Metallica Will Get Lifetime Achievement Award at Golden Gods

Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo of Metallica in Mexico CityAngel Delgado/Clasos.com/LatinContent/Getty Images

Metallica will lay claim to another corner of the heavy metal universe on May 2nd, when the multi-platinum band closes this year's Revolver Golden Gods Awards ceremony with a live performance in Los Angeles. It will be Metallica's first appearance at the five-year-old metal and hard-rock show, where they are set to receive the Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award.

"It would be very easy to think of a band like Metallica – being one of the biggest bands on the planet – to not really give a shit about this type of stuff," Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian told Rolling Stone following a Golden Gods press conference in Hollywood yesterday. "I've known those guys forever. This will show the world in a big way that these guys never forgot who they are. They're still the same dudes."

Video: Slash Remembers Ronnie James Dio

Sitting between metal guitar heroes Zakk Wylde and John 5, Ian was one of 16 headbanging players onstage at the Hard Rock Café in Hollywood as details on the show were announced. Other honorees set to appear on the program include Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi (being given the Riff Lord prize) and Rob Zombie (picking up the Golden God statue).

Besides Metallica, bands performing on the show at Club Nokia will be Anthrax, Stone Sour, Five Finger Death Punch, Dillinger Escape Plan and Halestorm.

"Fuck the Grammys. Our show is sexier, it's cooler," declared singer and WWF wrestler Chris Jericho, returning as this year's host, as he stood at the podium. He then performed a perfect Danish-accented impersonation of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich as he read a statement from Metallica, which said of he honor, "We are beyond psyched to be at the receiving end of this shout-out and in the distinguished company of Rush, Lemmy, Ozzy and Mötley Crüe."

The ceremony will be broadcast on the AXS television network, Xbox LIVE and on the Facebook pages of Revolver magazine and Xbox. Awards categories include Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Comeback of the Year, along with statues for best guitarist, vocalist, bassist, drummer and more. Anthrax are nominated in the Best Live Band category.

"Zakk and I were joking onstage – every year, of course they say it's the biggest and best Golden Gods you ever had. This year they have Metallica, so in a sense they're telling the truth this year," Ian said of his "Big 4" thrash brethren. "Unless they get Zeppelin to reform and do it next year, maybe this is the last Golden Gods. How are they going to top Metallica?"

As Ian spoke backstage, a short live set by Halestorm roared from the main room. They were joined by Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach as they did his band's 1991 anthem "Slave to the Grind," which appears on Halestorm's 2011 covers EP. "He's freakin' amazing," Halestorm singer Lzzy Hale told Rolling Stone of the strutting hair-metal veteran. "He walks the line between, OK, are you being cocky or sarcastic? It's probably a little of both."

Halestorm were among the youngest artists at the press conference. This year won't be their first time at the Golden Gods, but the Pennsylvanian hard rock act are still getting used to being around their musical heroes. "Today was a little nerve-wracking, because they are only some of the best vocalists, guitarists, bass-players, drummers ever," Hale said.

In a crowded season of awards programs, Halestorm is also up for a Grammy next week in the Best Hard Rock/Metal performance for their single "Love Bites (So Do I)." Nominated in the same category is Anthrax for "I'm Alive," which means Ian will soon be walking the red carpet outside L.A.'s Staples Center. He hopes to meet some new people there.

"It would be cool to meet Bruno Mars and tell him I think he's cool," said Ian, his fuzzy Tutankhamun goatee long and graying, "and him probably look at me like, 'I don't have a fucking clue who or – what are you?'"

Wylde and his Black Label Society are nominated for Most Dedicated Fans, which didn't surprise the guitarist. "It's like the Deadheads – the Grateful Dead on steroids," he said of the intense following he called "the Black Label berserkers. It's bigger than the band. We're just the house band for the Black Label community."

Win or lose, Wylde already has a British version of the Golden God. "I remind the wife plenty of times and carry the trophy around," he said proudly, "and explain to her how lucky she is to sleep next to a Golden God."

