The son of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich admitted he wasn't up for offering his kids music lessons early on. Myles and Layne Ulrich are the sole two members of the Taipei Houston with their debut set, Once Bit Never Bored, out now. 24-year-old Myles drums and handles guitar duties, with 21-year-old kid brother Layne singing and playing bass.
Myles told Classic Rock how the new album came about, “We kinda just ended up back in San Francisco during lockdown and had a lot of time on our hands. Being brothers, we’ve been making music together on and off for a long time. This felt like a real opportunity to dig deep and really focus and get into it. We started writing all the time.”
When pressed as to whether his legendary dad showed his boys some tricks of the trade when they started getting interested in music, Myles admitted: “Honestly, when I started, he completely steered clear. He was like, 'Go do it with your friends or get a drum teacher!’ Not because he didn’t want to do it himself, but because he wanted us to find our own paths musically, which is really cool and that’s what we’ve tried to do. I don’t know if there’s a soundbite piece of advice he gave us. We both came into being interested in music our own way, listening to bands like Arctic Monkeys, stuff like that.”
Back in the day, Lars Ulrich explained to us that Metallica becoming parents only strengthened their bond within the band: “(James) Hetfield and me having kids at the same time roughly has even brought us closer together. I think we just see much more eye-to-eye about things in terms of touring schedules and all that type of stuff. But I think the other thing that’s also happened is that projects – recording projects, creative projects – are much more, I think, both vital and interesting than they were, y'know, in the earlier days.”