tour around Europe.
Danish-born Ulrich moved to California as a teenager and started Metallica
with lead singer and guitarist James Hetfield in 1981, pioneering a furious
thrash-metal sound. They have sold more than 80m albums since their 1983
debut Kill 'em All. They kicked off their latest US tour in Phoenix last
Tuesday, and will play the UK Download festivals in June.
Ulrich, however, does not fit the stereotypes of the heavy-metal musician.
For one thing, he is a serious art collector. As Metallica became more
successful and began to tour the world, he took to slipping into galleries
on his days off.
One day in 1993, he recalls, he was sitting on an aircraft as the band's
lead guitarist Kirk Hammett flicked through a Sotheby's catalogue for an
upcoming auction. Ulrich looked through it himself. "I saw something that I
fell in love with and in Istanbul I was on the phone to Sotheby's in London
the day of the auction and I got this piece of art."
It was the start of a decade-long obsession - though not one shared by the
rest of the band. "It was really the first thing out of Metallica that was
my own," he says. "[Metallica] was like a gang: we did everything together.
We lived together, we slept together, we ate together."
The painting Ulrich spotted in the catalogue was by Karel Appel, one of a
number of the Cobra group of anti-elitist, postwar expressionist artists
whose work he collects. "I could talk about this shit for hours," he
enthuses. Cobra wanted to rebel against thought processes that went into
art: deliberateness, contrivedness. Ulrich is particularly attached to a
canvas by Cobra painter Asger Jorn called "Happy Wrath" and to an untitled
work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, the New York graffiti superstar who died of a
heroin overdose in the late 1980s, which he describes as the "pearl" of his
collection.
Ulrich has never used advisers in his forays into the art market. "Just buy
from your heart," he explains earnestly. And make sure that you're not being
taken advantage of by some shady art guy who overcharges you and then you
end up paying $3m for a painting you should only pay $1.5m for. "D'you know
what I mean?"
Rather than waiting for paintings to come up at auction, Ulrich took to
tracking down the private owners of paintings he wanted. Then, he says with
a laugh, he was relentless.
So was it about the chase? "Yeah," he says. It started to bug him after a
while that it became about acquiring and selfishness. "It started being kind
of a little one-dimensional. It started playing into almost a political and
social way of thinking that maybe I've realised that I was kind of against."
In 2002, Ulrich started to sell parts of his collection, in one case
fetching a record $5.5m for "Profit I", a Basquiat canvas, which he says was
a buzz. But he adds that he has taken to the idea of caring for paintings
for a while before passing them on, "instead of it being about the
selfishness and the acquisition".
The suggestion of selfishness may be a sore point with Ulrich - or at least
it is in the rather different context of illegal music downloading from the
internet. This, he says, is a topic that he has parked in a place in his
mind that he tries not to visit very often. The enthusiasm with which he
talks about his paintings is replaced by a more measured tone.
A couple of years back, Ulrich was one of the loudest opponents of Napster,
the online file-sharing service. He testified before the US Senate on the
subject and produced a list of more than 300,000 people who had traded or
downloaded Metallica songs using Napster. The service subsequently shut
down, although it recently reopened as a legal, paid-for downloading site.
While Ulrich's anger at the pirating of the band's work may have been
understandable, his aggressive stance proved something of a public relations
problem, as the band became the target of a vitriolic internet backlash.
Anti-establishment Metallica, critics charged, were now siding with the
suits against the fans.
The way Ulrich tells it, the issue was one of control for a band that had
always been protective of anything with their name on it. "It started out as
an innocent thing about controlling what we were doing - how do our songs
get so that we don't have control over them? OK, well, we need to go after
these people and then five minutes later, we were the biggest assholes on
this planet. That was strange to deal with."
As Ulrich points out, in the band's early days, fans were encouraged to
bring tape recorders to shows and pass out bootlegs as a way of building a
following - admittedly, this was at a time when they were rather more in
need of publicity.
Does he regret the way he handled things? He is adamant that he's not one of
those people who spends a lot of time worrying about whether they should
have gone left instead of going right. "It was a bit of a tough time but
when you're in the thick of it you can't let them see you sweat."
In retrospect, though, he says the band didn't see it coming, hadn't done
enough homework. As for being painted as anti-fans and pro-record company,
"nobody from the record company's ever set foot inside a recording studio
that Metallica has recorded in because we told them all to go fuck
themselves".
Metallica have since made deals that mean their recordings can be downloaded
legally and, according to Ulrich, the band are now completely fine with the
whole thing.
Not everyone has bought that, apparently. Only a couple of months back, a
hoax internet news story were claiming Metallica had copyrighted the guitar
chords E and F. Yeah, yeah. Ulrich looks a bit put out. "It'll be part of
our legacy for good or worse, it's just the way it is."
None of this appears to have harmed sales of Metallica's latest album, St
Anger, which won a Grammy. Made following a period of band strife that
culminated in the 2001 departure of their bass player, its harsh,
angst-ridden sound is a far cry from S&M, their 1999 collaboration with the
San Francisco symphony orchestra.
So what's a metaller fast approaching 40 and married with children got to
get wound up about? "All I've got to do is open my eyes, whether it's on
television or out the window or whatever, there's enough out there to stir
up emotions," he says. "I don't think that changes because you sell out a
stadium in four hours instead of in four weeks."
Metallica, Ulrich says, have had their best year in Europe for a decade.
Hard rock is very healthy there at the moment, he thinks, more so than in
the US. "There seems to be a lot of love for this band at the moment. And I
don't take any of this shit for granted, I'm trying to look at it from more
of a humble point of view than I used to, but it's all pretty crazy."
Arrogant
> fetching a record $5.5m for "Profit I", a Basquiat canvas, which he says
was
> a buzz. But he adds that he has taken to the idea of caring for paintings
> for a while before passing them on, "instead of it being about the
> selfishness and the acquisition".
By the way...this is the painting Lars got $5.5 million for.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2002/05/06/baulrich06.jpg
flickn
I was thinking a hand held picture
Wyrd
"Arrogant" <blo...@home.com> wrote in message
news:IoI3c.90$CJ5...@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
The term 'robbed' springs to mind...or a fool and his money......
Wyrd
flickn
wrote:
Read the article dumb ass......lar$ paid 1.5 million for it not bad
return i do say myself....?5.5 million ?
Wyrd
"flickn" <jtra...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:46vu40p571jmaqcqm...@4ax.com...
Where did I menton Lar$ fuckwit???
Wyrd
flickn
wrote:
hey dumbass the picture refers to lars you dint have to mention his
name
Wyrd
This is a simple concept even for someone as stupid as you. Anyone paying
that kind of money for that crap has been robbed. Your jumping to Lar$'s
defence speaks volumes dear boy...
Squirm bitch squirm.
Wyrd
Arrogant
> This is a simple concept even for someone as stupid as you. Anyone paying
> that kind of money for that crap has been robbed. Your jumping to Lar$'s
> defence speaks volumes dear boy...
> Squirm bitch squirm.
*reminder* You are attempting to argue with Flickn, you'll have better luck
teaching Japanese to a blade of grass.
Trond Bie
news:YxN3c.8466$zu.7393@newsfe1-win...
Calm down kids *cuddle*
Dclizardking
You've gotten very mellow and contented of late?
Nada
> >Calm down kids *cuddle*
>
> You've gotten very mellow and contented of late?
I heard some people can YAWN while having an orgasm.
Trond Bie
news:20040318045230...@mb-m17.aol.com...
> >Calm down kids *cuddle*
>
> You've gotten very mellow and contented of late?
*yawn*