LARS ORLICH

Rip It Up, Issue 173, 1 December 1991, Page 2

LARS ORLICH

A chance to speak with Lars Urlich face to face is too good to miss, but this time rather than unleash some media professional type on him, we decided to let Metallica fans come up with the questions. A group of them were polled and a range of questions selected for a somewhat tired Mr Utlich to deal with. “Oh God no! Lars Utlich on trial! Do any of them hassle me?”

! CONVENTION 92 A one day Music New Zealand Convention will take place Sunday April 5 atthe Aotea Centre, coinciding with the annual NZ Music Awards. Sessions will include: 1. Management — Getting Started. 2. Recording & Publishing Agreements — Making A Deal. 3. Media — Getting Exposure. 4. Overseas Marketing — Getting There. Each session will feature a panel of experts from NZ and Australia. Tangata Reords is a new label established to nurture and develop contemporary Maori music. As an indie record label Tangata is unique in that it is the only active Maori label. The label’s goals are to nurture an indigenous identity, to help Maori musicians realise their potential as performers and songwriters and also to develop and exploit market opportunities in NZ and internationally. Tangata has a national licensing agreement with BMG. - The first project is the release of the TVNZ Marae's compilation of four Christmas songs, Jandals & Jingle Bells. The performers featured are Mahinaarangi Tocker, Bill Kerekere, Te Aroha anderson and The -Whanau Funksters. - : The Deep Groove label has emerged out of Lab Studios, the brainchild of engineer Mark Tierney, BFM'’s Kane Massey and Lab's Bill Latimer. The first release is out now, a double 10" featuring contemporary dance grooves such as Strawpeople Tough Culture’, Nemesis Dub Systems ‘How Bout That’, Riot Riddum Sound System ‘Home Girl’, Rhythm & Business ‘Deep Groove's Love Theme', Jules Isa ‘Dangerous Game', Sound Foundation ‘Lethal Dub’, Love & Bass ‘Deep of the Night' and DLT Meets the Projector ‘ln a Free Style Dub'.

POSSE RETURN! UPPER HUTT POSSE have released a remake of ‘Stormy Weather’ and completed a hi-tech video to accompany the release of the 12" single. The video was written and directed by D-Word and funded by an NZ-ON-AIR grant. The B-side of the 12" features the ‘Projector Dub’ version, an eight minute remix by DJ DLT and Michael Hodgson. DJ DLT has left the Posse and Rhys B will take on Dling. ' 1 /4 S.PUD. GNAW SPUD release their new album Gnaw this month, ten tracks recorded at the Lab with “Big Ted” Tierney and Matthew Heine at the production desk. To listen to it properly the band suggest you “turn the bass right up, put your head between the speakers, turn out the lights and touch yerself.” Well, each to his own, | guess.

: { ! AXEMEN PUD Little Steve McCabe has moved to Auckland so expect gigs soon from this cacophonous Christchurch ouffit, now resident in the Big A. Here they look like Axemen Three but they swell even bigger on stage and they sound like noone else you'll hearin this town. Meanwhile, you can prime yourself with a copy of their greatest hits CD — Peter Wang Pud, out soon on Flying Nun. ' Adrenalin won the Westward Ho Tavern Batfle of the Bands with runners-up being Band With No

{ / NEXUS ‘SPACE Described as “space age jozz”, Nexus are an international electronic jazz ensemble who are presenting a multi-media show in the Auckland City Art Gallery auditorium on Monday 16th of December at Bpm. The show, called ‘Earth Bound', will combine audio-visual compositions with computer video artin what is promised to be a musical and high-tech extravaganza. _ Nexus is made up of musicians from the USA, Turkey, Germany and Sweden who first performed in Auckland at the Sweet Sharp and Short jazz festival in 1989. Fans of avant-garde music should keep an eye out for their tape release, out soon.

