Metallica drummer
Lars Ulrich
joined Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff for one of Benioff's livestreamed
fireside chats earlier today, and when the discussion veered on the
topic of a new album from the band while in quarantine, Lars said "if
you and I and the rest of the world are sitting here six months from now
or a year from now, I'd say there's a very good chance."
You can watch the whole conversation below.
Lars noted the band has a weekly meeting via Zoom and are itching to
get creative. He noted all the members are in four different states
right now, but if restrictions ease up in California, they may hunker
down in their practice space to work on new music.
If they can't get together physically, Lars seemed
very open to the idea of recording new music remotely and testing their
creative limits with technology.
Here's exactly what Lars said, as transcribed by
Blabbermouth:
"How do we make art? How do we share it
with this new paradigm that's happening? What can it look like on the
other side of the new normal? Even if you bring it into our world, the
people that make all the software and all the stuff that all use to
record are sitting right now trying to figure out how Lars and James
[Hetfield] and Kirk [Hammett] and Rob [Trujillo] can make a Metallica
record from four different locations in four different states. And
that's something that we're obviously circling and very excited about… A
lot of that will, obviously, have to do with how long stay-at-home
orders stay in place. A lot of that will have to do with if there's a
second wave of the virus. Who knows what our world will look like six
months from now? But, obviously, the one thing that you can depend on
with creative people, for better or worse, is that they can't sit still
for very long. And I can tell you that on these weekly Metallica Zoom
sessions, we are talking about how we can just be a band again. And
there are many different phases to being in a band, but the most basic
one, and certainly where it started 37 years ago, is to just have four
guys playing music together. The fact that it ends up being shared all
over the world and connecting with millions of people, that's much later
and a whole different thing. But at its core essence is just four guys
in room, or connected via Zoom, making music together. And I can tell
you that all four of us are really excited about what that could look
like. So, will there be a Metallica quarantine record? I can't tell you,
because, again, I don't know how long the quarantine will last. But if
you and I and the rest of the world are sitting here six months from now
or a year from now, I'd say there's a very good chance."
Prior to this, Lars was discussing what a shock to
the system it's been to have his entire schedule canceled and just be
told to stay at home:
"We've been sitting around in the last four to six
weeks and having numerous conversations. The four members of Metallica
connect via Zoom once a week, and it's great to connect. All four of us
are, obviously, in four different locations in four different states
right now. But one topic of conversation on these weekly Zoom sessions
is what does it look like going forward? What will the next couple of
months look like? What will the rest of the year look like? And what
will, obviously, say, the next decade look like in terms of how do we
create, how do we write music, how do we record music, how do we share
music, and how is it all gonna look with the uncertainties ahead of us.
"I think for people like myself, for people in the
band, for people in our organization, we can get very comfortable with
knowing everything that's in front of us," he continued. "I could pretty
much walk you through what the rest of my 2020 looked like, I could
start walking you through what my 2021 looked like. We planned
everything years ahead. We know where we're gonna be — our calendars and
our iPhones are full of all these appointments and all these places we
have to travel and so on. And I think it's a great lesson for people
like ourselves who like to steer and be on top and control every element
of our existence that, all of a sudden, we are sitting here now for the
first time in memory not knowing what does the rest of 2020 look like.
"I was supposed to be in Brazil this week and
playing shows all over Latin America," Lars added. "They've all been
moved to the fall. We were supposed to play festivals all over North
America in May. They've all been moved. But now some of those ones that
have been moved to September and October, one of them was canceled last
week, in Kentucky. And I'll have to say, as you and I sit here, I don't
know what the rest of those rescheduled dates will look like. I hope,
obviously, that we can come out and play and that we can connect and we
can bring people together in these situations through music, but you and
I both know, and everybody listening in and watching knows that there's
a significant chance that none of those dates are gonna happen, because
the idea of bringing tens of thousands of people together in concert
settings is maybe just not the right idea for the health and safety of
everybody in 2020. So the fact that we once again find ourselves find
ourselves in situations where we don't exactly know what the next six
months or the next year of our lives look like, I think, is a very, very
valuable where we have to kind of surrender to the moment.
"Like I said, the guys in Metallica, as we sit here
and go, well, maybe in a month or two from now, is there a chance that
the four of us can be together maybe at our studio here in Northern
California, if the quarantine and stay-at-home orders subside — so on
and so forth. So, right now, as everybody who has creative juices
flowing through their veins, they're being challenged to try to come up
with new ways to be creative, and I think that those are wonderful
takeaways from the devastation that's happening all over the world at
the moment."
Metallica were scheduled to play five shows for
Danny Wimer Presents in the States this year, but currently, only one
remains on the books – Aftershock Festival in the fall.
