By: Staff
James Hetfield
Both James Hetfield of Metallica and Lou Reed recently spoke with NME Magazine about their upcoming collaboration, an album entitled Lulu. The album was originally supposed to be a solo project for Reed, inspired by and based on German expressionist playwright Frank Wedekind’s play chronicling the trials of a dancer who is abused.
While the original plan was for Metallica and Lou Reed to team up to re-record some of Lou Reed’s old, lesser-known work with Velvet Underground, but when Reed decided to send Hetfield and company what he had so far for Lulu, they knew they were on to something special.
Metallica vocalist and guitarist James Hetfield spoke about that moment and focusing just on the music:
“We were very interested in working with Lou. I had these giant question marks: ‘What’s it going to be like?’ ‘What’s going to happen?’ So it was great when he sent us the lyrics for the Lulu body of work. It was something we could sink our teeth into. I could take off my singer and lyricist hat and concentrate on the music part. These were very potent lyrics, with a soundscape behind them for atmosphere. Lars and I sat there with an acoustic and let this blank canvas take us where it needed to go. It was a great gift, to be asked to stamp Metallica on it. And that’s what we did.”
Reed gushed about the project, declaring it to be better than any of his past material:
“We had to bring Lulu to life in a sophisticated way, using rock and the hardest power rock you could come up with would have to be Metallica. This is the best thing I ever did. And I did it with the best group I could possibly find. By definition, everybody involved was honest. This has come into the world pure. We pushed as far as we possibly could within the realms of reality.”
The joint venture is to be released on Halloween and will include some appropriately darkly entitled tracks entitled “Pumping Blood,” “Mistress Dread,” “Junior Dad” and “Little Dog.” Get more info about the collaboration from here, here and here.