Name and Confusion. First prize was SIOOO cash and some recording fime ... Rumblefish are doing a free concert, Queen St midday Saturday Dec 14, outside Marbecks, 164 Queen St. .. tune into Counting The Beat, NZ Music Show, spm Sundays, 91FM, Auckland . .. singer /TV host Moana visited Melbourne early December for the opening of Australia’s first Maori Radio Staion . . .Mark Tierney will produce the debut These Wilding Ways album at Airforce .. . Victor Grbic is currently producing a new Able Tasmans album at the Lab.

Well, not really Lars, I'm afraid they're all quite polite. “That's a shame, but as long as no-one asks about Bob Rock that's OK!" Fortunately our fans weren't remarkably interested in Mr Rock so all was well and the inquisition began. What does it feel like to be on stage, and look out over the crowd going absolutely wild? “That's one of those trick questions! That’s really difficult to answer because unless you've tried sifting on a stage and looking out at those people, it’s hard o describe. There's just this rush of fuckin’ energy that starts happening, it's just weird. . Obviously all shows aren't the same in vibe, and we do our best fo be consistent, but on nights where it lifts itself above the normal thing, that's just so special, this energy thing between you and those people.” What were some early inflences other than the whole New Wave of British Heavy Metal? “Umm, my shit goes back a lot longer than that. | grew up on the dinosaur rock acts like Purple and Sabbath and stuff, although | was never much into Zeppelin for some reason. Then bands like Sweet and

Slade and Uriah Heep, which evolved into like Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest. Its weird ‘cause none of the stuff coming out of America like Ted Nugent and Aerosmith ever really dented Europe. People were like ‘What's so special about that?’ Then came bands like Status Quo and like any other 12 year old idiot back then | had my brush with Kiss, and after that it's pretty well documented as you say.” What about the stuff like the Misfits? (So | couldn't help being a media professional, its in my blood 0K?) “Well, that whole punk side was something we never got into much, it was never really an influence. Our musical roots are very much in hard rock and metal, all this Misfits and Discharge and Ramones, it was more an attitude thing rather than aninfluence.” There’s a whole heap of questions and comments about the cover art, some positive, some negative, so give us the final word on that. “Its funny, cause the whole thing took about ten seconds to decide, but I've spent like five hours talking about it in the last week alone! To trace it right back, | remember sitting round my kitchen table with James

and thinking how cool it would be to absolutely downplay all that stuff. We were talking about Peter

Gabriel who did all those albums without fitles so we thought ‘Well, we'll have no title.’ Then it was like let's have no cover art. | remember I'd been reading a metal magazine and looking at all these monsters and cliches and crap that people put on their covers and thinking 'We definitely don’t want to do that.’ | had this vision of a really subtle logo. Actually, that cover art took about ten times longer to do than anything we'd done before because no-one could get that black on black looking right, and we'd had like five artists try! One day one of our managers said ‘Maybe you should put some kind of symbol on there.” We said O.K. then forgot about it until one day after we'd written ‘Don't Tread On Me' and James came to me with this book that had a picture of some old regiment’s flag in it, which was this snake with ‘Don't Tread On Me' by it. The simplicity of this snake was just so cool, it stood for so much but it looked like a drawing by a three year old, it was just real cool, a - symbol of a strong belief in your self. So there you have it.” How do you compare this album with And Justice For All2 “That's not the most difficult question in the world, i's pretty much like night and day. There are things on And Justice that are an indication of what we're doing now, but we'd take those things and do them for a while then go off on Planet 50 for the rest of the song. There's so much | could say about And Justice and | don't want people to think I've got some kind of problem with it, but for a while it just puzzled me how we could walk out of that studio and feel it was the right thing to do. | never second guess what we do, and in - 1988 that was it. What made us go off in this direction | don't know. | suppose it was just time to move forward.” Lastly, a technical question. How much does that guy practice every day? “I hardly practice at all actually, I'm not really a drummer’s drummer. The aspect of drumming that interests me is the group aspect and the songwriting side. | have a drum kit in my studio at home, and sometimes when I'm bored I'll go down and play it for ten minutes and get really bored. | think it needs some guitars and stuff to make it interesting.” OK. Lars, thanks and thats it Painless huh? “Yeah, come on, there must be one question slagging me there!”

KIRK GEE