Full Metal Jacket

Lars Ulrich, Metallica’s drummer, paces outside a Hollywood sound stage during a break in the shooting of the band’s latest video, but his restlessness goes deeper than the half-hour it’s taking the crew to set up the lights for the next shot.

It’s been three years since the last Metallica tour and five years since the last studio album, and both gaps are an eternity in the fast-changing world of rock. Because of the long absence, rumors were inevitable--from creative differences to personal problems within the band.

Ulrich says the reason for the break was simple: After more than 300 shows in support of the last studio album, “Metallica,” the band was pretty much burned out. Ulrich, singer-guitarist James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Jason Newsted agreed in the summer of 1993 to an “open-ended” break.

Ulrich and Hetfield finally got together in the fall of 1994 to write songs for the follow-up to 1991’s “Metallica,” which sold more than 9 million in this country alone.

By the time the band began recording the following May, the pair had enough songs for two albums. The group plans to release them about 18 months apart. The first one, “Load,” is due in stores Tuesday. (See review, Page 67.)

Metallica hits the road this summer, starting with its headline slot on the Lollapalooza tour. When organizers of that alternative-rock showcase booked Metallica, some alternative fans balked, but in fact, Metallica has shown as much pioneering spirit as the best alternative-rock outfits. Just as Nirvana brought alternative rock to the mainstream, Metallica has shown a mass rock audience over the years that metal, too, can have character and content.

On the eve of the album’s release, Ulrich, 32, spoke about the band’s long absence, its new album and its place in ‘90s rock.

Question: What was the plan when you came off the road in the summer of 1993?

Answer: The main thing was we needed to walk away from what we were doing. We had been together for 15 years or so, and the longest break we ever had was probably two or three months--and that’s not enough time to really wind down. Plus, we had never been through anything as physically and mentally draining as that last tour.

Q: Did any part of you worry about what a long break like that might do to your fan base? There doesn’t seem to be a lot of loyalty these days in rock.

A: It was a matter of priorities. What does it do to an audience if you end up burning yourself out to the point of never wanting to do it again? Besides, you can’t worry about things like fan bases. The minute you start trying to plan your moves in reaction to what you think your audience might want, that’s the minute I think you have already lost. You never should sit there and go, “Well, here comes Green Day or whoever, so how should we react?”

Q: I suppose the same thing applies when you are thinking about your music. There was a lot of grumbling from die-hard Metallica fans last time that your album was too accessible. Does that intimidate you at all--the fan reaction to change?

A: The point people forget is that we change as people and musicians. You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over or you’ll get bored. That’s why you’ll find some changes on the new album. The thing that would worry me is if one of my favorite bands doesn’t change. But we caught the grumbling long before [“Metallica”]. When we put a ballad on our second album, there were purists in the hard-rock world that were freaking.

In fact, every time we put a record out, 95% of the people are thrilled about the fact we explored some new musical territory, but you also have the 5% who are closed-minded and want you to put out the same record in a different sleeve. There are plenty of bands who do that. But we choose not to be one of them. This time, for instance, we put some bluesy stuff on the record and even some country and Southern influences.

Q: Do you ever see doing another marathon tour like the last one?

A: No. No. No. No. That’s an answer for all of us. We will never do that again because we realize the whole thing would just crumble. That doesn’t mean we won’t tour a lot. We just won’t play every place you can put up a stage, which is what we did last time. We did a month in the Pacific Rim at a time when almost nobody else had. We played the Singapores and the Jakartas. We played Tel Aviv and Athens. We went to Europe three times.

Q: How did you use the year off?

A: Mostly it was just an enriching experience--a chance for us all to think about ourselves and our life away from the band. It was the first time we really got to spend any extended period of time thinking of ourselves as individuals rather than being one-fourth of Metallica. The result, in my case, is I am a more comfortable with myself, a bit less manic.

Q: What did you do in the studio last year when you found you had 30 songs?

A: Well, we liked all the songs, so we started looking at options. We thought about a double album like the Smashing Pumpkins, or maybe putting out two separate albums like Guns N’ Roses did with “Use Your Illusion.” We even thought about staggering the release dates like U2 did with “Achtung Baby” and “Zooropa.”

In the end, we decided to take the 14 songs that were the furthest along and record them and put them out and then go out and play some shows for a year and a half or so, then go back and put out the other album. This way we would keep things fresh. We could even play some of the songs from the next album on the tour.

Q: Were you as surprised as everyone when Lollapalooza invited you to headline the shows?

A: Totally. I remember we were with [our managers] in New York when they showed me the fax and I checked the calendar. Was it April 1 or something? I was surprised that they came to us because the perception of Lollapalooza is so far from what we do. But I personally don’t see it as that much of a stretch.

Q: What do you mean?

A: There were a lot of divisions between alternative rock and hard rock and metal five years ago when Lollapalooza started, but that has changed a lot. I think the boundaries have come down, and that’s healthy.

I think musical tastes are so wide in America today that you could put Metallica and U2 and Oasis and PJ Harvey and Waylon Jennings and Dr. Dre and the Wu-Tang Clan together, and it would be great.

Q: What broke down those barriers?

A: I think you have to thank Kurt Cobain for a lot of that. If you go back five years or so, we had the punks and the metal kids and the modern Husker Du crowd, if you will. Cobain came along and somehow fused a lot of it together. The aggression and attitude of Nirvana appealed to a lot of the metal kids. There were definite hints of Black Sabbath riffs in the music. At the same time, Nirvana wasn’t about being a great guitar player. It was about emotion and purity and opening up, which is what a lot of the alternative crowd loved about Nirvana.

Q: “Hero of the Day” on the new album speaks about finding heroes. Like Cobain, you and the other members of Metallica are viewed by lots of young people as heroes. Cobain felt uncomfortable being seen as a hero. Do you like being a role model?

A: To tell you the truth, I could never understand this thing about role models, whether you’re talking about some basketball player or politician or rock star. Why should you pattern your life after what they do or say? You don’t know them. The way they live their lives may have nothing to do with what you admire in their professional life.

I always think you should look within and seek out answers for yourself . . . educate yourself to understand different sides of issues. That’s the way I was brought up. But I hope the songs do speak to people and help them find inner strength. . . . If there is any truth in what we say, it’s in the songs.