Lars Ulrich (born December 26 1963) is the drummer of Metallica, which many consider to be the biggest heavy metal band of all times. He was born in Gentofte, Denmark to a upper-middle class family and worked in a gas station and as a paper boy during his childhood and teens. Ulrich moved to Los Angeles, California at the age of seventeen. At the age of thirteen he begged his grandmother to buy him his first drum kit. The kit was a Ludwig because he wanted to have the same drum kit as Ian Paice of Deep Purple. After publishing an advertisement in a local Los Angeles newspaper, called The Recycler , he met James Hetfield and created a band whose name would be well-known for millions of people world wide—Metallica.
His father, Torben Ulrich, who was an acclaimed tennis pro from the late 40's into the early 80's, was also a musician, playing jazz with such giants as Stan Getz and Miles Davis. He had a jazz club in which Lars was in a lot as a child. Because of his early introduction to music, it isn't quite surprising where his interests in music come from. What was surprising, however, was when Ulrich made a sudden and dramatic change in his musical interests: he went from loving jazz to becoming obsessed with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal; the heavy metal era that was sweeping its heavy, rough, leather-clad way through all of Britain. Ulrich's first concert was that of great metal—Deep Purple in Copenhagen when he was barely nine years old. Needless to say, he instantly became a fan.
In his early days, Ulrich was a frequent tennis player. That's why he went to the USA.
In December 1999, Ulrich filed a lawsuit against Napster. This fact made him seen by many as a greedy musician who is not aware of his fans, whereas critics nowadays applaud his leadership and see him as the man that started the war against illegal distribution of musical material.
In 2004 Lars divorced Skylar Satenstein, with whom he was married for 7 years. They have two boys, Myles (b. August 5, 1998) and Layne (b. May 6, 2001).
In 2005 a band called Beatallica (a band that mixed lyrics and riffs from the Beatles and Metallica) got a cease-and-desist order by Sony (which hold a lot of the rights to the Beatles). Surprisingly Lars Ulrich stepped up to support the band.
