Lars Ulrich Quotes

If there was no Black Sabbath, I could still possibly be a morning newspaper delivery boy. No fun.

Doing things the way you see it, going by your own heart and soul, that is pure artistic integrity. Whether the hair is six or sixty inches long, the eyes have make-up or not, the riffs are in 'E' or 'F' sharp, the amps are Marshall or not, all those things don't matter if you are doing it for the right reason, which to me means doing it for yourself!!

The worst day of my life was once that my mom didn't allow me to go to a Queen concert because I was grounded.

What's the message in Metallica? There is no message, but if there was a message, it really should be look within yourself, don't listen to me, don't listen to James, don't listen to anybody, look within yourself for the answers.

The day Metallica's over, i'm not going to put an ad looking for another band. I'll put my drumsticks on the shelf and there's 14 other things I wanna try. Metallica's the only band I've ever been and it's the only I ever wanna be in.

I really like LIMP BIZKIT. I mean, I've said it for years - I don't know if anyone actually hears it - but I think LIMP BIZKIT are an awesome band. In terms of the rap-rock bands, or ANY bands out there, I think they really are truly among the best.

Metallica lives in a little bubble. We just do our own thing. We're not part of any trends or waves or fads. We can just do our own thing, all the time. It's a great luxury. I don't think we were really appreciative of it until recently, and really understood that it is what keeps us alive. It's great to be able to have the freedom to run around and do all this crazy stuff, and at all cost, avoid making another record, just to piss our managers off.

One of my few shortcomings is that I can't predict the future.

I'm just sittin here trying not to be unhappy.

Stretching your parameters is a necessity if you wan to keep growing, and sometimes the best way to do that is to dive into the deep end.

This isn't about fans, greed or money. It's about being morally right or wrong. Nobody is governing the way music gets from artists to fans. It's all running amok.

What Metallica always tries to do, as we go around and play a lot of the same cities, over and over again, year after year, is to give a different experience. We try to never play the same venues, or if we play indoors, we'll play outdoors, and all that type of stuff. It's always about just trying to do a different kind of experience.

The only band that we have never played with but have always wanted to is the Rolling Stones.

Some people try and tell you what the songs are about and it bores me to death.

Parenting changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others - which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other.

Metallica's the only band I've ever been in and it's the only band I ever wanna be in.

Sharing's only fun when it's not your stuff.

I don't like to be pigeonholed, and I really like that people never really know what's going on with Metllica.

Whenever I buy a painting, someone invariably says, "Oh, what a great investment." And I hate that reaction. To me, it's a matter of love and not an exchange of equity.

If you sit there and you know that rule #1 is just that everything you do is honest and is just a natural and instinctual extension of yourself, then there you go.

As long as it says Metallica on the record it's Metallica.

People are always spewing this horseshit about how age doesn't matter. Well, it does matter! I'm thirty-five, and I'm happy to be thirty-five. I can't pretend I'm still a snot-nosed 21-year-old.

Back then, I was really into composing the entire solo, beginning to end. I wanted to have it at least 80 to 90 percent complete before going into the studio. I didn't improvise in the studio. I was young, and I didn't really have the development in my playing or the ability to show up with nothing and then put down 500 ideas. I can do that now because I'm so much more of a musician now.

Hugh [Evans] called us. And obviously this has been on our radar for all the years it`s been going on. And each year obviously reaches more and more people, and it`s high profile. Hugh reached out to our manager just down the street. And we said we`re here [ on GLOBAL CITIZEN in the Central Park] to help and do whatever we can.

I guess that seeing yourself on a screen is something that you get used to. Let's face it, these days, there's really nothing that you do that doesn't get filmed.

Metallica's the only band i've ever been in. I'm not sure that when it ends in five, ten years, I'm going to put an ad in the paper saying, 'stupid drummer looking for stupid people to play music with,' Metallica is it and I think when that ceases, that's it.

The music business, or what`s left of it, is obviously a very - it`s like a wild west now.

I wouldn't say that we're proactively out there hunting down brands to try to fulfill some piece of a larger battle plan or something. If they have things they want to get to us, we're somewhat easily accessible through our managers and record companies.

I would say that I'm very proud that Metallica plays heavy music - but equally proud that we don't think like a heavy-metal band.

I would say [Lamar] Kendrick, it`s always fun to see what happens when Kendrick takes the stage. And my two oldest kids are huge fans of him.

As the world gets smaller and communication spreads further and further out there, you try to find the right balance.

I think you have to sort of accept that nobody really knows where it`s going so there has to be a lot of impulsive kind of attitudes. So it`s like a train that`s moving and you don`t quite know where it`s going but you try to steer it in the best way you can realizing that it may go in different places that you had no idea.