Icons: Kirk Hammett of Metallica

[Music] so [Music] [Applause] well there was always music in my house and it was either jazz jazz music uh it was either am radio that my mom used to leave on 24 hours a day because she thought kept away the burglars because i live in a bad neighborhood so it was either like you know jazz uh bossa nova uh broadway musicals classical music and then i had my my older brother's record collection which was nothing like the music that i was hearing in the house i gravitated toward his record collection because of the the the album covers you know i was only about four or five years old and so you know the visual aspect of the album cover is really really attracted me to to to them and i can vividly remember those album covers because they're they're album covers that everyone knows today like you know are you experienced uh the first gentle tall album the first uh grateful dead album quicksilver messenger service even even black sabbath paranoid and and so that that music was in my house but i didn't i didn't hear it though because as was my brother's stuff and he and you know he would just go on on his own and listen to it and i would catch snippets of it here and there but i was mostly interested in the album covers it was interesting because like one day i wandered into the living room where all the album covers were and i saw this case on the floor i looked at it as like what's this and of course you know being just curious i walked over to it opened up the latches and opened it up as a red sg gibson sg guitar and i was like wow cool and i remember taking it out and putting it on and plugging it into an amp and just hitting a note boom and it being a lot louder than i expected and being freaked out thinking that oh i'm gonna get in trouble someone's gonna hear me and taking it off putting it back into the case closing it and putting it in in the spot i found it in and that was like the very first my very first uh sort of experienced electric guitar and literally i had to be had to have been like four or five years old so fast forward 10 years i'm walking down the hallway high school you know i have my little tape recorder i'm probably listening to like jeff beck wired or you know uh wheels of fire cream or like i don't know electric lady land or something crazy like that and i saw this commotion off to the side these older kids and i remember looking and one of them pulled out a case of strat and when i saw the strat i was like wow it looks like a hot rod and then it got me thinking i remember that day running back to the house and just thinking wow that guitar looked really cool and then getting the album covers of the stuff i was listening to and looking at all the guitars that were on the couch on the covers of the albums and particularly kiss alive that picture of ace freely holding his guitar but i thought is he holding his guitar inside out and he was if you ever if you look at that he's actually holding his guitar inside out and so the idea got into my my head of trying to play guitar and i remember trading uh a kiss album i had a kiss album and all the money i had all the money i had in my life which is 10 bucks and trading it for this really cheap catalog guitar growing up my family didn't have any money uh i didn't have enough money to even buy a guitar case i used to have to put a case into a a garbage bag if i wanted to go anywhere and so the very first time i got a wall pedal it was because uh a relative of mine passed away and i got a small inheritance of like maybe 150 or something you know and i took that money i bought a wah pedal and it was amazing because all of a sudden i i felt like i was able to make sounds that jimi hendrix was making but also sounds that brian robertson the guy from thin this he was making you know pat travers was making uh you know sounds that that i was hearing on all these different uh different albums and i i played that wall pedal literally for like months on end it was just like always plugged in i was always changing the battery and it was just something i just loved it was a great option when i got you know when i wanted to take my playing somewhere else and i wanted a real distinct change of sound and and direction and attack stepping on that wall just finding a spot on that wall all of a sudden shifted my my thinking and my playing instantly and that's what i like about wah pedal it shifts my playing it shifts my thinking almost instantly and um it brings more stuff out people say that you know uh museum wall pill can be a crutch and yeah you know yeah it can be and i certainly guilty of that i'll admit it but only because i just love it so much but you know the main reason i i use it is because it inspires me and then it's like instant inspiration and it doesn't matter if if my amps up to 10 or my amps up to 3 have a clean sound you know dirty sound or whatever the fact that i could step on that thing and that all of a sudden i'm in a different tonal spectrum it's great it it it forces it forces my brain to the the feel filled in that that that that change my first real guitar was a a strat and um uh you know when i plugged the strat in into the amp i had i didn't get the fullness you know i didn't get you know the the all the frequencies that i wanted to hear and so i remember because this is after the first van halen album i remember getting a humbucker pickup i think is a dimarzio super two pickup and put it in the bridge position and not being quite quite satisfied with the sound i remember that i had a plan i was going to work for six months get enough money to uh uh to to trade in my strat and uh uh an amount of money for a gibson flying v because i really liked michael shanker i really liked his sound and i realized that gibson was probably what i was hearing on all those albums i decided that you know i need to get get a gibson to get that that sound and so i remember showing up the music store pick out 1979 gibson flying v that was brand new and doing the trade-in and from that part point on i was in heaven you know all of a sudden my sound was fuller sounding and uh it it made me realize that you know the the sound that i was looking for was based around humbucking pickups and that sound and even though i was totally into jimi hendrix and that kind of sound you know and steve and later on steve ray vaughn humbucking pickups were just my thing it's and it it just it fit my style of playing from there on i i've gotten this gibson flying v and it was it was so great because it was the first time that i had a guitar that i was able to like really just master you know from the from you know because strats are there you can do so much with a strat but i had so little experience with the guitar i had i i i didn't fully you know know the the strap potential but with a gibson flying v it was all obvious to me you know all the sounds were there that i wanted the playability the access and you know the look and you know for a kid you know playing a flying v guitar it's it's like a big toy you know and so i was just so happy and then when i finally got a martial amp and plugged that gibson into the marshall amp it was like i was it was a complete the sound that i was looking for was complete and i remember the band that i was in at the time you know the the other guys in the band were seeing this transformation and sound and then all of a sudden the band i was in we sounded different you know we started more full and it sounded closer to the sound that i was trying to get which was this like a more aggressive hard rock sound that i wasn't hearing in a lot of american bands at all but i was hearing a lot in european bands and i wanted that sound and i wanted to take that sound and just like you know grab it and apply it to the music that i was playing with these other guys in the band that eventually was called exodus i realized that that at some point after listening to the law of rock radio that i liked loud fast drums distorted guitar power chords riffs and you know i just realized