Lars Ulrich recently appeared on the SmartLess and once again explained how the name Metallica .
Contrary to what one might imagine, the idea didn't come from any of the band members. The drummer admitted that he stole the idea from Ron Quintana , founder of Metal Mania , who wanted to start a fanzine at the time – something very common among music fans in the pre-internet era.
“Ron Quintana wanted to start a small fanzine and one day he asked me if he should call it Metal Mania or Metallica . And I told him to use Metal Mania [laughs] and I would stick with Metallica,” says Lars Ulrich.
The drummer says he was eventually "forgiven" and that he and Ron Quintana are still "good friends." Metal Mania was in circulation from August 1981 until 1987, later evolving into a local TV program called VideoZine , also known as Video Mania (via Loudwire ).
Lars Ulrich had already told this same story in a 2017 interview with NPR . The drummer's version, however, differs slightly from that told by Ron Quintana himself.
According to Whiplash , Quintana gave an interview to Metal Core Fanzine and claimed that he was the one who gave Lars Ulrich the name Metallica because he preferred Metal Mania .
“There was already Encyclopedia Metallica , which is a very good name, but, for me, Metal Mania was better, and when he told me he was going to name his band Metallica, I told him to make good use of it,” he says.
Lars Ulrich convinced James Hetfield to persist with "Enter Sandman".
In an excerpt from his Masterclass , James Hetfield revealed that he didn't think "Enter Sandman" was "that good" when Metallica started working on it.
The vocalist hadn't been enthusiastic about the song and was ready to abandon it, but decided to go back to working on it at the insistence of Lars Ulrich and producer Bob Rock .
“They said, ‘Go back [to that track]. I challenge you to go back and work on it.’ And that’s what I did,” he revealed.
