METALLICA WORKING EXTRA HARD TO COMPETE, MUSIC AND PAYOLA

Metallica is working hard to get back to metal and hard rock’s king of music and airplay, and Lars Ulrich discussed the current scenes in both.

Metallica is working hard in the studio, so much so, they’ve booked a brief summer tour, but the band is focused on reclaiming the rock and metal throne and on capturing the radio airwaves once again. According to Lars Ulrich the band is balancing life and music, but they’ve got to navigate a path in the changed world in 2007.

In the ’80s the band couldn’t buy airplay, in the ’90s they steamrolled the radio waves, but in the early 2000’s the bands momentum began to wane. Sonically, the band’s St. Anger wasn’t radio friendly, and the band squeaked out two songs for airplay — none that became radio classics. This year, stations and the industry is still coming to grips with the recent payola scandals whereby parties on the behalf of the label or the band offer money or incentives to play their client’s music. Ulrich said that’s been going on since the advent of radio.

“It’s unfortunate if you can buy your way to airplay. At the same time it’s been going on in different stages ever since [the advent of] rock radio forty or fifty years ago. So what’s the difference between direct payola and taking someone out to dinner or comping them a couple of tickets to a show or getting them ten minutes with some singer, or getting a couple of autographs. There’s some grey areas there, which there are with most of these hotly debated topics. It’s not really black or white. I don’t really know what to say beyond that.”

The band is slated to start recording the still untitled effort March 12. When the band’s album is done later this year, it will enter into a new music scene with a lot of hungry players. Ulrich says today’s bands are a driving force to make the band push harder and keep up their chops.

“Wolfmother, who I saw up in San Francisco about a month ago, I mean they’re just. I’m just about listening to the record everyday. It’s f–kin’ awesome. There’s a band from Austin, Texas called The Sword, that are like really, really cool kind of retro stuff that I’ve been listening to, too. And then there a couple of the younger metal bands like Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine makes me run that extra mile everyday, believe me (laughs).”

Metallica’s Sick Of The Studio tour kicks off in Lisbon, Portugal June 28, but the band could still add more dates. Werchter, Athens, Vienna, Oslo, and Stockholm are some of the cities on the band’s itinerary so far.