just recently that that when i came to that decision i was maybe 15 or 16 years old i went to school and people were talking about these three guys i'd never heard of before pink floyd gentleton led zeppelin i was like who are those guys you know that's how naive i was i remember just slowly getting into it and then starting to listen to rock radio and in in the late 70s rock radio really progressed and started getting just harder and harder until like around 1978 1979. they were playing all sorts of hard rock you know aerosmith cheat trick ac dc foreigner apache oh you know all that stuff was on the radio and it was great and i really could relate to what i was hearing but it wasn't quite enough it wasn't quite enough it wasn't like fulfilling this this this this feeling in my chest and in my gut and then i heard ufo it was had to be like 1978 or 79 1979 and all of a sudden i heard something that was what i was looking for which was something heavier and a little bit more extreme and it's a a little bit more aggressive than anything that was coming out of america and when i discovered ufo i also discovered a whole slew of other bands too that are coming out of europe scorpions motorhead and and this thing called the new wave of british heavy metal and i started buying all this stuff motorhead's first two or three albums and then a whole barrage of other stuff came like the first maiden album and diamond head angel witch tigers of pantang all this stuff and it was what i wanted to hear i also realized as i you know would talk to my friends and like talk to people who were music fans at my school no one was listening to this stuff and when i played a lot of it for a lot of my friends they didn't want to hear it they did not want to hear it or they're just like visibly irritated by it so i started hanging out with the people who liked what i played for them they're like yeah this is good which ended up being you know our gang of people exodus and because we all like this this special type of music we became we became a click of friends and i remember when it came time for exodus when we felt like we were ready to start playing clubs we started going to a lot of the nightclubs in san francisco and seeing these hard hard rock bands are obviously influenced by van halen aerosmith you know you know led zeppelin all the contemporary bands and they're okay but we also started seeing like one or two bands that were influenced by the same stuff we were and me and all the guys next to us we would gravitate toward those bands there was only like two or three of them in the beginning but it grew to be like 15 16 bands whatever basically that's how the the heavy metal scene in san francisco started off we were just a band of people who listened the same sort of music and we started started to discover each other and we discovered that that there was this one guy named ron quintana who had a radio show on kusf college station in san francisco and his radio show was called rampage radio and they played nothing but heavy metal hard rock and a new wave of british heavy metal and that became our our rallying point soon after that a local club called the old waldorf decided to have metal mondays so not only did we have a group of people who were like you know who liked the same stuff and not only did we have certain bands coming up but we also had a radio station playing the stuff and so that was the core of of the scene and everyone would talk to everyone else and say hey have you heard this band or have you heard this band or check out this demo of this band that's not even signed yet we're hearing this this music from from europe and hardly anyone knew about it and and we were we were digesting it and and spitting out our version of it which became you know the san francisco thrash metal scene bands like exodus and metallica and all the other bands that came out of the the bay area but we are all pretty much doing the same thing we're taking these obscure bands from england listening to it and being so inspired by it and turning out our own version of it in our own version being just really really super popular that basically was how the scene started it was rampage radio it was heavy metal mondays at the old waldorf it was going to uh the import section of all these record stores and it was us recognizing other people who listened to the same stuff and the only way you could tell back then is if they had black leather jackets because black leather jackets weren't not styled back then black leather jackets and pins and that's how you would know at the very beginning of that scene there's maybe 50 people but by the end of that scene and maybe on whenever it stopped maybe 1991-92 it was practically the entire bay area and that's how that's how i believe you know the heavy metal what we know as heavy metal today really just like grew out out of out of that scene in san francisco and kind of spread all over the country i remember we were just sitting out around one day and uh the the singer of exodus this guy named paul balop was absolutely absolute maniac he walked into the rehearsal said metallica so heavy they're so heavy and i was like metallica i thought what a great name that's like the best name in the world metallica that is the best name i think i've ever heard from metal band metallica he said yeah they're playing the stone tonight we gotta go check them out and so we went down there and literally there was like 15 people there and i remember being at the front of the stage going wow these guys are pretty goddamn good and there was a there's a recording of that show and in between songs you can hear me scream sweet savage and and damastain walks up to the mic says off but anyway literally there was like 15 people at that show a few months later we got booked to play a metal monday and it was exodus first show at metal monday at the old waldorf and we got booked onto that show because we're friends with the headlining band which is a band called law's rocket and the band in the middle was metallica and we were like oh this is cool we're going to be playing with metallica that's that's great and i remember we played that show there was about maybe about a hundred people in in the club and then metallica went on and the place was packed i don't know where the people came from but all of a sudden they just showed up metallica played for like 45 minutes and then when they get one off stage the place emptied literally emptied and there's like 30 people for law's rocket and the next night was a benefit for metal mania magazine and we got asked to play with metallica again and it was um it was a better situation because it was just us in metallica and uh i met those guys for the first time uh uh in the dressing room of the mabuhay gardens which was really wasn't much of a dressing room at all it's like an indoor alley that was just you know the beginning of of of my relationship with them and it's really funny because you know uh like years after that you know people would ask me well when's the first time you ever talked to those guys and i would say you know i first met him at the map and lars was like really i don't remember that and james is like huh really they don't even remember paul bailoff was a very insightful sort of personality he was really smart all right i'll say that first and foremost he knew exactly what he was doing the whole time and you know it was it really was just like his way of like like getting everyone together into the tribe and making sure that the tribe was was pure and and and its intentions were pure and and everyone was there for the right reasons and his way of weeding out all the all the people who who were not worthy was you know looking for visual signs like oh motley crew they're posters you must be a poser or you know whatever what he really was doing though is is that he was just making sure that everyone was just as metal as they possibly could be in his presence it was entertaining to watch because uh it was something that was that he saved