Last week METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich was interviewed by the Official Sonisphere UK website. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Sonisphere UK: Metallica’s come a long way since your underground thrash days in the eighties. How have you managed the transition to megastars?

Ulrich: "Metallica’s always stuck to its guns and played the kind of music that turned us on and in turning us on it seemed like we turned a lot of other people on too. Over the years, the numbers just got steadily bigger, we sold more and more records, we reached more and more people and now we’re playing bigger places. But at heart it’s just four guys having fun and playing music and sharing it with people who get off on it as much as we do. Whether it’s 100 people or 100,000 it’s more or less the same attitude. Once in a while we go back and play really small places. We played a festival in the States a couple of years ago called Bonaroo and the night before the we played in a record store basement to about 150 people, so we do that type of stuff still."

Sonisphere UK: How did Metallica’s involvement with Sonisphere come about?

Ulrich: "There are some great festivals in Western Europe: Roskilde in Denmark, Werchter in Belgium, Glastonbury in Britain and Pinkpop in Holland. We just felt there would be room for a heavy metal version of that kind of festival where everybody comes and sees loads of different bands, maybe over multiple days, where people get a chance to camp and to have a bit of an experience that isn’t just limited to music. So when Stuart and John came to us a couple of years ago and asked if we would be part of this whole thing we said yes. Any time Metallica has a chance to be part of anything that’s unique and extraordinary and a little bit different it’s always fun to take that ride."

Sonisphere UK: The internet has moved on a lot since your dispute with Napster 10 years ago. With hindsight would you have handled that differently?

Ulrich: "I would have woken myself up from the nightmare quicker. I think if anything we were just caught off guard by how passionate people were about this whole internet phenomenon at the time and it kind of blind-sided us, but we stood our ground and stuck with our principles and a lot of people now are patting us on the back and saying how right we were. Where were you 10 years ago? We were the only ones out there is what I say. But it’s okay, you win some, you lose some. I don’t regret any of it. Certainly, it was an awkward time as we’d always been the good guys and suddenly there were people who didn’t think we were the good guys and it was an unusual situation for us to be in."

Read the entire interview here.