He may be the reason why Metallica is still one of the greatest forces in hard rock to this day, but if you listen to only a few of his live clips, you can hear that he’s a lot more interested in making sure the spectacle goes off well than worrying about practising his drum fills or making sure that he shows off technique. He learned to dial things back a little bit more, but if you look back to the 1980s, you’re going to see a guy deadset on being one of the best drummers that anyone had ever seen.
Granted, it was going to be a bit tough trying to impress a rhythm machine like James Hetfield. The frontman was a king of downpicking and wasn’t a bad drummer himself, so when he saw Ulrich play drums and watched half of his cymbals falling over as he played, it wasn’t the music that impressed. It was the drive that he had to succeed, and that was more than enough for Hetfield when they wrote ‘Hit the Lights’.
After all, the rest of the world didn’t seem to be in on their little secret yet. The glam bands were still ruling the world, and even though they could have easily tried to make rock and roll in the same vein as Motley Crue, they knew it was better to blast everyone from Diamond Head to Venom and see if they could do anything close to that. But Ulrich always had his own agenda when it came to drummers.
While Bob Rock got him to appreciate the subtlety of people like Charlie Watts and Phil Rudd when making The Black Album, Ulrich first fell in love with drummers who put on a show whenever they got behind the kit. He was never going to be the powerhouse that John Bonham was, but Ian Paice of Deep Purple was already turning rock and roll inside out when he made something like Made in Japan.
But in the world of drumming, there’s really no way to discount what Neil Peart did for people like Ulrich. Even with a band that has three different virtuosos in their ranks, Peart was the one proving that the drums could be a lead instrument in a band, so the idea of a snot-nosed kid like Ulrich getting the chance to meet him when he was first coming up was like a dream come true in the days of Master of Puppets.
They already had the luxury of Geddy Lee almost producing them, but Peart was always the true drumming hero in Ulrich’s mind, saying, “Cliff Bernstein, our manager, was the guy that signed Rush to Mercury Records. So (he said) ‘Do you wanna talk to Neil Peart about drums?’ I was like that big (tiny) at the time. And (I was) talking to Neil, who was like the God of Gods. So I managed to sort of get enough (courage) to dial the phone number.”
There’s no question that Peart is miles above anything that Ulrich ever hoped to play in his life, but it’s hard not to hear the influence in some of those early thrash masterpieces. They weren’t looking to make hit singles when releasing ‘Master of Puppets’ or ‘Disposable Heroes’, but throughout every piece of those tunes, you can hear Peart flying across his kit the same way that Peart used to do. It didn’t have as much finesse behind it, but really, who else could have Peart’s chops?
This was someone who could play as well as John Bonham and Keith Moon at the same time, so any chance of getting anywhere close to him was always going to be a pipe dream. Ulrich might have evolved into his own unique entity, but Peart will forever be the gold standard for anyone looking for a little bit more from rock and roll than the standard four-on-the-floor rhythms.