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Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Prepare for Golden Globes

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Prepare for Golden GlobesHosting duo crack jokes ahead of January 13th awards show $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); });

With the Golden Globes less than two weeks away, hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are busy preparing – by cracking jokes in ornate, sequined dresses. "We've been to [the Golden Globes] before and it's a very, kind of sloppy, loud party. And that seemed like our kind of thing," says Fey. She admits she personally wants to win Best Picture (just her, no movie needed), and Poehler tells her, "If there's any year to win it, this is your year."

'Lincoln' Leads Golden Globes Nominations With Seven

Poehler confesses she has lots of conversations with Angelina Jolie in her head and hopes to meet the star. But they really want to hang with "one of the blue people" from Avatar, and think Daniel Day-Lewis should win Best Actor for his (non-existent) role in the film. Hopefully the Golden Globes will include those killer awkward close-ups.

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Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Prepare for Golden Globes

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Prepare for Golden GlobesHosting duo crack jokes ahead of January 13th awards show $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); });

With the Golden Globes less than two weeks away, hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are busy preparing – by cracking jokes in ornate, sequined dresses. "We've been to [the Golden Globes] before and it's a very, kind of sloppy, loud party. And that seemed like our kind of thing," says Fey. She admits she personally wants to win Best Picture (just her, no movie needed), and Poehler tells her, "If there's any year to win it, this is your year."

'Lincoln' Leads Golden Globes Nominations With Seven

Poehler confesses she has lots of conversations with Angelina Jolie in her head and hopes to meet the star. But they really want to hang with "one of the blue people" from Avatar, and think Daniel Day-Lewis should win Best Actor for his (non-existent) role in the film. Hopefully the Golden Globes will include those killer awkward close-ups.

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Alice Cooper Set for Next Golden Gods Awards

Alice Cooper attends the 4th Annual Revolver Golden God Awards nominees announcement at the Grammy Museum.

Guitarist Zack Wylde promised a big night of "hookers, payola and blow" at this year's Revolver Golden Gods Awards, set to erupt April 11 in Los Angeles. "We're creeping up on the porn awards," he joked, standing among a crowd of hard rockers yesterday to announce the nominees in 10 categories.

"Within the next 200 or 300 years, metal and death metal and all the forms of metal will get top honors at the Grammys," he told Rolling Stone. Until then, Golden Gods nominees for Best Album include Anthrax, Foo Fighters and Lamb of God, and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons will receive the Golden God for best embodying "the spirit of hard rock and metal."

Last year's honoree was Alice Cooper, who attended yesterday's announcement and spoke to Rolling Stone about the awards, his upcoming summer tour with Iron Maiden (beginning June 21st in North Carolina) and the latest guitar virtuoso in his band, Orianthi.

What keeps you coming back to the Golden Gods?
I was watching the Grammys the other night – there was no rock & roll except for the Foo Fighters. I looked at the categories, and it said, "Hard rock – the Decemberists . . ." And I'm going, What? Foo Fighters were the only rock band involved. This is real rock. I feel more at home here. The Grammys used to be all rock & roll. Now it's sort of a novelty to have a rock band in there. I thought it was great when McCartney did "The End," where you had all the guitar players up there. That was the rockest part of the night.

The Foos' name also came up a lot in the nominations today.
They are the best Seventies band. They would have fit right in. Dave Grohl and those guys write really good hard rock songs. So we need more Guns N' Roses out there, and we need more Aerosmith. That's hard rock, and we don't seem to be getting a lot in the mainstream.

In the Eighties, you really embraced the metal scene, and now the Golden Gods. Do you see yourself that way?
I never thought of myself as metal. I looked at it as a hard, hard rock band. If you sit Ozzy and I down, we would talk about the Beatles. Ozzy's melodies and my melodies are all very Beatle-oriented – or the Yardbirds and the Who. There's more influence of that in our generation than anything else. That's why I think a lot of things that are happening now will not have a very long shelflife. The further you get away from the Beatles, the less chance you have of having classic songs. They were good teachers.