exclusively for just you know the audience he would never like walk up to any of the musicians and like you know pull that kind of shtick you know because i think he just knew that we probably knew better but he would he would do it to the most like like unsuspecting person in the audience single them out and go hey you're a poser and like dude like literally like just like go over there and just like a man handle a person tear off their shirt rip it up throw it in the audience and keep a piece for himself and like wrap it around his wrist or whatever you know take a trophy you know and there was never a dull moment with him ever even like driving around with him you know i i'd be i'd get in his car his dog which is half wolf and half something else would be in the back you know barking moving around and bailiff would be talking you know he had road rage so he would be like screaming at people outside of his window you know talking to me you know just driving just like haphazardly it was it was just it was just very exciting being around him and an adventure i was just sitting there and uh it was april 1st so i thought it was an april fool's joke and i had to say to the person on the other end is this an april fool's joke and i said nope they heard the exodus demo and they're very interested in in uh you flying out and trying out for the band i had a week to learn all the songs and um back then you know learning uh eight or ten songs in a week would have been pretty difficult i could probably learn eight or ten songs in like four days now because i'm just better at it but back then it was a lot and i remember sitting down with that that that metallica demo tape and just learning as much as i could and then flying out and i remember when i arrived uh to to new york city and i arrived to the rehearsal spot in jamaica queens at the music building and literally it was like 20 degrees outside and it was snowing and that was a bit of a shock for me because i'd never left california at that point i remember getting there and it was like early evening and those guys were just getting up and i thought who the gets up at six or seven o'clock at night and i remember saying hello to them and and and then like 15 minutes later going you know they saying to me come on let's just play some tunes and they said well what do you want to play and i instantly went for like you know the easiest song to play which is seek and destroy and i remember playing seek and destroy with them and i couldn't understand why mars and james kept on looking at each other and smiling and i thought wow they must really enjoy this song or maybe there's something else going on that i don't know about but i later found out that it was because they were just so happy that it sounded so good right from the start i just started playing shows with them and then next thing you know i'm in the studio with them and and recording killing moms and so i thought well i must be in the band if i'm recording an album with it now cause they never sat me down and said they're officially in the band and they never did that we only had three weeks and we had to rush through a lot of stuff and there were there's all sorts of mistakes on that album but we couldn't really do anything about it everything was uh it was pretty much uh um scheduled you know this time for drums you know drums and bass this time for rhythm guitars this time for lead guitars this time for vocals and and you know wherever you were at at the at the end of that that period of time that's where you were at and so a lot of those guitar solos i wish i could do over but you know it's like it was really just okay done next one okay done next one okay done next one but what i got to fix uh stuff nope we gotta go to the next one i mean there's like bad notes all over that album you know ben's are kind of uh shaky but you know when i think about it it's just like it gets it gives the album personality and it and and i i i heard a track i think i heard four horsemen a couple days ago and i thought you know we were just going for it we were just happy to be there and we were happy to be recorded we we had we had pretty pretty high standards of quality even back then but we didn't have the resources to really do anything about it until the next album and and then you know that's why there's such a big difference in terms of like sound and production between kill em all and write lightning right the lightning represents everything that we wanted to do and kill them all but couldn't because of time restraints and um and so that's why you know when you put them together there's a a big big difference a lot of progress in terms of sound and performance but you know it was it was fun we got drunk every night afterwards you know kind of like just celebrating and um we didn't really know what the engineer was supposed to do we had no idea what the producer was supposed to do and so we were just kind of like you know taking it all in and taking notes and um you know i would say that kill them all is is imperfect but that's what makes it perfect this is imperfections we're touring in less than favorable conditions but it didn't matter because it was our first tour and you know just the fact that we were on tour and being able to like like go from from place to place from city to city and play different people every night was enough to keep us going you know i remember having a lot of problems with my guitar sound constantly having problems with my guitar sound uh because the marshalls we had you know i don't know what it was but did it seem like every time i plugged into that the marshall i had back then it sounded different and you know we couldn't it was really hard for us to have consistent guitar sounds or james and i were always just like messing with our sounds and that on that first tour and you know it didn't help that we didn't have cases for any of the amps you know that stuff was just thrown in the back of the u-haul um and and and and so we were constantly having problems but you know it was all a learning experience as well there are two bands stuck into a very small rv us and raven and there are and our crews and so there's about i would say about 12 people in an rv we had a blast on on that that that first tour because we were doing what we we've we had been the goal you know ever since we picked up our instruments you know go on tour make you know make an album go on tour and play music for people who've never never uh experienced us live before and i remember when killamall came out and i thought you know it'd be so wonderful if if it was if it's successful enough for us to like you know do a club tour from coast to coast i thought you know if we can do that then then that's some real success and i thought that you know that would be pretty much the extent of it you know we'd just be a club band playing clubs because that's how we all started and that's where that genre of music was sitting it wasn't that popular all you could do is play shows that were club shows because not a lot of people there well there just wasn't a an audience yet for this kind of music this is limited you know it was a lot of fun and uh i remember um you know just i had to bring my guitar everywhere with me and i always had to have it within like two or three feet of me because i was paranoid of it being stolen and on that right before no right after that the kill mall tour we had an equipment truck stolen with like all our amps all our cabinets and a few guitars but none of the guitars were like you know are serious guitars they're all backup guitars and i was just so thankful that at you know taking the time to to always have my my guitar and my guitar case close to me whatever this situation and actually i'm still like that to this day with that guitar i mean wherever i sleep that guitar is probably in the same room with me and so right the lightning it was um it was a very interesting album we landed in in in copenhagen and uh we were there to record the recording album and uh we