Metallica’s Lars Ulrich Explains ‘Key to a Successful Band,’ Talks How Jazz Icon Became His Godfather

“What an honor to have the great Dexter Gordon as my godfather.”

During an appearance on Tanya’s Table Podcast, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich talked about success, live shows, and the fact that his godfather is the late jazz icon, Dexter Gordon.Metallica is promoting the “S&M2” record, you can check it out here via Amazon.

While on the subject of success, Lars commented (transcribed by UG):

“The key to a successful band is freedom, not, ‘8 o’clock, we are going to eat then!’ Some people are lone wolves, some are more social, everyone is in a different mood, so you just learn to roll with that.

“The main thing in being in a successful group – you gotta let people have their space and you don’t wanna ever make anything mandatory in the downtime, encourage people to be part of things.

“Somebody needs to just rest, stare out of the window, get lost in the city, or whatever – that needs to be encouraged.”

Absolutely. Your performances are so high-energy, I think either you want to pass out or your adrenaline is so high that you gotta keep it going.

“For me, on the road, it’s usually at least four or five hours after we got off stage that could be any kind of sleep.

“I can go back to the hotel and chill if I’m really tired but I am never going to sleep until a minimum of four hours, sometimes five or six, after we get off the stage.

“There is too much adrenaline and too much crazy energy just flowing through you still for hours.”

Your godfather – Dexter Gordon, how that came to be?

“That in the late ’50s, early ’60s, post-World War II – a lot of the great jazz musicians from America were facing a lot of issues in America.

“When they played in Europe, they found that the European audience was obviously much more mixed and open, basically would treat them in a whole different way than they would be treated in the US because of the segregation at the time.

“So a lot of great jazz musicians loved cities in Western Europe and a lot of them fell in love with Copenhagen. At that time, I think most people felt that Copenhagen was the most progressive part of Denmark, and people were colorblind to racism, and these jazz musicians were welcomed with open arms.

“They treated them as equals at that time. Lots of people ended up spending a lot of time in Denmark and Scandinavia, and Dexter Gordon was among that group. And he ended up living in Copenhagen, and my dad [Torben Ulrich], even though he was a professional tennis player, was also a huge jazz music fan.

“And he was also writing about jazz – he was a jazz critic for a newspaper. So whenever jazz people came to Copenhagen, he would end up in the same circles as them. And so my dad and Dexter became friends, so when I was born, my dad thought it would be great for me to have unusual and unexpected people close to me.

“So he asked Dexter if he would be my godfather, and he said yes. What an honor to have the great Dexter Gordon as my godfather. And he lived in Denmark for about 10 years after I was born, I have pictures of Christmas that we would spend occasionally, and hang out, do social things.

“I have pictures with Dexter for traditional Danish Christmas in ’67, it was just super cool. That was just what I grew up with, and not mingling with people we loved and respected would have been weird.

“So many of these incredible artists found the atmosphere in Copenhagen that was irreplaceable for them and felt it like home.”

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