Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has gifted a Metallica vinyl box set to Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo.
Known as Jokowi, the Indonesian leader has made his love of metal clear in the past, after being spotted in a Napalm Death t-shirts and flashing the “devil’s horns” hand sign.
Jokowi received the Metallica boxset as a diplomatic gift from Lars Løkke Rasmusse. Rasmusse also had the vinyl case signed by Metallica’s danish drummer Lars Ulrich. You can see pictures of the exchange below.
Danish President gave a Metallica box set to another world leader ??
The metal giants – who returned to the UK recently as part of their mammoth WorldWired tour – are re-issuing their third studio LP this month, following the release of their tenth album ‘Hardwired… To Self Destruct’ last year.
To celebrate, the band got together with album co-producer Flemming Rasmussen to reminisce about the studio sessions for a two-part episode on Beats 1. The discussions aired earlier this month (November 12 and 13) on Ulrich’s ‘It’s Electric’ show.
In preview snippets of the chat, the band offer up an insight into the birth of the colossal eight-minute instrumental ‘Orion’. Speaking of late bassist Cliff Burton’s “super rough” demo version, Kirk Hammett said: “I remember hearing it like months later and it had all these harmonies, all these melodies on it and I was just blown away, because it had grown from this little chord progression to this huge opus.”
Elsewhere in the clips, Hammett reveals that the key to remembering riffs he had written was to “keep on playing it to remember the feel.”
“Back when we had memories – or brain cells – if it was good, you would remember it,” James Hettfield added.