Iron Maiden may have picked up a few stagecraft tricks from you.
Those guys are really good friends of ours. When you've been out for five decades on the road, there's a whole section of the audience out there that have heard of Alice Cooper but never saw Alice Cooper. So an Iron Maiden audience is a great opportunity for us to show them what Alice is all about. We do more theatrics now than we did back then.

How did you connect with Orianthi?
[Producer] Bob Ezrin and I both liked Orianthi. I don't think anybody has seen her really play. You saw the Michael Jackson stuff, but you watch her play a full set of 28 songs, and that girl can rock it. Halfway through the tour, she goes, "By the way, I am left-handed." What do you mean? "I play better left-handed." What?! She's awfully good right-handed. She's fun. I notice every night on stage there would be a little more [fake] blood on her mouth. By the end of the tour on her arms was "Help Me" and cuts [drawn] on her arm. She got freakier and freakier as the tour went on.

What are you going to do on this tour with Maiden?
You have to do the hits. The audience would kill you if you don't do "Eighteen" and "School's Out." But then we've got to do stuff from the new album. And then you have to get what I call the underground hits – the real Alice aficionados want to hear those songs. Once in a while you throw a cover in there. We do a pretty mean "Brown Sugar."

What do you have in the works now?
The new album charted higher than anything we've had since Trash. When we go out with Maiden this year, we're going to be doing a best-of Alice, and after that we'll be going into producing the Welcome 2 My Nightmare show.

What will that be like?
I stay away from things like lasers and pyro, because Alice is more vaudevillian than that. I want the show to look like a sideshow – that thing you don't really want to go into but are compelled to go into.

Do you see anyone out there following that tradition?
Black Veil Brides picked up on something and said, "How come nobody's doing this Sunset Strip Eighties rock anymore?" And I'm surprised, too. That whole hair-rock thing that went on was a really fun era. It was loud, it was fun, it was in your face.

Did you witness much of the Eighties Sunset Strip?
To me it was funny, because it was a resurgence of what we did in the Seventies. All of a sudden every band had a show. Bands like Poison and Warrant and Ratt and Cinderella – they all had a show, and it was fun to watch. I might not even have liked some of those bands, but I would look at the show and go "Wow, they actually rehearsed this."

There's a lot of bands out right now that are afraid to be rock bands. They go up and they're way too polite. Everybody in the band looks like somebody you'd see on the street. A rock band looks like Black Veil Brides. You know what that guy does for a living. That's the way it was in the Sixties and the Seventies. Now I look at a group on stage and they've got acoustic guitars and they're singing about the environment, and I'm going, "What kind of edge is that?"

They had that in the Seventies, too.

They did, but nobody liked it. [laughs]

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Alice Cooper Set for Next Golden Gods Awards

Alice Cooper attends the 4th Annual Revolver Golden God Awards nominees announcement at the Grammy Museum.

Guitarist Zack Wylde promised a big night of "hookers, payola and blow" at this year's Revolver Golden Gods Awards, set to erupt April 11 in Los Angeles. "We're creeping up on the porn awards," he joked, standing among a crowd of hard rockers yesterday to announce the nominees in 10 categories.

"Within the next 200 or 300 years, metal and death metal and all the forms of metal will get top honors at the Grammys," he told Rolling Stone. Until then, Golden Gods nominees for Best Album include Anthrax, Foo Fighters and Lamb of God, and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons will receive the Golden God for best embodying "the spirit of hard rock and metal."

Last year's honoree was Alice Cooper, who attended yesterday's announcement and spoke to Rolling Stone about the awards, his upcoming summer tour with Iron Maiden (beginning June 21st in North Carolina) and the latest guitar virtuoso in his band, Orianthi.

