Ulrich, a big Deep Purple fan, made the revelation in an interview that Metal Hammer's Peter Makowski republished on his Facebook page earlier this month to celebrate the release of Deep Purple's new album, "Now What?." Here are some excerpts:

Makowski: Why do you think Purple haven't been inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame? Ulrich: "What you've got to understand is that a lot of the people that have run the selection process are critics. And Deep Purple as you know were never a critic's band especially in America, because their influence was probably felt more in Europe. It's only a matter of time. Rather sooner than later. We've already lost one member. The fact that Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are in and Purple is not is one of the crimes of that whole institution. We'll get them in soon enough; I'm working on it."

Makowski: You wrote beautiful eulogy to Jon Lord on the Metallica website, you were obviously a friend and a fan. Ulrich: "Thank you. I'm not sure that the people in today's hard rock world really truly understand how innovative this guy was. He wasn't just another keyboard player on the side of the stage. In 66/67 when Hendrix, Townshend and Ritchie Blackmore were taking the electric guitar to a new level, by using banks of Marshall stacks beefing up the sound, Jon Lord was one of the first guys in hard rock to take the keyboards through the same process. He took a fairly standard instrument like a Hammond organ put it through amplifiers and Leslie cabinets and introduced a whole new way of forcing the sound out of the keyboards. Ritchie Blackmore said the other day that Jon formed Deep Purple; he was certainly the instigator that made things happen. If not the musical leader Jon was the spiritual leader of the band. He was a pioneer and I think that somehow that's gotten a little lost in the last few weeks. People are talking about, obviously, what a gentleman he was and what a fantastic band member but he really did something nobody had done before with the sound of the keyboards and I think that's probably the biggest thing to remember him for."