In 2003 Metallica would release their much maligned album St. Anger. The band had gone
through a tumultuous time during the making of the record with frontman James Hetfield
leaving the group to attend rehab to deal with substance abuse issues. A
lot of the turmoil was captured on the 2004 documentary Some Kind Of Monster.
A year after the album was released the band was out on tour in Europe during the summer
playing their own shows and headlining a variety of festivals across the continent. At one gig in
the UK drummer Lars Ulrich was a no show leaving the band in a difficult position. Do they cancel
the gig or get someone to fill in? That’s what were going to discuss in today’s video.
On June 6, 2004 Metallica was set to headline the Download Festival, the UK’s biggest
metal musical festival. The band had previously played Lisbon Portugal and were on there way
to the UK when MTV would report that the band’s drummer Lars Ulrich was feeling under the weather,
without disclosing the cause or the symptoms. Ulrich would take a detour to Germany to receive
medical treatment while his bandmates headed to the UK. This wasn’t the first time Metallica
dealt with illnesses or injuries that jeopordized their live gigs. 4 years earlier in 2000, frontman
James Hetfield would suffer a slipped disc and the band had a revolving lineup of singers including
Kid Rock and Korn’s Johnathan Davis. Then 8 years prior Hetfield would suffer serious burns to his
arms during the group’s co-headlining tour with Guns N’ Roses resulting in John Marshall of Metal
Church playing rhythm guitar for a handful of gigs while Hetfield was limited to vocal duties.
Download Festival organizer andy copping would recall Metallica’s infamous gig in 2004 writing
on Instagram “Download 2004. The year where there was a no show from Metallica’s Lars Ulrich.
I remember receiving a call telling me to go backstage where I was given the news,”
“There were two choices a) do Metallica cancel? or b) do Metallica convince other drummers on
site to fill in? I suggested they cancel because I just couldn’t see b) happening, particularly as
quite a few drummers that were asked said no.” Loudersound would publish a piece by writer
Alexander milas who was in attendance at the festival that year and recalled that after
word spread of Lars being a no-show rumors spread amongst those in attendance about what happened.
He would write “I heard Lars Ulrich jumped out of a helicopter as it was landing and disappeared
into the crowd,” one allegedly in-the-know label executive tells me with all the severity
of a news anchor between JD-and-Coke burps. Other theories circulating the sardine-packed
backstage bar range from death to, even worse, Lars’s departure from the band. ” he’d write.
Metallica weren’t going to let their fans down and as part of
their 2004 european tour Slipknot was their opening act and Slipknot
that night was also scheduled to play ahead of metallica’s headlining spot at the uk festival.
To salvage the show band would spend several hours rehearsing with several drummers from
bands who were playing on the bill that night including Slipknot SLayer and Lars own drum tech.
The idea that night was for several drummers to help Metallica make it through their live show.
The band would show up an hour late to their gig with frontman james hetfield informing the crowd
of what was happening that night. Slayer’s Dave Lombardo would perform battery and the
four horseman, while Joey Jordison of Slipknot would perform a majority of the songs in the set
playing creeping death, seek and destroy, for whom the bell tolls and the last 5 songs of the set.
Jordison while wearing his slipknot mask would play 8 of the 11 songs Metallica performed that
night. Ulrich’s drum tech fleming Larsen would sit in with the band performing fade to black.
Jordison would be hailed as the hero of the day (no pun intended), but Dave Lombardo also
played an important part in the events that day. Lombardo’s time with Metallica went back
over two decades recalling to Loudersound first hearing the band “I remember a live demo tape
being passed around, and we’d listen to that – we were blown away. Slayer got to play with Metallica
really early on at a club called The Woodstock in Orange County [on Oct 22, 1982]. I remember
standing between James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine, watching them. That was an amazing experience.”
Lombardo would recall in the same interviewe being asked to perform
that night “Slayer had played in the tent earlier in the evening, and I was
somewhere backstage when I was approached by management. They said, ‘Lars can’t make it,
and Metallica was wondering if you’d be able to sit in?’ It was a bit of a shock.
My first thought was, ‘Is Lars OK?’ But they said, ‘He’s OK, he’s at the doctors,
he’s just having a bit of a moment.’ So I said I’d do whatever I could to help.”
Lombardo would end up going into a rehearsal room with the members of Metallica and would
admit he only knew a handful of songs well enough to play them and that he didn’t know
the finer detail of their other tracks. It was decided that Lombardo would perform Battery
and the four hoursemen. He would admit that only performing two songs took the pressure off of him
as he praised Jordison’s performance saying the drummer was better suited to fill in on more songs
since his time in a metallica cover band made him more familiar with the material.
Lombardo would look back at the show telling loudersound
. They were headlining, so the energy there was just intense. I definitely had to retain my
composure and think, ‘This is going to be great, stay positive, let’s rock.’ After it was all done,
we all took a bow at the very end. They were really grateful – they appreciated the help.”“For
them to even ask me was an honour, and I’m very proud to have helped them out when they needed it,
and just been a small part of their history. Come on, I got to play with Metallica!”
So what was the deal with Ulrich? Well he would later issue a statement almost
a year after the incident telling Metal Hammer about how he was going through some
pretty difficult times in his life stating “We’d had a heavy touring schedule in Japan,
Europe, America and Australia,” “In the midst of that there were things
that had come unravelled in my personal life – my family and my marriage and stuff.
"I’d had a lot of late nights and early mornings. So I woke up in Copenhagen on the Sunday morning,
had brunch with 14 in-laws and cousins and then I got on the plane.
It was pretty scary to be in a little metal tube at 41,000 feet,” “I’ve never had anxiety
attacks or any kind of stress attacks ever. So we landed in Hamburg and went
to the hospital. They took some blood tests, and everything was normal physically — it was just
everything caught up with me mentally. It was the first-ever Metallica gig I’d ever missed.
You wanna try laying in a hospital in Germany while Dave Lombardo — the greatest drummer on
the planet — is playing with your band? That’s not easy. Joey Jordison, too. I have a bit of
an odd relationship with it — I still haven’t looked at the press or the pictures.” he’d easy.
Loudersound would report that Slayer’s Tom Araya would be quoted as saying at the time “We were
like: ‘Oh well, we just lost another drummer,’” . “Dave has a tendency to play fast – period.
But Metallica played faster – they sounded a lot more like what Metallica should sound like.”
Sadly in july of 2021 Jordison would pass away in his sleep at the age of 46. Following his death
tributes would pour in include metallica frontman james hetfield who posted a photo of the drummer
performing with the band at the download festival in 2004 with a caption that read RIP brother.