Birth School Metallica Death - Vol I Read Online Free PDF

Ulrich, a man hitherto wholly unacquainted with the concept of being lost for words, gave a nervous, anxious laugh. With his face communicating a mixture of petulance, exasperation and embarrassment , he began a stammering defence of the track. His father’s verdict was ‘interesting’, he noted, but out of step with feedback the band had received elsewhere. He pointed out that Metallica’s co-manager Cliff Burnstein was so taken by the wordless piece that he had ventured the opinion that it might serve as the opening track on the new album.
    ‘Yeah?’ said Torben. ‘That could well be, but I’m pretty surethat … I really don’t think so. I
really
don’t think so.’
    The exchange (captured by film-makers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky as they amassed fly-on-the-wall footage for what would become the 2004 documentary
Some Kind of Monster
) was revealing, shining a light on a side of Lars Ulrich rarely seen. Abandoned by his friend and musical soulmate, and understandably emotionally raw as a consequence, in this briefest of moments the years appeared to roll back for Ulrich. Stripped of his usual bullish self-confidence, he stood in front of his father once more as a gauche adolescent, eager to please and craving approval. As a glimpse into the intrinsic motivations which willed Metallica into existence in the first place, the moment is priceless.

    Lars Ulrich was born on December 26, 1963, in the municipality of Gentofte, in eastern Denmark, a late Christmas present for his parents, Torben and Lone. Transformed from an agricultural community into an affluent industrial society in the post-war years, the nation into which Ulrich was born was progressive, liberal and aspirant, a fully functioning social democracy growing in confidence and ambition. Well-heeled and well-connected, the Ulrich family were considered part of Copenhagen’s cosmopolitan elite. Torben was a professional tennis player – like his father, Einar, before him, Denmark’s number one – and a celebrated polymath, with a range of cultural interests that stretched far beyond the baselines of the outside courts at Wimbledon or Flushing Meadows. A regular columnist for the Danish daily newspapers
Politiken
and
BT
, by the time of his son’s birth Torben had also co-edited a literary magazine, presented on Danish radio, co-founded a Copenhagen jazz club and played clarinet and tenor saxophone with a number of the capital’s best-regarded jazz ensembles. A 1969
Sports Illustrated
profile hailed him as the tennis circuit’s ‘most fascinating, most captivating figure’.
    ‘He is a sort of gargoyle in a pretty game played and watched by pretty people,’ wrote journalist Mark Kram. ‘As tennis now slowly and desperately tries to lure the masses, Ulrich is invaluable … Win or lose, he provokes reaction and constant comment, the one indispensable vitamin for all sports.’
    Torben’s free-thinking, philosophical attitude to life was shaped by events in his formative years. In October 1943, at the age of fifteen, the boy and his younger brother, Jorgen, were encouraged to flee Nazi-occupied Denmark with their Jewish mother, Ulla, as concerns for their future welfare intensified. Their intention was to travel across the Oresund strait to Sweden, but the fishing boat commandeered for their flight was spotted by the German army while still in Danish waters, and when the Germans sprayed the vessel with arcs of machine-gun fire, all aboard surrendered. The Ulrich family were sent to a Danish concentration camp, and threatened with a transfer to Auschwitz or Theresienstadt. Two weeks later, however, they were released, the German authorities having apparently decided their Jewish heritage was not sufficiently ‘pure’ to warrant their deportation. Upon returning to high school in Copenhagen, Torben apologised for his prolonged absence from class, explaining to his teacher that his family had been imprisoned by the Germans. Thinking he was being