had a limited budget and we had uh you know worked out you know only so much time and uh when it looked like we needed to be there longer we worked out a deal with the studio but we didn't have any place to live you know and so we actually ended up living upstairs in like the storage room where they kept all the tapes you know so there would be a pl there'd be a space on the floor and literally three sleeping bags and then shelves of like you know master tapes i say it's three sleeping bags because lars him being from copenhagen always had a place to crash but cliff james and i we were sleeping on the floor but you know the thing the thing with the write the lightning is we were just kind of like we knew we had more time to to explore certain guitar sounds and we knew that having the right drum sound was was key to having a good sounding album i mean all good great sounding albums sound with great drum sounds and we knew that and we knew sweet silence had a reputation for for just it being a great sounding [Music] my studio [Music] [Music] also back then uh studios were a lot uh uh um a lot cheaper to record in uh compared to american studios and you know is copenhagen you know lars's home country blah blah blah we just thought it was a good thing to be you know to be away from the bay area uh but what we did not know is that we were gonna be away for so long and we ended up being away for like five or six months and we all got incredibly homesick i mean incredibly homesick i remember a lot of those those feelings uh that are around the lyrics of fade to black had a lot to do with just feeling homesick um because we were all all just pining fruit home i remember you know being kind of you know depressed wanting to be home came time to do my solos and i remember just like you know i have all this energy but i'm just unlike bummed out at the same time and so i just kind of put all those all those feelings into my guitar guitar solos and and that was therapy cliff he was the only one who actually like you know uh studied um uh uh musical theory in earnest i mean i i i studied studied music music theory but cliff went to school and studied it for like a couple years and so he had a a much firmer grasp of musical theory and harmonies he was really really good at teaching us how to harmonize guitars and whatnot i mean my own my only experience with with harmony guitar is just like thin busy songs and even then you know i'd only play one guitar part you know but but uh but cliff he just who's really into harmonizing everything and he would like come up with bass parts and harmonize the bass parts he played a lot of atari he'd come up with guitar parts and harmonize guitar parts he was just really really into harmony so who's your main influences there cliff main influences yeah geezer butler getty lee stanley clark tony ayami richie blackmore you know like ed king old guitar player for letter skinner he's bad as what i just swore a few times i guess i wasn't supposed to do that and so i remember i was working out guitar solos for right the lightning and i thought i'm gonna harmonize this this piece is solo and i remember thinking okay if i do it myself it's gonna take hours but if i get cliff over here it's gonna take 15 minutes and you know he's just like he said all right write out all the all the notes i was like okay e you know g g sharp b and he go okay e we're gonna go to the fourth which is a okay g we're gonna go to the fifth which is c you know he'd do that kind of thing and just do it all on paper and then he'd say okay then we can get our guitars to see how it sounds you know and nine times out of ten it would sound correct and i would be so blown away and so there was a point during right the lightning that cliff left to go back home and were all so jealous because his parents sent him a ticket and none of us had that kind of resource you know to do that and so there was a time during the lightning sessions was just james lars and myself and i remember james wanted to work out it's not really a harmony it's like a a a alternate part and for whom the bell tolls and uh it's kind of based on harmonies and i remember him and i trying to work it out and we couldn't work it out and him just like being frustrated going i wish cliff was here and but we it took a few days but eventually he worked it out it just goes to show i mean he he he had such a great grasp on on music theory and in his approach to harmonies and everything you know harmonic rubbed off on us a lot and then once he left i remember thinking oh shoots you know we've lost like a a huge like a source of musical knowledge you know and and technique and theory and i remember thinking shoots you know who's going to fill that gap and i remember like just like freaking out and then buying a bunch of music books and just just just brushing up on my own my own musical knowledge and theory and so i mean that that was pretty much uh you know his biggest sort of uh of uh contribution in terms of like you know inspiring us and influence us other than his raw ribs back then we were we had so much energy and a lot of it was just nervous energy you know i remember whenever we would play a big festival like that we'd all be a bit nervous you know and some of us would you know have a couple beers you know to kind of take the edge off but that nervous energy i think contributed a lot to the beats per minute if you came here to see spandex and uh eye makeup and all that and the words rock and roll baby in every song this make the band we came here to pass some heads for 50 minutes are you with us [Music] [Music] [Music] the fact of the matter is that back then we were we all were just we were just all so just energetic naturally we all just had so much energy and we just needed a place to like get it all out and the music was was where we all all came out i remember when we were getting the song master puppets together and i just couldn't believe it i mean it's just everything just kind of flowed into every riff flowed into every other riff and you know the only thing that was a hundred percent realized with that song was the opening riff you know the main riff everything kind of like just came after it like the first parts i had you know this is based off some riffs i had but they weren't exact they didn't sound like that and the pre-chorus part you know before the the chorus is another thing that i had but it didn't sound quite like that um the chorus was something that james had but didn't quite sound like that [Music] so it was when everything came together that riff kind of like set the tone for all these riffs to be changed to be to become that song and so we didn't know that the the finished product was gonna sound like that for that particular song all we had was a riff by the time that that song was done we were like wow this is fantastic much better than any of us thought and that was really consistent from song to song i mean disposable heroes i remember showing up you know we were jamming on it um uh you know the very fast part was a riff i had that we had been jamming on for like months before at least lars and i we we would jam on the fast part you know just just casually but when that song was coming along you know the feeling that it was special started to hit me and i remember i i got a lump in my throat and that lump started showing up on a regular basis every time i'd show up a rehearsal and it came time to to to uh play another song i'd get this lump in my though i was like wow you know i'm i'm physically reacting to this song on a subconscious level that's what that tells me you know because i'm just i'm just working on you know the the logistics of the song but you know something inside of me is is being affected too from an emotional sort of of a a standpoint same thing happened when we were working on sanitarium i was just like lump in my throat again orion was the middle part of sanitarium until it was decided that that it was going to be its own thing and so then orion became its own thing and