HEAVY MUSIC

Lars Ulrich on Metallica « Death Magnetic », Rick Rubin, Robert Trujillo's role and « St. Anger »

Archive #39 goes back to 2008 when Metallica released their ninth record « Death Magnetic ». The Four Horsemen were doing one of their usual summer tour vacations in Europe and with « Death Magnetic » release date fixed just 2 month afterwards, the band was starting to do promotion for it. I sat down with drummer Lars Ulrich in a wonderful hotel in Milan, Italy in the month of July 2008 to discuss « Death Magnetic » although I wasn’t able to hear one single note from the record at this specific time as it wasn’t mixed and mastered yet. Could have been a bummer, I was also expecting very limited time, but when Lars saw he had « only » 20 minutes scheduled with every journalists, he said to the publicist : « f**k that, I want at least 45 minutes with each and I want to reschedule the phoner interviews and do face-to-face instead » which in all my career was the first and only time I saw an artist asking for more when doing interviews (and coming from such a successful one, it makes you think when you see some mid-level bands moan about it) ! Lars was obviously really motivated by « Death Magnetic » and very talkative so it wasn’t hard at all to talk about a record I hadn’t heard at the time. We also talked about some other topics such as producers Rick Rubin and Bob Rock, Robert Trujillo’s role in Metallica and how he compares to Cliff Burton and Jason Newsted, the « Some Kind Of Monster » movie, controversial « St. Anger » and « Load » records and the new fire the band felt live since playing the whole « Master Of Puppets » album in 2006. Full article (in french) was featured on Rock Hard France magazine (Rock Hard is currently having financial issues due to the Covid-19 pandemic, you can support the magazine here : https://www.leetchi.com/c/rockhard208) #LarsUlrich #Metallica #DeathMagnetic #JamesHetfield #KirkHammett #RobertTrujillo #Load #StAnger #SomeKindOfMonster #RickRubin #BobRock #MasterOfPuppets #Cliffburton #JasonNewsted

Phil Anselmo on "Vulgar Display Of Power", Dimebag's guitar playing and the whole Pantera carreer

Archive #37 goes back to 2012 when the 20th anniversary reissue of the Pantera classic "Vulgar Display Of Power" was released. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this masterpiece (soon to be 30 years old which is insane!), one of the very most important heavy metal records of the 90's, I called Phil Anselmo to do a long interview which was featured at the time as the cover article of France's Rock Hard Magazine. We started talking about the gigantic gig at The Monsters Of Rock '91 in Moscow in which Pantera took part while they were in the studio for Vulgar and then we talked everything about this album including the production, Dimebag's playing, the relationship with the record label, where the record's name came from, the touring's cycle and most importantly about its classics songs : "Mouth For War", "A New Level", "Walk", "F**king Hostile" and "This Love". While we were at it, we also talked about what was next for Pantera after "Vulgar" and discussed "Far Beyond Driven", "The Great Southern Trendkill" and "Reinventing The Steel" as well. Full article (in french) was featured on Rock Hard France magazine (Rock Hard is currently having financial issues due to the Covid-19 pandemic, you can support the magazine here : https://www.leetchi.com/c/rockhard208) #PhilAnselmo #Pantera #VulgarDisplayOfPower #FarBeyondDriven #TheGreatSouthernTrendkill #ReinventingTheSteel #DimebagDarrell #VinniePaul #RexBrown

Richard Fortus on Guns N'Roses "Not In This Lifetime" tour, playing with Slash and his gear

Archive #36 goes back to summer of 2018 when Guns N'Roses were on the the second european leg of their successful "Not In This Lifetime" tour.Saw the band several times on that specific tour and guitarist extraordinaire Richard Fortus was such a class act and cool dude for inviting me at his hotel after a very long gig in Bordeaux, so we could do this long interview around 1.00 am outside of any official promo schedule (the band had none).So thanks again for that very cool gesture Richard, you rule !In this probably messy interview, we talked about the "Not In This Lifetime" tour, more specifically about Richard playing with Slash and complementing his tone, Axl's discipline for the tour, the first GN'R gig in St Louis since the infamous '91 riot and we also talked about Richard's gear including his Gretsch and Scala guitars, his Supro and signature Voodoo Amps, Arcane pickups etc...Full article in french was featured on Guitariste.com : https://www.guitariste.com/interviews/richard-fortus-guns-n-roses,5331,1.html#RichardFortus #NotInThisLifetime #GunsNRoses #GnFnR #VoodooAmps #Arcane #Gretsch #Scala #Supro #Slash #4Tus #AxlRose

Butch Trucks on his Allman Brothers Band best and worst memories

Archive #28 goes back to 2009 when The Allman Brothers Band were celebrating their 40th anniversary with 15 shows at The Beacon Theater in NYC. Butch Trucks (R.I.P) was also launching Moogis (live performance streaming website) around that time and was doing promotion for it. I was kinda sad as I listened to the whole file digging this archive as Butch told me at some point (not included here) that he had the plan to retire in France (more specifically to a house he bought in Languedoc area) where he could just ride horses, write books, play music with some people and just take it easy…tragic he took his own life in 2017 and heartbreaking to listen to those words nowadays… The Moogis part of the interview is now a bit irrelevant so I decided only to include here the part in which Butch talks about the inception of The Allman Brothers Band, his best memories and to the opposite dealing with Duane Allman’s death and Dickey Betts demons. We also talked about why the band chose to play with 2 drummers and the chemistry he had doing so with Jaimoe. R.I.P Butch Trucks, Gregg Allman, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Allen Woody, Dan Toler and David Toler. The Allman Brothers Band music lives on forever ! Full article (in french) was featured on Rock Hard France magazine (Rock Hard is currently having financial issues due to the Covid-19 pandemic, you can support the magazine here : https://www.leetchi.com/c/rockhard208) #TheAllmanBrothersBand #ButchTrucks #ABB #DuaneAllman #GreggAllman #Moogis

Vinnie Paul and Chad Gray on Hellyeah and Rebel Meets Rebel

Mikael Akerfeldt gives his Opeth record-by-record recap (from "Orchid" to "Ghost Reveries")