Lars talks about Hetfield backstage
In an interview on "The Late Late Show With James Corden," Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich spoke about how James Hetfield felt during the Grammy performance when his microphone malfunctioned . Ulrich said:
“In the heat of the moment, if you’re out there playing and you have a technical problem, you don’t really know – ‘is this going to everyone? is the vocal reaching the sound engineer? maybe it’s just the monitors’. So you have to keep playing. We went backstage, went to the back, and I hadn’t seen James like that in 20 years. He was furious.”.
He aged well, and he's a laid-back guy, but the first five or ten minutes backstage weren't very fun. But, as they say, the show must go on, and we got over it. And with the fire, and Gaga depending on me, it was just 'keep going, keep going, keep going.' So we battled it out, and a lot of people said that at least it was a good show for TV, which is the point of doing the Grammys anyway.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone after the performance, Lars referred to Lady Gaga as the perfect fifth member for Metallica.