Ice Cream Man

Bonnaroo 2008 Preview - Interview with Lars Ulrich of Metallica and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam

Words by Anastasia Frangoulis
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Bonnaroo 2008 is almost here. This year it runs from June 12th- 15th. The line up may be the most diverse one so far. A few featured artists include: Pearl Jam, Metallica, Tiesto, Jack Johnson, Kanye West, Chris Rock, Willie Nelson, Death Cab for Cutie and Rilo Kiley. Bonnaroo was named the best music festival in America by Rolling Stone. In a recent press conference Mike McCready from Pearl Jam and Lars Ulrich from Metallica were interviewed about the upcoming festival. The interviews are so very exciting, and these artists seem just as excited about performing at Bonnaroo as the avid fans feel about seeing them.

Mike McCready, guitarist of Pearl Jam said that he felt honored about being invited to Bonnaroo. “I’ve heard good things about the festival over the years from people that have gone to it. And certainly, you know The Raconteurs and Robert Plant and Metallica and B.B. King for sure – that’s pretty much an eclectic type of a group of bands. And it’s exciting for me to know that there’s that many kinds of bands playing on one bill over three days. And it seems like it will be a fun – a real fun thing to be part of. And my expectations of it are, I think, it will be hot. I know that for sure, it’s Tennessee in the summer. I don’t really know. I just want our band to play to the best of our ability and entertain the crowd. That’s my expectation.”

Pearl Jam is currently recording a new album, but you seasoned Pearl Jam fans, don’t worry that they will only play new music. According to the interview they are planning on playing their known and already loved music at Bonnaroo. They are going to shape the show around the audience. McCready stated: “We have about 200 songs to pull from so we’ll do that. And maybe some obscure B side kind of stuff. There’s still some kind of vitality to us and our music and people get something out of it and that’s important to us. You certainly want to throw in stuff that people know. You want to give them some of the 'hits' but you also want to challenge yourself so you know, play some different stuff that you maybe haven’t played, but that stuff once again happens when you figure out what – the vibe of the whole audience is, and that can change like that second, mid-set, and we’ll go, “OK, let’s go this way. We’ll go this direction. OK, acoustic set,” you know, or this or that.”

Mike has only heard good things about Bonnaroo, “I’ve just heard it’s kind of like a really cool three day festival. And that the crowds are very receptive to the jamming that goes on. And the bands kind of feel a little more free to get into a jam session. I’ve heard good things. I hear that they do a very late night set and it’s a good experience. It’s a laid back festival and it’s good music, and that’s what a festival should be.”

Mike sees Bonnaroo and Pearl Jam as a “perfect fit”. “I believe that we’ve done kind of organic releases of our music, you know, aside from big record company things, but we’ve, you know, we’ve tried to keep everything as in-house and small and as punk rock and as do-it-yourself as possible over the years, and that being to our fan club and having the fans, you know, will get access to tickets and to, you know, we’ve – that’s part of our way of doing business, and I believe that kind of fits right in with how Bonnaroo is doing now, so I think it’s going to be a really perfect fit, and you know, we’ve always kind of strove to give as much as we can for a good price to the fans, and you know, hopefully that’ll happen again at the show.”

Mike says he gets a huge rush out of performing. “I love playing for a big crowd.” Regarding the idea of music festivals popularity rising, Mike stated, “if this is growing like you see in Europe, you know, you get three or four-day festivals, people just camp out and they, you know, 30 to 40 or 50,000, 50,000 people, and they do that every single year. I think that we’re – the United States is kind of in its infant stages of that, but I think that it’s growing and I, and you know, an ample example of that would be Bonnaroo obviously and Lollapalooza and I think it’s a great thing. I think it’s a maximum exposure for new bands that can go through and maybe they’re playing clubs one night and then they go and they play a really big stage and then they go back to clubs and then, you know, they got another 5,000 fans just by playing there that day. So it’s a wonderful opportunity to be a part of.”

