Lars Ulrich

Lars Ulrich is Metallica's drummer and co-founder, and the member who set the band in motion — literally, since it was his newspaper ad, in 1981, that drew in James Hetfield. Born in Gentofte, Denmark, he is the only non-American in the original line-up. He came from a family of tennis players: his father, Torben Ulrich, was a professional, and Lars himself was on a junior track in the sport when he moved to California at sixteen. What diverted him was a specific obsession — the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and Diamond Head above all. Early Metallica is, to a large degree, that British repertoire accelerated to its limit, and the translation was his idea. His playing divides opinion, but its function is clear: Ulrich thinks of drums as arrangement architecture, marking the sectional turns that organise the long tracks of Ride the Lightning (1984) and Master of Puppets (1986). Away from the kit he was always the group's commercial brain, which placed him at the centre of one of music's most enduring controversies: the lawsuit against Napster in 2000, which he led personally and which cost him dearly in public image. In 2009 he became the first Danish musician inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.