Lars Ulrich’s New Job: Beats 1 Radio DJ
Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich aims to obliterate musical boundaries with his new Beats 1 radio show, It’s Electric!, which debuts Sunday, May 7th at 3 p.m. PT with special guest Iggy Pop. An encore episode will air Monday, May 8th at 3 a.m. PT. In a teaser video, the drummer calls his show “my 16-year-old self’s wet dream: doing a radio show to a worldwide audience.”
“We go all over the world – we look at international bands for an international audience,” he continues. “I’m gonna play you lots of really cool music by mostly bands you don’t know; a lot of bands I’ve just been introduced to. We don’t believe in boundaries, and we’re open to everything. I have some guests call in on the phone, and they promise me I’m gonna have this show every week.”
Ulrich spoke to fellow Beats 1 host Zane Lowe about his new gig, noting that his show will be “unfiltered, unscripted and completely all over the place.” He also added he’s been exposed to great obscure music while prepping for the show.
“I gotta tell you, since we started this endeavor six weeks ago, I’ve been turned on to more great music just doing research for my show in the last four to six weeks than I have literally in the past five to 10 years,” he told Lowe. “I’ve got so much stuff to share with everybody out there and a lot of stuff that’s turning me on. I’m telling you, people that love great music, rock music but also hip-hop and world music, and all the rest of it – there’s a lot of people that talk about, ‘Well the music business is in sad shape, and it’s dying,’ but there’s a ton of fantastic music out there, and I’m reenergized and reinvigorated and ready to share it with the world.”
Ulrich told Lowe that he recruited Pop for a guest spot after Metallica enlisted the punk legend to perform onstage in Mexico City.
“He joined us onstage for a sensational run through of the Stooges classic ‘TV Eye,’ and I asked him if he’d be the first guest on It’s Electric!” he said. “He called in and we talk about our shenanigans in Mexico City, the new relationship and the rest of it, so he’s the very first guest. How cool is that?”
Ulrich and Pop will discuss the stage collaboration in the premiere episode. The drummer will also play deep cuts, tell stories from the road and detail what drove him to a music career.
Metallica released their 10th studio album, Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, last year. The metal legends will kick off a North American tour May 10th in Baltimore. “It’s been a total mindfuck the last six months about how the whole world has received this record,” Ulrich told Lowe. “Life on planet Metallica is very good.”