Lars Ulrich, drummer for Metallica informed us in the interview that they have also been spending time in the recording studio finishing up their as yet untitled album. They just played a charity show to raise money for inner city kids. Lars said that originally they wrote 26 songs for the album, and it was cut back to 14, and just a couple of days ago it was cut back to 11 songs. Lars explained the reason for cutting out so many songs. “The problem is that they haven’t made a CD yet that can contain more than 80 minutes of music, so we’re probably, because we’re not really going to edit them. These are long songs. I mean, these are – it’s not like three minute little pop ditties here. We’re talking, you know, seven minute, eight minute, nine minute, you know, nutty-ass songs.”

He described the new album as, “definitely pretty all over the place. There’s a lot of variation, a lot of, you know, fast, slow, melodic, kind of hard core, nutty, super fast speed stuff, and it’s a little more like some of the earlier records. We’re a little more dynamic within the songs.” Metallica is planning on playing songs off of the new album.

Lars informed us that Metallica is going to Europe next week to play shows leading up to Bonnaroo. Lars said “by the time we hit up Bonnaroo, hopefully there’ll be some new stuff going in there.”

Lars is definitely a “festie” at heart, and he sees the festival environment as the ultimate show experience. Lars said that the thing, “I’m so psyched about with Bonnaroo is that, you know, we’ve been playing obviously the European festival circuit for years and years and years and years. I mean, even the last three years we’ve been planning our summer vacations around all the European festivals. I mean, it’s, you know, apart from like, you know, last night and stuff, I mean there’s not much that compares to that in the level of fun, you know. I listen, I love chaos, I love no rules. That kind of anarchy, I mean, that’s trying to do for as many years as, you know, so it’s – I look forward to it. We’re coming in either Wednesday, Thursday, going to hang around, hopefully do a sound check and just kind of roll with it, you know, and trying – it’s not our gig, you know. So when it’s not our gig we have a tendency to just kind of show up and roll with it and hang out and just kind of roll with the vibes, you know.”

When they were invited to Bonnaroo Lars said their initial response was immediate. Lars said, “in Metallica we have a, you know, a phrase a no-brainer. It was just like, you know, Bonnaroo, let’s go. That’s a no-brainer. Let’s go have some fun.” Metallica is heavily supportive of Bonnaroo’s philosophy of combining all types of musical styles. He said it it seemed obvious last year with The Police, and “obviously I know how it started, and there’s a lot of people that are sort of protective of its origins, and we certainly appreciate and respect that, but at the same time, I mean, you know, the spirit of most of these festivals, certainly the ones in Europe, I mean, it’s five stages, and it’s all kinds of different music from, you know, hard core, you know, Norwegian (death metal) to, you know, jazz bands and everything in between. And everybody just shows up and gets along and has a great time, and you can go over there, you can go over there, you can avoid that, you go in your tent and whatever. But to me it’s about the sense of community and it’s about, you know, shared experiences and about variety and those European festivals have been thriving on that for decades.” Lars continues, “I think it’s awesome that that’s starting to happen now with, you know, with Bonnaroo and Coachella and you know, the whole festival thing in America, it’s just starting to like sort of pop a little more.”

Metallica and Lars seem very laid back and natural as musicians. He said, “I generally write the set list between 10 to 15 minutes before we go on stage, so it’s not something that I really think a lot about. Like, OK, at Bonnaroo we’re going to have to do this and this and this. I mean, we just show up and do our thing, you know, and whatever mood we’re in that day and whatever kind of a vibe is, you know, I mean, I don’t think we have to radically alter anything specific. We just kind of show up and do our thing and just have a – we have a great time and everybody else seems to have a great time, and it’s going to be great, man.”

Wow, I am so ready for Bonnaroo after getting some insight from Mike McCready and Lars Ulrich. If you haven’t gotten your tickets for Bonnaroo yet, I’m sure you will soon. Remember it begins tomorrow.