sanitarium became it became its own thing at one point um we were to paint debating whether sanitarium needed a chorus or lyrics over the chorus part or not of course lyrics came over that chorus most of the material was written there was only a couple songs that were not done by the time we got to sweet silence so that was the thing that should not be um but the basic riffs were there would just need to be finished and also damage incorporated again the basic riffs were there just needed to be finished and those were just finished just really quickly in the studio those two songs went were just when they were done they were done there were there weren't any like major changes or anything like that to it and i could remember thinking with the thing that should not be it was in 1986 hardly anyone tuned down but we wanted to tune down because of sabbath into the void that kind of thing not only did we tune down but we tuned down a half step more than usual which was you know everyone back then or sabbath and only two down to d we tuned down to c-sharp thinking that now we're that much more clever it's going to be that much more heavy it turned out heavy much more heavy i don't know but it turned out pretty pretty pretty heavy [Music] for me that's that's one of the standout tracks the thing that should should not be um i think it's a really really unusual uh type of song and at the time there wasn't very many songs like that in fact you can look at all the songs on master puppets and say there aren't any any songs like this contemporarily right now and i think that's why it became such a successful album is that we presented a palette of colors that no one had ever ever seen before or you know or tasted before and to this day if you're not you're you you're not um you're not hip to like heavy metal culture or you know the sound of heavy metal and you get that album it's like a blueprint for for for you know so many albums to come afterward but you know it's it's such a a unique album and everything everything that that that that we knew at that point all our skills all our knowledge all our creativity all our inspirations our influence were part into that album it was it was great it was really intimidating for me because yeah i held black sabbath at such you know high standards you know it's just like you know to me that at that point black sabbath were the ultimate you know and even to this day you know i still feel that and to be touring with the lead singer of you know the former lead singer of black sabbath was just a huge thing and you know being a huge randy rhodes fan and blizzard boss fan too that that definitely played into it but you know for cliff it really really meant i think more to him than anyone else and all he could talk about the entire time was black sabbath and you know during sound check he was always playing sabbath rips in the hopes that he'd get ozzie's uh attention you know and i remember one time what were you playing maybe hole in the sky or maybe sentence of the universe or something during sound check and all of a sudden you know all this out in front of the stage there's ozzy like big old smiles going yeah yeah yeah and oh my god we just like it was it was amazing for us to like be acknowledged by ozzy during that sound check and i remember looking over at cliff and cliff just had the biggest smile it's just like and he whenever he's happy do the slow motion walk you know he just like do the slow motion walk but um whenever he could he'd always mention black sabbath to ozzie and it would always try to get ozzy to talk about sabbath and ozzy was always like you know happy to talk about sabbath and so cliff and ozzy they had quite a few conversations and there's one time where we were our bus stopped at a truck stop and ozzy's bus stopped at a truck stop and we were told by sharon the entire time uh can't drink around ozzy can't drink you know if you're gonna drink port in a solo cup but don't give them any booze don't be seen drinking around him just like none of that we're like fine sharon and we were we were really good at soul cups you know uh we're really like paying attention to that so we stopped you know both both buses stop at a truck stop and everyone on our bus gets off except for cliff everyone on ozzy's bus gets off instead of ozzie except for ozzy ozzy gets off his bus and walks over to our bus and goes onto our bus and sees cliff and the first thing he says to cliff is got any beer because it's like yes right there help yourself and so after about 20 minutes all of us go on and there's ozzie on our bus and he's drinking now we're like holy what are we gonna do we did not know what to do we were like we were like we're sprinkling he's tweaking what are we gonna do and we had no idea what we were gonna do i remember at one point our tour manager went off the bus went on to ozzy's bus grabbed their tour manager said we're in a real situation here got to get ozzy off our bus and so after about 10 minutes their tour manager came on and said us we're about to leave and i was like oh but i want to ride with them and it sort of matters going aussie we need to ride we need to be together and ozzie left and it was a bit of a situation because we thought that you know that that all that the whole thing that just went down might have gotten us kicked off the tour and you know there are actually a couple situations where we thought we were going to get kicked off the tour but we weren't it was our first arena tour so i mean we and this was like you know a conversation that we would have nightly and go out there and play our asses off as heavy and as hard and as energetic as we could and just just head bang as hard as you can and just like go out there and give it a thousand percent you know because it's our first arena tour we wanted to make a a you know a maximum impact so that was the attitude every single night and you know in retrospect i think i think we pulled it off because i remember seeing an interview with ozzy uh you know like two or three years later and he said yeah when metallica were on tour they blew us off every night i was just going geez i'm seeing this in the magazine going that's you know that's that's quite a lot for something like someone like ozzy to say because i mean my experiences we went out we played as as much as we could and then we get off stage and we watch ozzie's show and ozzy every night looked like he went down like he was like you know master of the universe and for him to think that we put him off stage after him watching him go down every night it really made an impression on me because i could tell that you know he was judging us not on you know audi audience uh standards but on musical standards you know and and and like you know real like like creative standards and you know it really meant a lot to me [Music] iwrtn a nurse yeah midnight medal of course tonight dedicating the entire show to cliff burton of metallica who died early this saturday morning in a tragic auto accident uh the tour bus of metallica going off the road uh during their tour in sweden it was early this saturday morning that it happened uh metallica's minivan or tour bus whatever you want to call it was on way to copenhagen from a gig in sweden and as we have learned the driver of the bus fell asleep and causing the van or tour bus to go off the road james kirk and lars uh had abrasions uh as of now anthrax and metallica are in copenhagen denmark in a hotel together and we're gonna bring you the latest on this tragic incident the last show that we played with cliff was a spectacular show because it was after it was the first show after maybe six or seven weeks that james was finally back on on guitar because he had broken his arm during the aussie tour and his arm had healed enough so that he was actually able to play guitar and it was the first show where we had james back and it was the night that cliff died so everyone cliff james lars and myself we were just so happy that james is back and to have changed his guitar you know