What a beautiful book.
It reminded me how much I enjoy looking at pictures of guitars.
[Laughs] Me too.
Kirk Hammett goes deep on his whole career in our new interview.The Collection: Kirk Hammett/Gibson Publishing*
And the primary audience is people who just have a passion for great vintage, rare, unique guitars.
For me, Ive always been a collector.
Cause those are the things that will always retain value and hopefully go up in value.
That was the same attitude when it came to guitars.
And then the quest grows.
Thats a result of going out on tour and needing certain guitars for that particular tour.
And then after that tour is over, those guitars go into cases and we dont use them again.
Both James and I have countless numbers of guitars like that.
Youve mentioned that it actually changes the way you play.
How does that work?Well, I want to hear the tone.
Cause shesings,man.
There are very few guitars that actually do that.
It has frequencies that just come through every single time.
Its an amazing guitar.
It was iconic before I even got it.
The sound of it is so unique.
Other high-profile players had the opportunity to buy Greeny but passed.
Two of those guys would be Joe Bonamassa and James Hetfield.
So it feels like Greeny was just waiting for me, bro.
I cant get enough of it, bro.
I play that thing all the freaking time.
I bring her everywhere with me, everywhere, bro.
Where I sleep, Greenys not that far away.
But were both at points in our collection.
We have so much good stuff, we kinda stay in our own lanes.
Once he found out it was at that store, he literally just called me first.
I was so stoked.
Its rare because in the horror-movie poster world, cutthroat.
I see people taking second, third mortgages out on their house to buy movie posters.
And maybe its like that in the guitar world.
And I get it, theyre businessmen.
But man, it just goes back to my other thing.
Thats the key in of deal that I love, man and I look for.
That photo of you in the book playing guitar on the Great Wall of China is wild.
Cause he was the guy who had to haul that stuff up there.
And its a walk, man.
And then you start walking and theres countless steps and inclines, declines.
God bless my security guy.
He had to carry a guitar and an amp [laughs].
The pollution was particularly bad that day.
Nope, this is not gonna do it.
Ah, this part?
And by the end of it, bro, theyre just cursing my name.
Of course, from my youth.
Its what we always do when we get together and jam.
Fucking jam on Seventies hard rock and new wave of British heavy-metal stuff.
It just never fails.
People walk in going, What is this stuff?
What do you play?
Hes part of a wave of producers who are genuine rock fans at heart.Like that guy in Sweden.
Max Martin.I met him, I was just, he looks like a Swedish metal guy.
Chappell Roans Pink Pony Club has a full guitar-solo section.
Guitar is popular and then guitar is not popular.
In 1979, 1980, everyone was saying heavy metal is dead.
And heavy metal hadnt even fully blossomed yet!
Theyre not listening to the same stuff we are.
Because it was a really exciting time.
Anyone who said to me, Heavy metal is dead, Id say, No.
But people were just kind of sick of all the guitar stuff.
And so all these synths came in, right?
Now, its the same cycle, I believe.
But instead of just synths you have samples.
You have whole songs that are created digitally.
You also have like five or six writers on one song, which is mind-boggling to me.
I mean, to answer your question, bro, I think I fucking strayed so far.
But I think it just follows trends.
It truly follows trends, and to say that something is dead, will never come back.
I think thats just a dangerous statement to say overall when youre talking about art of any kind.
I find it fascinating that you were listening to earlySoundgardenwhen you wrote the Enter Sandman riff.
That helps explain why theBlack Albumsomehow fit alongside the grunge explosion when it came out in 1991.
You guys were already tapped into those sounds.Oh, yeah.
I remember getting the first Sub Pop singles in, like, 1987, bro.
I mean, its tons of stuff.
I was listening to a lot of it and James was listening to a lot of it.
And all of a sudden I knew things were happening.
Then all those albums started coming out, and then we were full on in the grunge era.
I had no problem with the grunge.
I freaking loved it, to be honest.
I fucking thought it was the greatest fucking thing.
He loved Ride the Lightning, too.
Kurt was a great guy.
you’re able to tell that he was shy.
He was more the observer than the participator.
