Lars Ulrich is featured in the new book The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi. It’s a posthumous release from Lou Reed with help from his widow, Laurie Anderson. The book explores Reed’s relationship with music, Tai Chi and meditation. In addition, the book features a number of new interviews.
Among those new interviews is one with Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Reed and Metallica famously (or infamously) collaborated on the 2011 album Lulu. The album was panned by critics and fans alike. It’s so controversial that we didn’t even include the songs from Lulu in our ranking of every Metallica song below.
Despite all of that, Ulrich still stands by the LP. In the book (as transcribed by Loudwire), he says, “What the f-ck is it about ‘Lulu’ that it got that kind of reaction? I can’t quite figure it out, but years later, it’s aged extremely well. It sounds like a motherf-cker still. So I can only put the reaction down to ignorance … It took our fans to a place I wish they would go more often.”
He added, “Maybe it would be a better time to release it now with what’s going on outside in the world, the chaos. I don’t know, but I am very proud of this record.”
The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi is out now and available for purchase at HarperCollins.com.