Metallica was such an odd group of people to be in a band together that it took a few goes to get right, and even then tragedy sometimes forced their hand. Strangest of all was the uneasy partnership at the band’s core, the one between intense, bottle-it-up frontman James Hetfield and breezy, let-it-all-out drummer Lars Ulrich.
They first met after Ulrich, fresh from seeing his dream of becoming a tennis pro fade away, placed an ad in the local paper looking for bandmates. He reminisced to Classic Rock about his first impressions of the singer. “We instantly connected over music,” he said. “He freaked out about my record collection and seeing all that stuff from England, and I didn’t know that much about the Aerosmiths of this world. We filled each other’s voids right there.”
