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) and he had spent time
playing in a metallica covers band he played in prior to joining slipknot.
Slipknot frontman Corey taylor would reflect back on the performance telling Knotfest.com‘s
Ryan J. Downey, “We were back there watching it…
It was so surreal to watch Joey playing with [Metallica], because we all grew up listening
to them.“And Joey was shitting bricks.
I mean, he [had] his mask on, but every time he’d come back and he would pull his mask
off, he would just be, like, ‘How am I doing?
How am I doing?’
I’m, like, ‘You’re fing killing it.
’Me, Paul [Gray], Clown, we were all standing there fing cheering him on.
And they ended up throwing different songs at him that they hadn’t rehearsed.
They threw all the Misfits shit at him, and he fucking knew it.
They would have probably kept him up there all night if they could have.
He played the majority of the set.”
Following the performance Jordison would issue a statement to the press stating"It was an
honor last night to play for a band I've looked up to for so long," "[Before this,] I could
not imagine getting into the seat of one of my heroes.
It was one of the best experiences of my life."
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.”
Jordison would leave slipknot in 2013 due to health issues, but he would reveal in 2016
he was actually fired from the band.
It was a bitter split that left Jordison fuming revealing in 2016 at the metal hammer golden
gods awards “I got really, really sick with a horrible
disease called transverse myelitis, I lost my legs,” “I couldn’t play anymore.
It was a form of multiple sclerosis, which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
I got myself back up, and I got myself in the gym and I got myself back in therapy,
to beat this.”
Jordison would claim his bandmates mistook his health issues for substance abuse and
that he was unfairly fired from the band.
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.