Drummer Lars Ulrich Recalls Impact of Oasis

To celebrate the release of the deluxe edition of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich penned a piece for UK newspaper The Guardian where he detailed the impression Oasis left on him, calling them, “the soundtrack to my life for the last 20 years on this wonderful planet.” The drummer recalled how he first heard about the band, smitten before he even heard one note of their music.

“In 1994 I was browsing through an issue of a magazine called Select, and there was a story about a band from England, with some unusual looking fellows, that I’d never heard of,” he said. “I skimmed across the article, and was quite amused by the fact that every other word was either “fuck” or “cunt.’”

“A few weeks later I was driving in my car, listening to radio station Live 105 here in San Francisco, when a song came on unlike any I had ever heard before,” Ulrich continued. “The attitude, the aloofness, and the not-giving-a-fuck vibes were pouring out of the speakers, and by the time the first verse/bridge/chorus cycle was done, I was convinced that whatever I was listening to had to be that band that I had read about in Select a few weeks back.”

The song he heard was the single, “Supersonic” from the Oasis debut, Definitely Maybe, which turned 20 earlier this month, and was given the New Ordered treatment by Vanyaland.

“[Supersonic] began a long and very rewarding relationship with a sound, an approach and a way of looking at the world that has had a huge impact on me and helped shape who I am today…for whatever that’s worth,” Ulrich added, before touching on what has long been puzzling to fans of Britpop, why it was so big across the pond.

“If you didn’t live in England at the time, it may be difficult to truly understand the cultural impact and significance Oasis had on all things English in the mid 90s,” he said. “Wherever or whoever you were when it was going down, you felt it … in the streets, in the pubs, the music press, on the radio, in the gossip rags, the concert halls, and affecting everything from the way people dressed, the way they cut their hair, what football team they supported, the way people communicated, one’s accent…the list goes on and on.”

Ulrich eventually struck up a long running friendship with Noel Gallagher, with the two of them last photographed with actor Bradley Cooper at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, which Metallica headlined.