What keeps you coming back to the Golden Gods?
I was watching the Grammys the other night – there was no rock & roll except for the Foo Fighters. I looked at the categories, and it said, "Hard rock – the Decemberists . . ." And I'm going, What? Foo Fighters were the only rock band involved. This is real rock. I feel more at home here. The Grammys used to be all rock & roll. Now it's sort of a novelty to have a rock band in there. I thought it was great when McCartney did "The End," where you had all the guitar players up there. That was the rockest part of the night.

The Foos' name also came up a lot in the nominations today.
They are the best Seventies band. They would have fit right in. Dave Grohl and those guys write really good hard rock songs. So we need more Guns N' Roses out there, and we need more Aerosmith. That's hard rock, and we don't seem to be getting a lot in the mainstream.

In the Eighties, you really embraced the metal scene, and now the Golden Gods. Do you see yourself that way?
I never thought of myself as metal. I looked at it as a hard, hard rock band. If you sit Ozzy and I down, we would talk about the Beatles. Ozzy's melodies and my melodies are all very Beatle-oriented – or the Yardbirds and the Who. There's more influence of that in our generation than anything else. That's why I think a lot of things that are happening now will not have a very long shelflife. The further you get away from the Beatles, the less chance you have of having classic songs. They were good teachers.

Iron Maiden may have picked up a few stagecraft tricks from you.
Those guys are really good friends of ours. When you've been out for five decades on the road, there's a whole section of the audience out there that have heard of Alice Cooper but never saw Alice Cooper. So an Iron Maiden audience is a great opportunity for us to show them what Alice is all about. We do more theatrics now than we did back then.

How did you connect with Orianthi?
[Producer] Bob Ezrin and I both liked Orianthi. I don't think anybody has seen her really play. You saw the Michael Jackson stuff, but you watch her play a full set of 28 songs, and that girl can rock it. Halfway through the tour, she goes, "By the way, I am left-handed." What do you mean? "I play better left-handed." What?! She's awfully good right-handed. She's fun. I notice every night on stage there would be a little more [fake] blood on her mouth. By the end of the tour on her arms was "Help Me" and cuts [drawn] on her arm. She got freakier and freakier as the tour went on.

What are you going to do on this tour with Maiden?
You have to do the hits. The audience would kill you if you don't do "Eighteen" and "School's Out." But then we've got to do stuff from the new album. And then you have to get what I call the underground hits – the real Alice aficionados want to hear those songs. Once in a while you throw a cover in there. We do a pretty mean "Brown Sugar."

What do you have in the works now?
The new album charted higher than anything we've had since Trash. When we go out with Maiden this year, we're going to be doing a best-of Alice, and after that we'll be going into producing the Welcome 2 My Nightmare show.

What will that be like?
I stay away from things like lasers and pyro, because Alice is more vaudevillian than that. I want the show to look like a sideshow – that thing you don't really want to go into but are compelled to go into.

Do you see anyone out there following that tradition?
Black Veil Brides picked up on something and said, "How come nobody's doing this Sunset Strip Eighties rock anymore?" And I'm surprised, too. That whole hair-rock thing that went on was a really fun era. It was loud, it was fun, it was in your face.

Did you witness much of the Eighties Sunset Strip?
To me it was funny, because it was a resurgence of what we did in the Seventies. All of a sudden every band had a show. Bands like Poison and Warrant and Ratt and Cinderella – they all had a show, and it was fun to watch. I might not even have liked some of those bands, but I would look at the show and go "Wow, they actually rehearsed this."

There's a lot of bands out right now that are afraid to be rock bands. They go up and they're way too polite. Everybody in the band looks like somebody you'd see on the street. A rock band looks like Black Veil Brides. You know what that guy does for a living. That's the way it was in the Sixties and the Seventies. Now I look at a group on stage and they've got acoustic guitars and they're singing about the environment, and I'm going, "What kind of edge is that?"

They had that in the Seventies, too.

They did, but nobody liked it. [laughs]

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Read more »