fueling everything again you know rather than me and john marshall sharing that duty we played really really well and felt that you know we were back a hundred percent everyone was so inspired and we played that show so well because we had not played like that in four or six weeks or whatever so yeah that that last show was like one of the best shows we had played all year and you know in retrospect i'm glad that that that we you know cliff's last show was special in that regards it really was in in in in all respects on one of the best shows we had played and cliff was very very happy and so knowing that this is just a good thing you know cliff and i we used to uh we used to do a room together so we were super close we were like brothers so we would we'd hang out and like hang out you know arms around each other but literally like ten minutes later we could be arguing and wrestling on the ground you know that's kind of relationship we had total 100 honest you know emotions just out there all the time cliff would say this so much he would say there's power in the truth there's power in the truth there's power in the truth you have to be honest all the time you know you have problems with me i want you to tell me blah blah blah you know and i would tell him you know he would tell me and then he'd like suggest ridiculous things like okay let's wrestle or fisticuffs or you know you know the drinking contest you know or you got to show me this lick you know or or whatever but um there was two weeks where it was it was just like a yo-yo but you know jan burton cliff's mom was there and she was around us a lot as was ray burton and they kept on insisting insisting insisting that we go on and we're like yeah yeah but i mean it really didn't really truly sink in until like maybe about i don't know three weeks or so and we were just kind of like looking at each other going well what's going to happen now we have to keep we have to continue cliff would have wanted us to continue and as a tribute to cliff's memory it was important for us to go on and so those first two weeks it was like it was up and down we had no idea what was going on i mean i was what am i gonna do i was thinking guitar lessons you know the old standby for musicians who can't find you know any gigs or a band you know you get guitar lessons you know the old standby that's what i was actually thinking but but it was the insistence of ray and jan burton that i think really just pushed us in into into the decision to keep on going and then when when jason came into bed it was only like four or five weeks after the accident i mean we were still grieving and you know we're all pretty young too we're in our mid-20s and we didn't really have or at least i didn't have a lot of experience with grieving and and knowing how to deal with that and knowing how to heal and how to move on and so i i hate to say it but you know jason was was became the scapegoat for all those feelings that we just did not know how to process and you know to this day i regret i regret behaving like that and then taking that attitude but i mean you didn't really know better and you know as far as the grieving period is concerned i think i think i think we're all still kind of grieving you know uh cause i get emotional when i think about cliff and when we're together think about cliff you know a lot we i know james and i we get really really emotional um and and so i mean i would say for me you know there's still some grief after all these years you know it's just like after all these years i can still feel that that pain you know in the late 80s uh uh the the music culture kind of like kind of steered itself towards uh you know musical proficiency and how proficient you were with your your your instrument and how virtuosic you can be you know with with your technique and there was a lot of a lot of emphasis on that kind of thing you know and there was a lot of like instrumental albums being put out by a lot of guitar players they're super super um uh successful and uh you know the showy bit of of being in a band was kind of like i think augmented by by things like mtv and and just being able to play your instrument so i think that had a a bit of a of an influence on us in in terms of like uh wanting to show people you know what we could do um and how progressive we can be because after our album like master of puppets you know we thought wow this is this is as technical as it gets you know and at that point in our musicality it was about as technical as we could get but we wanted to show people that we can even go farther and so conceptually that was that was uh what we were thinking you know in the songwriting and you know the riffs they just after touring on the aussie tour and then playing all those headline shows we had started like really like taking advantage of of the fact that you know when you're on tour you're playing is is like you know really really the level of ability is really high you know and playing at 100 and all of a sudden all these risks are coming out you know and we're experiencing that pretty much for the first time writing wrists on tour because it's just this is what happens after a while and so a lot of the riffs that ended up on justice for all riffs are written on master puppets and you know the technicality of of what we were doing in master puppets uh you know wanting to take that further influenced how those risks were written so when it came to a time to to get all all the music together for injustice for all we had a bevy of of rifts that were just that much more thought out and developed and more progressive because you know we had we had the ability to be more progressive so we just took that and ran with it we knew because we had a relationship with mtv we knew when they were planning on playing the video they said yeah we'll play you know twice an hour so six o'clock hours six o'clock we're gonna play it twice an hour hour eight o'clock we're gonna play twice out blah blah blah so we actually knew in advance what was going to come on and i remember okay i can catch it you know i remember watching it and then afterwards the vj said oh man that was depressing okay now on to better things and it's the i thought we have something if that was the reaction of the vj and there's nothing there's no videos like that on mtv at that point that was like the one video with dialogue i thought we're on to something we are on to something here i always knew the song was great but you know you can think a song is great but you know the audience will you know for some reason or another think otherwise um but you know i just knew from the reaction that vj that that uh we had something that was actually hitting people on an emotional level i cannot live you know a lot of times you know we go out there and you know first song creeping death you know play and you know habitually we go come on everyone you know do this sing sing you know well that day we went out there and we're going sing sing the audience interpret that as these the bleachers flood the entire empty uh uh football field in front of the stage and come to the front of the stage and just come come closer to us that's as that's what it was interpreted as but we're just going sing and so like during that song we it was like a damn busted and flowing out like water was just thousands of bodies out into the empty playing field and and and right up right up to the stage there are there were rows of like collapsible chairs that were just sitting there and the audience just mauled them over and and there are people picking up the chairs and throwing them forward which is the only way you can get rid of them which is towards the stage so we're trying to play and all these chairs are like flying and they're hitting people up front and they're landing in in the security uh barrier and the space between and it was like total chaos for like 10 to 15 minutes and at one point we had to stop playing because we were concerned that you know mass hysteria might break out and people