In a recent interview with New Noise Magazine, the frontman of MELVINS, Buzz Osborne, talked about METALLICA‘s music catalog and chose an unexpected album as his favorite.
Osborne, who is known for his unorthodox musical style, expressed his admiration for Lulu, the controversial collaborative album with Lou Reed released in 2011. Despite being criticized by many fans, Osborne believes that artists should create music that they enjoy, and METALLICA has the freedom to do so given their current status.
“Those guys got taken to task for it, and I think it’s their best record, easily the weirdest one,” Osborne said. METALLICA should be leading the way. They should be planting the flag in their own spot and making people rally around that.
“Don’t let people tell you what to do,” he continued. “That’s a terrible idea. It doesn’t work because then you’re assuming that you know what they want. There’s no way you can know that. All you can do is make music that you like, and they obviously liked that thing with Lou Reed, and they’re at a point now in their career that they could do whatever they want. They’re playing stadiums. What’s going to happen? They’re gonna go down to 10,000 seaters? I think they’d be OK.”
Earlier this year, METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich reiterated his support for Lulu.
According to Ulrich, the album has stood the test of time and still holds relevance, despite its controversial nature. Lulu was met with mixed reactions from fans and critics alike, as it featured a combination of spoken-word poetry and lyrics by Lou Reed and METALLICA‘s musical assault. The album was a departure from the band’s previous work and received some of the harshest reviews in their career.
Lars mentioned Lulu in Reed‘s recently published posthumous book titled The Art Of The Straight Line: My Tai Chi, which is now available through HarperOne.
Ulrich is quoted as saying of Lulu: “What the f**k is it about Lulu that it got that kind of reaction? I can’t quite figure it out, but years later, it’s aged extremely well. It sounds like a motherf**ker 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. 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, METALLICA frontman] 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 f**king take of that.’ That’s not the way we usually worked, but it was so beautiful and great, the whole thing.”
