LAMB OF GOD’S CHRIS ADLER Asked LARS ULRICH If He Should Have Joined MEGADETH

Lamb of God’s drummer, Chris Adler told Metal Injection Livecast that he really asked Metallica’s Lars Ulrich an advice about joining Megadeth and about Dave Mustaine’s reputation. Read his words:

“After I got the call [to join MEGADETH], I actually called Lars. We had toured together and connected to some degree. And I said, ‘Hey, man, I just got, like, a legit offer to play, or at least try out, I guess, for the new MEGADETH record. And I think heavy metal in general is a bigger genre because of the drama between you guys. So, what, if anything, would you allow me to know about what am I getting into if I go into this?’ And Larstold me what was exactly the truth: Dave is an absolute pussycat. He is a sweetheart — he really is. But he’s driven. He has a vision in mind and it’s perfectly defined and nothing outside of it is acceptable. And I love that. I’ve had the same idea. In my career, that’s exactly the way that I have kind of come up, and that’s why Dave and I got along. Now, that doesn’t mean you have the people skills to make it work or the ability to actually get to that end. I mean, those are difficult things that we all go through in whatever it is that we do. You know where you wanna be, you find that point on the horizon, and that is how you get it done — you believe in yourself and do it.”

“It’s such a negative market in general and so many subdivisions of everything, it’s certainly easy to pick on guys who are in the news for whatever they say,” Chris said. “Nor do I advocate everything Dave has said — but the dude is just… He’s had a bit of a hard time, obviously, from the beginning of his life. He [grew up with] two or three older sisters in a poor family that, basically, he was the last one to get any attention. And he finally found some friends, [formed] a band. You’re f**ked up from life, and [after getting fired by] the only friends you really had, you’re out on a f**king Greyhound bus to go home [before] they record the sh*t that you wrote. No doubt he’s gonna be upset. And it’s an incredibly dramatic story in our genre. But if you think about that personality, coming up from that, not giving up, and creating something, in my opinion, certainly equivalent…”

“The dude is awesome — he really is,” Adler said. “He is conflicted with all of that, as we all are with our own stuff; we all have our story to tell, I suppose. But he really cares about what it is that he’s doing. He’s a perfectionist. He loves the idea of giving some sort of art to be appreciated — not for his sake. There’s no real satisfaction in providing something that’s enormously successful… It doesn’t really mean much to get a Grammy or be in the [Rock And RollHall Of Fame — it doesn’t matter. What matters is, can I give something? And it’s not this dramatic blogosphere, web sites, people arguing… It’s, ‘Do I have something to offer? Can I still offer something?’ And he is absolutely that guy. He doesn’t want anything other than to make other people happy.”