In a recent interview with Drumeo, Mastodon's Brann Dailor revealed how important Metallica's Lars Ulrich was to him as a budding drummer. Dailor said he idolized guys like Mikkey Dee from King Diamond (and later Motörhead) and then-Judas Priest drummer Simon Phillips, but Ulrich's drumming was the one that he and other young drummers could actually latch onto and successfully attempt.
"With the metal guys it was it was heavily Mikkey Dee [from] King Diamond," said Dailor as transcribed by Metal Injection. "When I was a kid, I really fell in love with King Diamond – the drumming on that blew me away. Nicko McBrain and Clive Burr from Iron Maiden, Simon Phillips with Judas Priest, Dave Lombardo was a big guy for me. Lars was huge as well.
"When you're attempting trying to play along with 'Angel of Death' when you're 12 it's like, this is really difficult. I'm not saying that what Lars was doing was easy by any stretch of the imagination, but you could create a version of it that was doable, that at least you could learn the structure of the song.
"I think myself and all the metal people that are probably around my age, and even younger even older, cut their teeth learning Metallica covers. Metallica was the biggest band in the world at that point in time – everybody was a Metallica fan.
"As far as like, trying to learn how to be in a band, we all would butcher versions of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and 'One' just all the songs that anybody could come over and try to muster."
Dailor also touched on his love for Phil Collins and Genesis, which is of course founded – Collins' drumming is incredible, as is his writing.
"Phil Collins is my guy. That early work that he did with Genesis, and even into the pop stuff when he was still playing drums on a lot of that, it was very cleverly disguised pop music where you got odd time signatures happening. I felt like it was their mission to write this really popular music but camouflage it with prog."
