Lars Ulrich was born in Gentofte, Denmark back in 1963 and moved to the United States in 1980 to try to follow his father’s footsteps and become a professional tennis player. But after he failed in the competitions he participated, he decided to focus on music, which eventually made him create Metallica alongside James Hetfield in 1981.
Within 10 years they were already one of the biggest bands in the world and their success only got bigger and bigger four decades later. During his career, the drummer talked about many other artists, even saying which musician he believes that was a genius.
The musician that Lars Ulrich called a genius
Music changes all the time and in the 90s Rock and Roll music was transformed by Grunge. That new sub-genre “killed” many Heavy Metal and Hard Rock groups. The reason was because the music business focused their attention to those new groups that were trying to make the music more simple and more connected to the fans.
But unlike other groups, Metallica wasn’t much affected by Grunge since in 1991 they released their self-titled album, also known as the “Black Album”, which became their best-selling album.
The drummer Lars Ulrich always had a broad musical taste and loved many Grunge bands, including Nirvana. He even said in an interview MTV (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) for the special “Testimony 20 Years Of Rock On MTV” (2001). The musician praised Cobian saying he was a genius.
“What else can I add to Kurt Cobain that everybody else hasn’t said already. He was a genius and changed the music landscape forever, end of story,” Lars said.
For Lars, Nirvana’s biggest hit was the best anthem of the last decades
Although James and Lars sadly made fun of Cobain’s death during some Metallica live concerts in the early 90s, over the years they became more mature. Since then, they always said good things about the late musician. In 2019, when he was interviewing Joan Jett on his radio show called “It’s Electric“, praised “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. He said that it was the greatest anthem of the last 25 years. Jett was the one who inducted Nirvana into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame back in 2014.
He had already praised a Kurt Cobain documentary “Montage of Heck”. It was during his conversation with Mötley Crüe‘s bassist Nikki Sixx for the show “Sixx Sense” in 2015. Ulrich praised the film but complained that it showed a lot of the musician’s intimacy. “As a fan of Cobain, and as a fan of Nirvana, it was almost too much. It was almost too close. Do you know what I mean?!”
“Because, now, next time I hear ‘Come As You Are’ or one of those songs, I’ll still sit there and think of him in a bathtub of him shaving. Or that scene at the end where he’s holding Frances (Cobain’s daughter). Some of that stuff, which was challenging to watch,” Ulrich said.
He regrets that he never had the chance to meet Cobain
Although Kirk Hammett had a friendship with Cobain during the early 90s and the Nirvana leader went to see Metallica live many times, Ulrich never really had the chance to really know Cobain.
He lamented that in an interview made available by “Clip ‘Em All” (Transcribed by Rock adn Roll Garage). “I never met him and I really wanted to meet him. I hoped I would have a moment to meet him. Because maybe it would have enriched my life even more than meeting other people or added something else to it. You know what I mean? It’s so amazing that you can have that kind of musicians and people you can connect with that level, just taking all the bullshit out of it.”
He continued:
“It’s so cool that he could touch so many people. And it’s so sad that he is not around here kind of continuing to touch people. The good thing is that Nirvana music sounds as vital and as relevant now as it always had. It’s pretty cool that he at least had the chance to throw what he threw out there. Then we should celebrate that instead of maybe focusing so much on what could have been,” Lars Ulrich said.