Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich recently took to his Instagram account and posted a throwback picture with Jason Newsted on the latter’s birthday. His caption read:
“Long rocker hair, sleeveless rocker shirts, mischievous rocker smirks…good rocking times!!!
Happy Birthday Jason!
📸 @rosshalfin”
Meanwhile, former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson recently joined in for an interview with “I Ask No One With Kevin Re LoVullo.” He was asked if the multi-platinum success of Metallica’s 1991 self-titled album helped or hurt the metal community.
Ellefson responded:
“Ah, it frickin’ broke the doors down. Metallica were always the leader. They broke all the doors down to every obstacle in the way of heavy metal. To some degree, Iron Maiden, before them, had superseded and became an arena act and done this stuff too, so certainly you’ve gotta give credit to Maiden. And even Def Leppard, to some degree, because they started out as just kind of a grungy little heavy metal band out of Sheffield, and then they [went] on to become essentially almost like a pop act, on some level; I mean, they became that big. Those guys — certainly Def Leppard and Maiden— deserve credit for sort of carving the initial path to sort of the big-time mainstream path for heavy metal.
“But then Metallica came in, and they just f***ing [said], ‘We’re here. We’re coming in.’ They really broke through every obstacle with MTV and daytime rotation with their videos and just became a household name. And it’s cool, because they have ‘metal’ in their name, so it’s not like there’s any ‘what is this?’ It’s, like, come on. It says ‘metal’ right in it. You know what it is. And they didn’t clean it up and pretty it up; they just kept it raw and frickin’ grungy and in your face, and it was, again, authentic.”
“So, again, the likes of Lemmy [of Motorhead], who influenced Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] and the guys, that inspiration that stayed true, that, ‘We don’t have to…’ I remember with Metallica, it was always the thing: ‘We do our own thing. We don’t play by the rules.’ And to a large degree, they didn’t. And that’s, I think, what made it appealing to the fans, because, let’s face it, heavy metal is kind of working man’s music, and that’s why we look to our heroes, because they’re, like, ‘God, I wish I could my boss to f*** off and just go do that, ’cause these guys can do whatever they want.’ That’s the message, right?”
