CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM (3)
By:
October 8, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… creators switching art forms and/or careers! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
LARS ULRICH, TENNIS ACE
Lars Ulrich came from a dynasty of tennis pros. His father, Torben Ulrich, was the best player in Denmark; his uncle, Jorgen, was the second best. And Einer Ulrich, Lars’s grandfather, represented Denmark in the 1924 Summer Olympics, though he did not get the gold. So Einer pivoted. In 1941, he co-founded Ulrich and Parrilds Advertising.
Lars took after his grandfather, not just for his tennis talents, nor for their three marriages each, but because both were willing to rebrand successfully after a destabilizing disappointment in their sports careers.
When Lars was 16, he moved to Newport Beach, Calif., and attended Corona del Mar High School solely to pursue tennis, because unlike his classmates, Lars had finished high school in Denmark. He has said this was isolating, but he was also at an advantage; because of his father being the best pro player in Denmark, Lars’s coach, the renowned Nick Bollettieri, gave him special treatment. Lars made it to the second tier; used to being the best of the best in Denmark, now he felt demoted and would fail to make the high school tennis team. His passion was always for music, so this was his signal to leave his tennis roots.
Lars grew up in a musical household (his godfather was sax great Dexter Gordon, and Lars’s father had overlapping careers in sports and music, as well as painting and film). Lars was playing drums before he was a teenager, well before he moved to America, so his interest in metal and his love of bands like Iron Maiden and Diamond Head was already well on its way. He said he was wearing Maiden t-shirts at tennis school, which further isolated him.
And now that he was exploring the Los Angeles music scene, he was still an outsider. His taste was decidedly European; “The New Wave of British Heavy Metal” was practically unheard of in America.
The kismet moment was when both Lars and James Hetfield placed and responded to each other’s ads in a local newspaper looking to start a band; Lars was able to play Hetfield the music he was influenced by, and then they co-founded one of the biggest bands of all time.
Ultimately, Metallica got so big they transcended the metal genre. Though controversial, Lars shrewdly altered the band’s sound and image in 1996/97 with Load and Reload, and therefore Metallica was able to survive when most bands of their ilk faded from the mainstream quite quickly in the transition of tastes and styles between the eighties and the nineties.
From tennis prodigy to drummer to art collector (in 2002 he sold a Basquiat for $15 million), Lars has always been one thing: a shrewd businessman. And he knows how to diversify.
CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | James Scott Maloy on DAVID LEE ROTH, EMT | Lynn Peril on HEDY LAMARR AND GEORGE ANTHEIL, INVENTORS | Crockett Doob on LARS ULRICH, TENNIS ACE | Mimi Lipson on DANIEL DAY-LEWIS, COBBLER | Mariane Cara on BRIAN MAY, ASTROPHYSICIST | Carlo Rotella on CURTIS COKES, FIGHTING ACTOR | Josh Glenn on GEORGE HARRISON, FILM PRODUCER | Crystal Durant on SKUNK BAXTER, DEFENSE CONSULTANT | Adrienne Crew on HENRY ROLLINS, PUNK POLYMATH | Deborah Wassertzug on JOHN LURIE, DISRUPTOR | Heather Quinlan on HARRY NILSSON, COMPUTER GENIUS | Adam McGovern on JOSEPHINE BAKER, SPY | Douglas Wolk on RICHARD McGUIRE, GRAPHIC-LIT INNOVATOR | Jake Zucker on SYDNEY POLLACK, CHARACTER ACTOR | Rani Som on RACHEL POLLACK, SEEKER | Jeff Lewonczyk on ANDY WARHOL, FORMER ANDY WARHOL | Nikhil Singh on ADOLF HITLER, FORMER PAINTER | Holly Interlandi on ADAM JONES, DIRECTOR | Jonathan Pinchera on PETER CAINE, CONSPIRACY STAR | Miranda Mellis on EVE KOSOVSKY SEDGWICK, ACADEMIC WEAVER | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on BRENT SPINER, SINGING NOVELIST | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on QUENTIN TARANTINO, CRITIC | TBD on TBD | Marlon Stern Lopez on GREG GRAFFIN, HARDCORE ZOOLOGIST | Pichchenda Bao on WENDELL BERRY, FARMING POET.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!