Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich discussed seeing Ozzy Osbourne wear his wife Sharon’s dress during soundchecks on tour in a new ‘Life on the Road’ interview.
“At that time we didn’t have a pot to piss in, and so it was basically the two bands and the crew in this camper, and then a small truck with both band’s equipment following. And of course, two-thirds of the way through this tour, the camper broke down on the side of the freeway where we had to abandon it.
All those crazy stories – they were not particularly glamorous times, they were difficult in certain practical ways, but when you’re 19 years old, I was like a kid in a f***ing candy store. In those days, we never slowed down long enough to think about anything. It was just play, beverages, on to the next thing – play, beverages… You usually lived in this little bubble, this little vacuum. A couple years later, we were opening for Ozzy in arenas across America for six months.
[Ozzy] was just becoming a big post-Black Sabbath solo artist who still, obviously, his reputation was that he was out of his mind. He would show up at the gig for soundcheck, and he would be soundchecking in Sharon’s dress or something. You never quite knew what was gonna happen, and it was just so much fun. Again, 21-22 years old, you’re playing for 45 minutes, you get off stage, you jump straight in a bottle of vodka, and the headliner is on, you get a chance to go out in the audience, meet people, hang out… You’re just f***ing living the dream.
About six months into that tour, our manager came down to the last show in Norfolk, Virginia, and we had a meeting in the back of the bus at three o’clock in the afternoon. And we’re sitting there, and he goes, ‘I got something to tell you, boys.’ And we’re like, ‘Uh-oh, now what did we do?’ And he goes, ‘You’ve all made enough money to go and buy houses now.’ And we all sat and looked at each other, and we’re like, ‘What? Say that again! What the f***?!’
We couldn’t compute the fact that we were out there doing what we wanted to do, having more fun than you could ever imagine, and at the same time, you got paid for it! And I remember Cliff [Burton], our bass player, who was a couple years older than us and still lived with his parents, he actually almost got emotional. He was sitting there, going, ‘I’m gonna buy my parents a house!’ It was a really beautiful moment.”
