Q. Some people have suggested a metal headliner won’t work at Glastonbury — much like Noel Gallagher scoffing at Jay Z in 2008.
A. Jay Z came out and played Wonderwall, right? So maybe we gotta go out and do our rendition of Wonderwall. We’ll start with Wonderwall and we’ll take it from there. Ha ha, listen, you’ve just gotta go out and be yourself and be proud of what you’re doing.
Q. You’re doing two very different headline sets — Sonisphere with the setlist chosen by fans, and then a straight-up Glasto set where a lot of people might be unfamiliar with Metallica.
A. It is good fun when one’s setlist is taken away from you, for somebody who likes to control his own environment like myself. I still get a chance to sequence it, thank you! But yeah, Glastonbury will be a straight-up Metallica setlist, whatever that may mean, since it’s our first time playing there. I usually don’t write the setlist before about 15-30 minutes before we go on stage, depending on what the mood is in the camp.
Q. What’s been the rarest thing on the Metallica By Request setlists?
A. I believe our date in Finland, in three weeks, will see the world premiere, the first live airing of a song we’ve never played before from the Justice For All album called The Frayed Ends of Sanity. So we’re looking very much forward to that. We’ve been waiting for an excuse to play that song for the better part of 25 years! I guess we have one now in Helsinki.
Q. Sonisphere is also the first time you and Iron Maiden have ever co-headlined in the UK. I know you’re a huge Maiden fan, but Bruce Dickinson has also said that they’re better than Metallica...
A. I will never argue with that. I will always support Bruce Dickinson in whatever nonsense he says. That’s part of the fun. So go Iron Maiden! It’s fine.
Q. What’s the strangest time you’ve ever had at a festival?
A. The first time we played at Monsters of Rock at Donington in 1995, there was a pig’s head that was thrown up onstage while we were playing. If you just pause for a second and walk through that, step by step like, just first you gotta acquire it, which I guess you can maybe buy at a butcher’s or slaughter yourself. Then you’ve gotta be motivated to carry it to the gig and keep it with you. Then you’ve gotta get it in the venue. Then you’ve got to get up to the front. And at some point, you’ve gotta launch it up on stage for it to land in close proximity to the singer. It was just lying up there for the better part of the set. It was a truly bizarre thing. And that was our first British festival experience. I’m not sure that anything has really matched that since on the bizarre scale, and that’s 30 years ago.
Q. Best not to give people ideas. They might bring a whole one to Glastonbury.
A. If somebody wants to go through with that, I salute them. Without encouraging them, of course.
Q. Do you have any idea what they meant to say by doing that?
A. You’re asking me? I’m just the drummer, OK? No, I think the minute that you start asking those type of questions, you’ve already lost. I think you just roll with it, as Noel Gallagher would say, right?
