Metallica appeared in a recent issue of Billboard that has since been published on the web. The piece finds the band reflecting heavily on their age and how long they can keep playing. Frontman/guitarist James Hetfield said of growing older:
“We know we’re not supposed to mature in this field. People don’t want you to. They want you to look young and cool and dye your hair and all that shit. We respect our age — we’re not trying to hide it.”
Drummer Lars Ulrich has concerns about his own physical ability to continue playing into his twilight years:
“Whether we’ll be able to play ‘Master Of Puppets’ in our 70’s, I just don’t know. With Metallica, there’s a physicality and a weight that has to be part of it. You can play it less heavy, slower — or you can realize that the music deserves that physical approach, and if the physical delivery isn’t there, then maybe it’s better not to do it.”
Ulrich, who infamously led the charge against file sharing service Napster in the early 2000’s, also has a more levelheaded view on technology these days, stating:
“It’s not something I sweat over, I have the Spotify app and I use it, not daily but weekly. I’m on iTunes every day, more for movies than music. I’m on YouTube 500 times a day. We just won’t give these guys an exclusive — we don’t need the money, and we’d like all our fans to be able to find us.”
For more from the band on how they’ve learned to work function without conflict and accept their age, head to Billboard. Their new album “Hardwired…To Self-Destruct” will be released on November 18th.
