“A different interpretation”: the one Metallica song Lars Ulrich never plays the same way
One of the best things about seeing your favourite band live is hearing them play your favourite songs. Even better than that is hearing them re-work those songs, exploring new possibilities with their parts and finding new and inventive ways to repurpose them. While some fans may prefer to hear them played exactly how they sound on an album, for Lars Ulrich and Metallica, there is one song that is particularly exciting to re-imagine in concert.
When asked by GQ in a 2020 interview to name his all-time favourite Metallica song, Ulrich responded with ‘Sad But True’ and then added, “I just love playing that song. I play it a little differently each time. I love the tempo and giving it a different interpretation every time I play it.”
Originally released on their self-titled 1991 album, the song came out as a single two years later. The group have since played it 1,405 times so far in concert, giving Ulrich plenty of space and opportunities to mix it up on the track behind the kit and find new ways of interpreting its rhythm and energy.
“I love the feel of that song and the kind of the stomp and the size of it,” Ulrich said. “There’s some of the songs that are really rigid and some of the other songs that are a little more free-form. ‘Sad But True’ falls kind of on the far end of the free-form scale. Every night you play sort of different drum fills and push, pull, all that stuff. So that one I love playing.”
And it’s not just a favourite with Ulrich. It’s also been singled out by former bassist Jason Newstead and is always popular with the band’s die-hard fan base, too. There is a reason that it is one of their most-played numbers, and every time the group performs it, the crowd can be heard joining in with a chorus of backing vocals, chanting and cheering to match the energy to every performance by the band.
An eight-minute epic on stage, the group stretch the song out from its studio counterpart and impart more energy, more excitement and more aggression to the song. Ulrich drives the whole thing along with the chunky, churning and searing guitars from James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, as well as the gruff, growling, and screaming vocals also supplied by Hetfield.
With its lyrics inspired by the 1978 Anthony Hopkins film Magic, a movie about a ventriloquist who is controlled by his evil puppet, the song is about dual personalities, fighting the Devil on your shoulder and controlling your darker urges. Thus, it’s an appropriate pick to play in as many different ways as possible over the years and for which to find the multiple personalities, possibilities and peculiarities within.
