Chris Adler Asked Lars Ulrich for Advice on Working With Dave Mustaine
Chris Adler has revealed that he sought advice from Lars Ulrich about working with Dave Mustaine before joining Megadeth back in 2015. The Lamb of God drummer says in a new interview that he reached out to the Metallica drummer in hopes of getting some insight into what he was getting into before he accepted the invitation from Mustaine.
"After I got the call, I actually called Lars," Adler tells Metal Injection in an interview which can be heard below. "We had toured together and connected to some degree. And I said, 'Hey, man, I just got, like, a legit offer to play, or at least try out, I guess, for the new Megadeth record. And I think heavy metal, in general, is a bigger genre because of the drama between you guys. So, what, if anything, would you allow me to know about what am I getting into if I go into this?' And Lars told me what was exactly the truth: Dave is an absolute pussycat. He is a sweetheart - he really is. But he's driven."
"He has a vision in mind and it's perfectly defined and nothing outside of it is acceptable," Adler continues. "And I love that. I've had the same idea. In my career, that's exactly the way that I have kind of come up, and that's why Dave and I got along. Now, that doesn't mean you have the people skills to make it work or the ability to actually get to that end. I mean, those are difficult things that we all go through in whatever it is that we do. You know where you wanna be, you find that point on the horizon, and that is how you get it done - you believe in yourself and do it."
Mustaine was Ulrich's bandmate in Metallica for a period in the early '80s but was unceremoniously ejected from the band due to his behavior before the group recorded their debut album, Kill 'Em All. The guitarist received writing credit on a handful of tracks across Metallica's first two LPs but tensions stayed high between himself and former outfit for decades before the hatchet was buried in recent years.
"He's had a bit of a hard time, obviously, from the beginning of his life," Adler says of Mustaine. "He had two or three older sisters in a poor family that, basically, he was the last one to get any attention. And he finally found some friends, make a band. You're fucked up from life, and the only friends you really had, you're out on a fucking Greyhound bus to go home after they record the shit that you wrote. No doubt he's gonna be upset. And it's an incredibly dramatic story in our genre. But if you think about that personality, coming up from that, not giving up, and creating something, in my opinion, certainly equivalent..."
Adler joined Megadeth in 2015 and played on the band's Grammy Award-winning LP Dystopia which came out in early 2016. He left the band that summer to return his focus to Lamb of God full time after spending time pulling double duty with both groups.
10 Epic Fill-In Performances
Where Does Chris Adler Rank Among the Top 66 Hard Rock + Metal Drummers of All Time?