Dear Superstar: Lars Ulrich

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Danes are famous for their porn. At what age did you see your first dirty magazine?
rskyb2nss, Newtown, Pa

When I was 14 I started making money in the summer as a morning-newspaper delivery boy. At 5 a.m., there were fresh bundles of magazines put outside newsstands before the owners showed up. Every Thursday, Weekend Sex—Danish porn at its ­finest—was lying there waiting for me. I’d grab one, then go home and whack off three times before anyone else in the house woke up.

All four of the guys in the band are fathers. Do you have Metallica play-dates?
disposablezero, Fort Scott, KS

Yeah, they’re called summer tours. Hetfield’s oldest is a girl, and my oldest, Myles, is a boy. They play together backstage. So far, everybody gets along—I don’t know if there’s a Some Kind of Monster Part II: The Kids coming. If Myles started dating James Hetfield’s daughter someday? I’d be up for that. Maybe we could be grandparents together.

You’ve consumed legendary amounts of booze. Did you ever consider going to rehab, like James did?
sweettamber, Philadelphia

No, because I never felt there was problem—it was always social drinking. Honestly, I never drank nearly as much as Hetfield. Look at me, I’m 138 pounds. If I had five beers, I’d fall over, and if James had five, he’d go, “I need 15 more.” I was never one of these wake-up-and-reach-for-the-whiskey-bottle types. I would at least have the decency to eat breakfast first.

You gave up cocaine a few years back. What do you miss most about it?
stillthestatue, New Brunswick, NJ
 
The bonding. Two guys in a bathroom stall—it feels like the most important place in the whole world in that moment. I’ve actually gone into bathroom stalls with friends since I quit, just so I still have a little bit of that bonding.
 
Your girlfriend, Connie Nielsen, is smokin’ hot. Is she with you more for your money or your fame?
reese7977, Silkeborg, Denmark

She’s with me ’cause I’m cool. In ’04, when I was getting divorced and she was ending a relationship, we were both staying at the same hotel in Denmark. We knew each other already. She was doing promotion for a movie, and over the course of a week, we ended up in one room. We’re gonna grow old together. Marriage, I don’t know. None of us in the band have had great experiences with that.

You once joked that Metallica’s video collection should’ve been called 15 Years of Bad Haircuts. Who has rocked the all-time worst do?
1O_zildjian, Reno, NV

Hammett had dreadlocks going for a while—that was pretty iffy. But Hetfield had a 100 percent certifiable mullet in 1995. So he’s got to take the gold medal.