Lars Ulrich Reveals Song That Made Him Want to Be in a Band

Metallica have inspired a whole generation of musicians, but what inspired Lars Ulrich's start in music all those years ago? During an interview with GQ, the drummer pointed to Diamond Head for really sparking his interest in a music career.

Ulrich recalled, "When I was 15 or 16, I was living in L.A. – I’d moved over from Denmark a year or two before – and I was going to school in Orange County. The new wave of British heavy metal was going on. It was around 1979-81 and I would get all these records sent from England. There was this mail order thing called Old Records, where you’d send your money and all the latest releases would show up. So I got an MCA Records compilation album called Brute Force."

Thinking back to that set, he adds, "I’d recently read about this band called Diamond Head in Sounds that I hadn’t heard of before, then they were the opening cut on this compilation album – the song was called 'It's Electric.' When I heard that song I think I subsequently ended up playing it, like, 9,000 times for the next month."

The drummer declares, "If there was ever a song that made me want to be in a band, that was it. I wasn’t in a band at the time – I was still fussing around with tennis, although that was going down the drain quickly – and that song was like, 'Holy hell, if I could just play that song or be in some sort of set-up where I could live my life playing a song like that, that’s what I want to do.'"

The influence of Diamond Head has remained strong on the band, with the group most famously covering Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" Over the years, the band has also taken on "Helpless," "The Prince" and the song that initially sparked Ulrich's adoration, "It's Electric." Ulrich even went so far as to name his Apple Music show "It's Electric" as a nod to the song that started it all for him.

Diamond Head, "It's Electric"

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