LLOYD GRANT
Lars’s jamming buddy made history when he played guitar on Metallica’s first song
How did you end up playing with Lars Ulrich in the early 80s?
“I was a guitarist just trying to get into a good band, particularly one that would play around town, so we met through a local magazine that would put out ads for musicians looking to recruit other musicians to form bands.”
What was he like?
“He was a really nice guy, very friendly, and even then he knew exactly what he wanted to do. Before Metallica became a band, Lars was still investing all of his time into eventually making music. He’d go to the record store a few times a week to see what new things were coming in from Europe, listening to them but also studying them.”
At what point did the concept of Metallica as a band start to form? “Metallica kind of formed on the side while Lars and I were playing together.
He met tons of people and would play with them in either the rehearsal studio or his place. I do remember he brought a guy into the practice once and it was James Hetfield. They’d got a tape and it was an early instrumental version of Hit The Lights, but at that point there still wasn’t a name for the band.”
What did you think of the song, compared to the stuff that was around at the time?
“I liked it – I wish we’d written it! It was probably a bit faster than I was trying to write at the time, but it was right up my alley. I didn’t know just how big it was gonna be so at the time it was just a cool song.”
Was there a particular point you stopped playing together?
“We stopped playing around the time he started getting together regularly with James and Ron Mcgovney. He still approached me when it was just Lars, James and
Ron to go and play with them. I went over and we went through Hit The Lights a couple times, which was really awesome. After that I got another call, this time to come and put down a guitar solo because they were trying to get the song onto the compilation Metal Massacre. They literally turned a recorder on and just got me doing a solo; if I’d known just how much interest it was going to create, I would have spent way more time on it!”
How does it feel to be a part of the story of metal’s biggest band?
“It feels super-important, my name appearing in the same breath as the story of Metallica. It’s pretty interesting, but obviously at the time we couldn’t predict the future, so nobody knew what was going to happen!”