“It took a while for James and I to open up”: Lars Ulrich admits not being receptive to Cliff Burton’s musical ideas when he first joined Metallica
Metallica’s third album, Master Of Puppets, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and bassist Cliff Burton helped it soar to success.
During the making of the record, which would be Burton’s last before his tragic death during its supporting tour, the other band members began to embrace Burton’s more melodic ideas, opening them up to new ways to experiment.
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In an archival interview republished in Classic Rock magazine, drummer Lars Ulrich says, “Most of the record was written in May and June of 1985, from the best ideas that were kicking around on our riff tapes.
“Cliff had been in the band for a few years and he brought in a lot of harmonies and melodies. It took a little while for James [Hetfield] and I to open up to some of Cliff’s ideas about harmony and melody, because we’d never played stuff like that before. But after a while we got it and that’s when we started experimenting more.”
Guitarist Kirk Hammett adds, “James would show Cliff and me the riffs, and we’d build the songs from there. Some I’d already be familiar with. The main riff in Battery, for instance. The first time I heard James play that was in England, on his acoustic guitar. We were watching The Young Ones, and all of a sudden he started messing around with this sort of galloping rhythm. I said: ‘Wow, that’s cool.’”
Ulrich describes this young iteration of the band as “snot-nosed punks trying to do something different from everyone else,” before Hetfield then adds, “I remember writing the chorus to Master Of Puppets in our living room and thinking it was too commercial, too obvious. ‘If it’s too easy, something’s wrong’ was kind of the Metallica mantra.”
In other huge Metallica news, the band are due to take up residency at the Las Vegas Sphere across October and November of 2026, and into January 2027. The residency will continue their ‘no-repeat’ weekend tradition, with unique set lists for each night.
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