might start getting hurt so we sat there on stage and sat down and people just kept on doing stuff and at this point they were throwing anything to get their hands on and then when it subsided we're like right let's get back to playing and we played again and it was fine but for 10 minutes it really looked like the worst sort of mass hysteria and chaos you can ever think of thousands of bodies just just flowing out you know with no no no order whatsoever you know and just filling space it's a scary thing to see but at the same time is incredibly awesome and i never used that word but it was i hung out with george lynch a lot i hung out with with george lynch a lot and um you know him and i would just play guitar but i was mostly just watching him play and you know there was a few times where i would hang out with eddie but eddie was it was funny you know we would talk and i you know i'd want him to like play guitar but he all he wanted to do was talk you know and talk about equipment and you know guitars and stuff and i always wanted to like actually play but he always wanted to just talk which was a little frustrating to me you know for and for me and like the scorpions they're they're uh always were always kind of like you know off to their off to their own and to like you know socialize with them you'd have to like walk into their camp and like hey what's up but you know i liked them so much that it was hard for me to stay away from them and so i was i was always talking to rudolph and and and uh matthias because those guys were like really you know the easiest guys to approach and you know it it was a pretty cool tour i have to say in terms of like guitar players and guitar playing and i watched eddie as much as i could and to this day i still don't understand where he comes up with 90 of his licks because they're like i don't i don't hear any other people playing those licks he's you know he's just creates it all himself he came down to uh to rehearsals uh for the black album and his one one thing was he said to us no one has ever caught the power and energy of you guys live on tape or on vinyl and i thought about it i thought he has a point you know there is yet to be a recorded uh uh uh um a song that captures you know the energy and and and and uh the um uh the uh the urgency that you know it comes with a with seeing us live and that was his goal and you know to a certain extent looking back at the albums that that uh he did do i mean he caught a lot of energy in the studio i mean his whole way of of recording us was so radically different than anything we had ever done and uh you know all of us playing together in the same room to record the drums was a milestone for us because in the past it was just james and you know we we honestly thought that whenever we were all playing together like that in the room that lars always played better and you know that using that recording technique proved that that was the case and so the first time i heard it on the radio i was blown away about how good it sounded you know because like you know one sounded pretty good on the radio it sounded pretty good on on mtv you know even though it's compressed as but the there's something about the black album and all the tracks that just made it leap out of the radio maybe it's because there's so much presence in the drums you know you know the drums are so crisp i you know i don't know but every track that's played on the radio it just like leaps out of the radio there's just so much presence and and to me i mean that's the thing that i keep on going back to is just how good it sounds when i hear it on the radio and you know i i just it never struck me as being a hit song you know none of those songs ever struck me as being hit songs they struck me as being just like really really good concise songs with great great periods of heaviness and great periods of melody and when the album just started you know selling the way it did i could not believe it and i even had a bet i had a bet with our tour manager he said yeah six million it's gonna sell six million by by this date i was like i'll give you my porsche 911 carrera if that happens and guess what it happened and guess what i had to give him my portion i let my career you know for me i think bob he's he's an amazing producer and he's also an amazing engineer and he has an amazing ear for guitar sounds for drum sounds some of the best guitar sounds that i have ever gotten ever in my life i've gotten with bob rock and a lot of it is just like you know chasing tones blending amps you know using certain amps certain pickups certain guitars with certain amps you know various combinations blending amps blending guitars what i like about bob rock is that is that he is into the pursuit you know if he hears something a sound or performance he will pursue that or make you pursue it until he believes you've reached that point and a lot of times it's a lot of frustration you know and you know there's a lot of footage that shows him being just like so frustrated going it's not there yet it's not there yet do it push push do it and he'll he would do anything say anything to just push us to that next level it's like he's gotta eat sleep and breathe this solo until it's done like james put time into nothing songs like these deserve that it doesn't need flash it's not his style he's he's got to put some time into this one he's not going to work on him oh so just let's slap on anything that's what you're saying so what do you suggest [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] he starts up there and then goes down and all the you said right there is great but i don't see it being any less great if it comes in bar two instead of bar one but what i'm saying is build rather than blow your load bring everybody down and then build it up again i'm just saying let's get guttural and build it to a peak because that's why there's the strings and all those changes at the end why can't it start here and go like that yeah that's that's my my school of thought grab him and like take him to this other place and then really take him to a higher plateau man sammy wage go ahead because go ahead and impress me mm-hmm you got his permission do whatever you want kirk you agree with him go for it man come on let's cut the and start cut to the chase and play okay all right man now that you've uh you know warmed up i liked i liked that approach and it was really effective at the time um because you know at that point i i didn't feel like i i just i knew my full potential and bob rock really helped me just like kind of see my own potential over the course of of all the albums that that that we recorded with him bob's really really good at just steering the entire project along and keeping everything in place so nothing like veers too much this way or veers off too much that way he keeps everyone very very focused and and all the all the goals in sight and um you know i i i think he's just a a great great producer it was a three-year tour and we started in 1991 and ended in a in i think the summer of 94. that that tour is very special because i mean when you put out a tour and put in an album you're guaranteed you can go to a markets which is like you know all the usual big cities chicago san francisco l.a new york you know that those those are a markets the bee markets are like um you know oakland uh pasadena you know new jersey uh you know that you know that kind of thing but if your alma's really good then you can hit up the sea markets and because the album's selling and it's a good barometer of who's buying in the these records you know you can go into sea markets and and know that you'll sell tickets because you know the album is doing so well just everywhere you know there's kind of like a built-in audience so we're going to places like you know butte montana valdo lakes you know minnesota places i'd never even heard of and we were showing up and and the shows were selling out the expanse of the black album was was amazing the expanse uh and and the