Metallica's Lulu is widely regarded as one of the worst albums in heavy-metal history — perhaps even more so than their similarly disliked 2003 misstep, St. Anger. Indeed, the band's 2011 collaborative album with Velvet Underground icon Lou Reed is such a low point in Metallica's history that many fans choose to forget it ever happened. Lars Ulrich, on the other hand, thinks the album has "aged extremely well."
The Metallica drummer is quoted defending Lulu in a newly published book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, a posthumous collection of Reed's musings on his passion for Tai Chi, and how they informed his life and music. In one section of the book, Ulrich offers his retrospective thoughts on the negative reaction Lulu garnered, chalking up any unsavory opinions to "ignorance" and reiterating how proud he is of that album.
"What the fuck is it about Lulu that it got that kind of reaction?," Ulrich wondered aloud in the book. "I can't quite figure it out, but years later, it's aged extremely well. It sounds like a motherfucker still. So I can only put the reaction down to ignorance."
"It took our fans to a place I wish they would go more often," he added. "Maybe it would be a better time to release it now with what's going on outside in the world, the chaos. I don't know, but I am very proud of this record ... James [Hetfield] and I would be figuring out ways through a piece of music and then Lou would look over and go, 'That's it. I'm not doing another fucking take of that.' That's not the way we usually worked, but it was so beautiful and great, the whole thing."
