Following their performance on the last day of the three-day Power Trip festival, Metallica’s James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo sat down for a chat on ‘The Metallica Report’ podcast to talk about the experience. Hetfield revealed Lars Ulrich’s deal with band rehearsals before the festival and said:
“An interesting fact: Lars never rehearsed ever until — I don’t know — I’d say maybe four or five years ago, he started really getting into rehearsing. And now he’ll — I mean, he’ll rehearse four days for a two-hour set, which is what he needs to do, which is awesome.”
With more details on the rehearsals, he went on:
“So there was gonna be rehearsals [for Power Trip] down at HQ [Metallica’s headquarters in San Rafael, California] for a couple days beforehand. And I said, ‘I’m not gonna show up guys. I would love it if we could find a rehearsal place here [closer to the Power Trip festival] ’cause I’d love to see all these other bands.’ And Robert got on board, and then we found a place over here in the polo grounds [at the Empire Polo Club] to rehearse. And I’m grateful that Lars was up for it.”
The singer also commented on their time at the festival:
“So they did their rehearsals down there, and then we came up, and we have rehearsals and get to watch these bands. It’s so frickin’ cool to have your own compound at a festival for all the days of the festival… We show up, go rehearse, and then go out there and watch Iron Maiden. I mean, how cool is that?”
Metallica’s long-time photographer Ross Halfin took pictures of the band members while they were watching Judas Priest’s set on the second day of Power Trip. As the photos made the headlines, Hetfield shared how watching the other acts involving older musicians felt on the recent podcast episode by saying:
“So, for me, there’s a lot of inspiration in every single band that’s played here. Just looking up ages — I know age is bullshit. I mean, there’s plenty of the guys in these bands that are [in their] early 70s, late 60s, and it’s inspiring. And the fact that they’re up there still kicking ass in this kind of heat was fantastic. But every single one of those bands have been a part of our childhood and our upbringing in our Metallica adventure. So it’s really cool to be a part of this.”
Recalling the past, he added:
“And we used to hang out a bunch together in the early days, like at all the festivals we would go to and hang out. Yeah, we would play early on and then get to watch all the other bands after. We would hang out. It kind of felt like that again. Obviously, it was a different day, but we’re all here hanging out, and it’s really fun. It’s really fun to see. I just kind of realized that we’re down in the very front looking up, Rob Halford riding out on a motorcycle, and there’s fans behind us, looking at us like they’re watching us enjoy that. How cool? I guess that’s pretty cool. But we’re fans at the end of the day. We wanted to be in the mix and see it. So it’s been a fantastic weekend.”
Metallica’s closing performance included tracks from its earliest to latest records. The band started the show with ‘Whiplash’ and followed it with songs from ‘Ride The Lightning,’ ‘Reload,’ ‘Master Of Puppets,’ and ’72 Seasons.’
In addition, Hammett and Trujillo introduced a new song called ‘Funk In The Desert’ to the audience, as the bassist revealed that they wrote it for the festival.