reach of it over the course of the tour is amazing because we were able to get into the nooks and crannies of of of america and play to places that normally you know bands would not go because it wouldn't they had not sold sold records in those areas but we had at that point and so you know it was really important for us and now and then to these days those markets are still very strong metallica markets and it's because we went there during the black album well the pressure is is for me to like you know to not do the same thing twice you know and so every album i try to like not repeat myself um and you know i know you guitar players know what i'm talking about we all have our bag of tricks you know once those once we went been through those bag of tricks or just kind of like staring at the floor going oh now what do i do and i wanted to like be free of that sort of thing and my way out of that is to just fully and completely improvise and just completely work on my improvisation and you know i realized this in the 90s so i started listening to a lot more blues and a lot more jazz and just a lot more improvisational music in general and and you know my so so my whole attitude now is if i improvise and uh just make up stuff right on the spot that's a real real honest way for me to just like really show what i'm feeling and what my my guitar capabilities are in the moment i never know what the heck my guitar souls are going to be on on certain songs live because i leave it open you don't fade to black soul i know that the first seven or eight bars are going to be what i always play but i don't have any idea what i'm going to play after that and there's a lot of songs in metallica set that are now like that that never used to be my point is is that you know being being uh being recognized and getting so much attention from so many other guitar players all over the world yeah i feel the pressure that you know and i feel the expectations of that but i'm not gonna let it affect the outcome of my own musicality i started playing guitar because i have a curiosity real curiosity for music and how music works and i also have you know emotions and feelings in me that even to this day i that need to get out you know what's important is to make music that reflects your inner self and is honestly not anything that that that's that's been done before and that's a it's difficult but you know it's a challenge that i like because i can wake up every day to that challenge you know it gets me out of bed and it gets me to walking over to my instrument and going what can i squeeze out of this out of this thing now that's different that no one else has heard ever before looking back now i've played guitar for over 40 years now it should be way better but but looking back the most important thing is practice and the most important thing is also 100 commitment you really have to play as much as you can and you really have to be really focused on what you want to do for me it's like maybe after like six or seven months of me playing guitar i turned i turned a point where i was like i need this in my life you know this is so important for me i don't think i i don't think that there's anything else that's that's more important you know other than the other things like you know family friends health whatever i don't think there's anything else that's this important to me in my life and i held on to it like a lifeline the greatest thing that happened to me is like i play guitar literally 12 hours a day when i was a kid and i reached you know i reached a point where i was just like i know that i can do something i know i can make um some sort of living out of it whether it's becoming a guitar teacher being in a band you know something i know that you know i can make music a part of my life and i just stuck to it and i kept my eyes and ears open for opportunities and i also learned how to hustle to make work for myself ever since the very beginning you know hey i'm playing with you and i'm playing with you and we're going to perform a band we're going to play shows and make money i've always had a real good sense of of having knowing how to sell the band sell my music and sell my musical abilities if anyone tells you that you can you can be successful with without being a a thousand percent committed and it being a lifestyle they're lying to you it has to be a lifestyle if you know you want to become a guitar player but you have other things in your life that's great but really to really really get where you want to be it's a lifestyle look at all the other successful guitar players in the world it's a lifestyle for them i practice every day people still ask me why why do you practice i'm like are you kidding about 10 years ago something happened and i s something switched and you know i used to get so bored when i was doing tedious things with my guitar you know like showing something so showing someone something or coming or doing like tedious recording or rehearsal whatever but 10 years ago something's shifted and i enjoy everything now i enjoy everything none of it is work none of it is work except for one thing there's one thing about my career that's work and that's the change in my sleeping patterns that is the one thing that just messes with me everything else i embrace wholeheartedly a thousand percent you know whether it's rehearsal the travel the sitting down working out harmonies you know recording you know taking three days to come up with the guitarist sound you know can't finish a song sometimes it takes six months to finish the song you know it's all part of it and i enjoy all of it and you know i constantly uh uh rejoice in the fact that i am staying true to playing guitar rather than working guitar and for me it's such a like it's such a big difference i always you know i'm playing my guitar i'm not working my guitar i'm not struggling my guitar i'm playing my guitar and i'm having a good time and this is play and it just also happens to be you know my life commitment and how i make a living and you know i'd be doing this right now if it you know if i wasn't in metallica and i'd probably be you know i don't know like i said a guitar teacher or something you know but i would definitely have the same commitments because for me it's just like guitar playing helps me so much it saved my life it calms down this thing that's inside of me and it gives me focus and it gives me some reason to like get up out of bed i don't i hope this doesn't sound too far far-fetched or or or or whimsical but you know classical music has survived six 700 years um even longer but they can't really document it um you know i really believe that that that uh that heavy metal will probably outlast this century and maybe you know outlast to us and i don't know what the world's going to be like in the future but you know as long as there's a need for aggressive energetic music that's you know somewhat therapeutic you know i think that that there will be musicologists in in the future they're going to find our music and you know and and you know find some merit and quality in it you know and that's that's huge [Music] you

Channel: Gibson TV

Views: 908,408

Rating: 4.9392333 out of 5

Keywords: Gibson, Gibson 2020, Gibson TV, Metallica 2020, Kirk Hammett 2020, Kirk Hammett Interview, Lars Ulrich Interview, James Hetfield Interview, Metallica Interview, Kirk Hammett Greeny, Kill em all, Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, Gibson Icons, And Justice for All, Rolling Stone, Metallica Black Album, Normans Rare Guitars, Troglys, Andertons, Exodus, Guitar of the Day, Music is Win, Paul Davids, Metallica Interview 2020, Kirk Hammett Gibson, Loudwire, Heavy Metal, Reverb

Id: bPy8YyUgxyA

Length: 80min 7sec (4807 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Jeezer88]

Anyone knows which concert creeping death at 36:00 is from?

[u/GhostFaceDrummer]

This was a great video man -- just posted a drum cover of Spit Out The Bone for Christmas! Hope you can check it out -- https://youtu.be/9MSOv7KwvaU