Metallica's Lars Ulrich has admitted the band would love to headline Glastonbury.
The sticksman, whose band will be touring Europe this summer playing their 1991 self-titled album, commonly known as "The Black Album", from start to finish, told NME that they if Michael Eavis ever wanted to book them they'd be more than up for it.
Asked if they'd like to headline Glastonbury, Ulrich said: "
We've never played Glastonbury. I don't know if Michael would ever invite a harder rock band to play. It's something I would love to do at some point. We love playing, we love connecting with people, and you want to try to do that in as many situations as possible. Mid-May to September in Europe, it doesn't get better than that."
Ulrich also spoke about Metallica's own festival, which they are launching later this summer. The event, which is titled the Orion Music + More festival, will take place on June 23 and 24 in Bader Field, near Atlantic City in New Jersey.
Metallica will headline both nights, with Arctic Monkeys, The Gaslight Anthem, Avenged Sevenfold, Modest Mouse, Cage The Elephant, Fucked Up, Hot Snakes, Titus Andronicus, Best Coast, The Black Angels, The Sword, Liturgy also booked to play the event.
Speaking about this, Ulrich said: "We're trying to get our own festival off the ground, and it's no fucking picnic. It takes five years to even really get on the map. So we're trying to get our own thing off the ground in New Jersey in June. You've got to stay with it."
Then asked why they'd decided to stage their own event, Ulrich replied: "We were invited to play Bonnaroo in 2008 and that was the first time we saw the European festival model work in America, the whole thing was a total mindf-ck, it was great – it was us. The people were really accepting towards diversity, so it was back then we started thinking about doing our own thing. We really want to have that kind of European diversity and that sense of discovery."
Metallica will play a headline slot at this summer's Download Festival as well as a series of other large European shows.
Thanks for the report to Nme.com.
