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Def Leppard Tour History Fan Archive.
Rick Allen's Snare Drum Used On Metallica's Ride The Lightning

Monday, 28th July 2014





Rick Allen/Lars Ulrich.
Rick/Lars 1987

Metallica's ex-production assistant Flemming Rasmussen has revealed Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen's snare drum was used on the band's second album in 1984.

'Ride The Lightning', containing such classics as 'Fade To Black', 'Creeping Death' and 'For Whom The Bell Tolls', was released 30 years ago on 27th July 1984. Rick's Ludwig 'Black Beauty' snare drum was used on the recordings by drummer Lars Ulrich.

Flemming's memory of events is a little bit off as Rick's accident happened five months after the album release.

NOTE - Checking the thank you credits of the 'Master Of Puppets' album from 1986 reveals Flemming was correct with the part about Rick's accident but had the wrong album. As shown below Rick is thanked in the credits for use of the snare known as 'Black Beauty'. MOP was recorded between Sep-Dec 1985. Some of you will also remember Rick had a Metallica T-Shirt on in the 1987 UK version of the 'PSSOM' video.

Metallica 1986.
MOP Credits

As seen above Rick and Lars were photographed together a few times in the 80s by Ross Halfin and for drum/cymbal adverts.

Rolling Stone - Flemming Rasmussen Interview Quote

"One good story about the drums, though, is that Lars didn't really like the snare he had. So he called up [management company] Q Prime, and this was about the time when Rick Allen, the drummer from Def Leppard, had had his car accident [in which he lost his left arm] so he was in the hospital, and Lars called him and asked if he could borrow his snare drum. It came on the plane the next day. So Ride the Lightning is actually recorded on Rick Allen's Ludwig Black Beauty."






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