How complete were the songs when you began recording? Metallica’s Lars Ulrich Recalls ‘Fucked Up’ 1989 Grammy Loss We were excited because we liked the sound of that album, and we were looking to get a similar sound for our album, using that studio and the same engineer, Flemming. But we were really excited to be at Sweet Silence Studios because that’s where Rainbow did Difficult to Cure. Hammett: We recorded Kill ‘Em All, at this local studio in Rochester, New York, and I think the biggest artist that might have used that place was the singer of Foreigner for some demos or something. He was recording us with lots of ambiance, and we wanted heavy sounds and big drums. Lars Ulrich: Flemming was completely in tune to what we were doing. My mentor was really into jazz, and he pulled me aside one day and said, “What’s going on with these guys? They can’t play.” And I’m like, “Who cares? Listen to the energy.” The studio I worked at, Sweet Silence, was renowned in Denmark. That’s what we did.įlemming, what were your first impressions of Metallica?įlemming Rasmussen: I had never heard of them, but I really liked them as people. And part of our thing is we would wake up in the morning, pick out a music video to watch. He had a huge videotape collection of all these bands, live on video. Hammett: We totally destroyed our friend’s house where we were staying. Being homesick gave us the right amount of, I don’t want to say “depression,” but a little bit of longing that I think made its way into the recording process. Once we figured that out, that was a little thing that we did.
Album or cover metallica ride the lightning full#
We collected absolutely every single beer bottle in our friend’s apartment, because you were able to take in four six packs of empty beer bottles and get one six pack of full beer bottles back. Hammett: We didn’t really have anything else to do besides work on music and drink Carlsberg beer. We were experiencing culture shock a little bit. It was easy for the Danish guy to fit in, but it wasn’t so easy for the three American guys to fit in. It was three American guys and a Danish guy. Hammett: It was great when we started there, but we were homesick after three or four weeks. Was recording in Copenhagen fun at that stage in your life? Kirk Hammett: I was reading The Stand by Stephen King, and there was this one passage where this guy was on death row said he was waiting to “ride the lightning.” I remember thinking, “Wow, what a great song title.” I told James, and it ended up being a song and the album title. Where did the title Ride the Lightning come from? On the eve of the 30th anniversary of Ride the Lightning, Rolling Stone caught up with Ulrich, Hammett and production assistant Flemming Rasmussen, who recorded the group in Copenhagen’s Sweet Silence Studio, to find out how the album was made and what it means to them now. But when Metallica were making it, they were poor, young headbangers, trying to stretch their dollars. The record has since gone on to be certified six times platinum. Lollapalooza 2022, Day One: Metallica Thrashes, Caroline Polachek Hushes, Lil Baby Chills Now they were working on the album that defined Metallica. Less than a year earlier, they had kicked out guitarist Dave Mustaine, who went on to form Megadeth, recruited Hammett and released their speed-limit-breaking debut, Kill ‘Em All, the record that defined thrash metal.
At the time, Ulrich and vocalist-guitarist James Hetfield were both 20, guitarist Kirk Hammett was 21 and bassist Cliff Burton was the old man of the group at 22. It was the spring of 1984, and the Bay Area thrash-metal quartet was holed up in Copenhagen, Denmark – Ulrich’s home country – recording at a studio they had picked for two reasons: hard rockers Rainbow had recorded their Difficult to Cure album there, and more urgently, it was cheap. Look Back at Metallica’s Ferocious Career in Photos
James and I slept in the bedroom, Kirk and Cliff shared his couch.” A friend literally gave us his apartment to stay in while we recording. “We were really broke,” drummer Lars Ulrich says, reflecting the state of Metallica as they were making their second album, Ride the Lightning.
0 kommentar(er)