I smoked and drank with him quite a bit back in the day.
I remember getting an early copy ofNevermind.And then seeing them at the Palladium in L.A.
I came backstage and I said, Kurt.Nevermind,its gonna be huge.
He goes, No, its not.
I go, Yes, it is.
And then I told Krist Novoselic.
I said, Bro, this albums gonna be huge.
He goes, Think so?
I go, I know so.
Its gonna be huge, man.
Theyre like, Man, nah.
They came out there and just fucking played their asses off.
Some people loved that.
I just saw the difference, dont have much opinion over it, but I saw the change.
And really just loving the support.
Cause he wasnt that kind of person.
The drum sound is amazing.
Youre like, Yeah, turn it up even more, because its so easy to listen to.
Its probably our best-sounding album, hands down.
And we put so much work into it to double-check it sounded good, bro.
We hit the mark.
Sometimes you hit the mark, sometimes you miss the mark.
And missing the mark is important.
So try another approach and just be totally honest about it, and hopefully it works.
Your approach to soloing on the Black Album marked a real evolution in your playing.
It felt like the solos were writing themselves.
It was a remarkable sort of thing.
Like, I didnt know what to do for Unforgiven.
All our ballads were the opposite, light verses and heavy chorus it was totally inverted.
And it took being spontaneous to put down the solo that works.
And Ive found over the years that usually thats the best stuff.
The stuff I dont think about is usually the best stuff because it just comes to me.
Thats how I come up with everything these days, bro.
I just sit there with my guitar and see what happens.
I refuse to work hard on anything.
I dont want it.
I failed algebra two years in a row.
Im not gonna fucking wanna do algebra when it comes to music.
And inevitably something comes, and its a beautiful thing.
And I feel so blessed and lucky that this is happening.
Cause Im 62 fucking years old.
And I havent reached the top of the mountain yet.
Havent reached the top, the capstone of the pyramid.
Still going up, man.
Still feel like Im improving.
Word is you had something like 700 riffs stockpiled for the last album.Oh, its ridiculous, bro.
Let me see how many riffs I have at this point.
Going over to my phone.
And this is 767 new ones for the next album?New ones, bro!
It is such a nightmare going through this stuff, too.
It is such a fuck.
I cant do it.
And Im the one responsible for all of it and I cant do it.
Sometimes the band asks you to pare those down, right?
And he doesnt mind taking on a task like that.
And I just shake my head and I say, God bless you, man.
Theres a reason why youre so much my bro.
Because its just a lot of material to go through.
So right now, Im just actively getting ideas together for my [first] solo album.
Im, like, going, OK, I guess this is what it is.
Its a fusion of different styles and its gonna be a full-length album.
So Im like, OK, whos gonna be doing the vocals?
I hope I am not, I already have too much to do onstage.
Its interesting because I started to learn how to read ancient Greek.
Ive been obsessed with a lot of ancient-Greek texts, Pythagoras hes the father of fucking musical theory.
And Dionysus and Apollo, they just showed up playing these things.
Theres so much reference to music in the ancient text in regards to ritual and magic.
And its so interesting to me because I see parallels.
The Greeks used to use music to augment their rituals, their secret rites.
And music was so highly regarded back then.
You have the ability to change the situation in the room by playing music.
When people hear certain types of music, theyre transformed.
If you dont think thats magic, what is it?
Come on, gimme a break.
Its more than that.
And so I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like this.
Im gonna try and finish it by the end of this year.
And because Ive been reading all these ancient-Greek texts, theyve influenced the music.
The muse whispers music into my ear every single fucking day.
I need to act on it or else itll stop.
And thats kind of where Im at these days.
All I can really do is say thank you to whoever.
Cause it doesnt even feel like that, honestly does not feel like it.
Im just fucking passing something along that always existed.
Im having problems wrapping my head around it because I need to understand things.
Im a seeker of knowledge, so I need to understand things, and this I cant fully understand.
So Im looking to other ways to explain it, and its living somewhere in the unseen.
And people are gonna think Im crazy, but you know what?
Ill just play you the fucking music and you guys figure it out, because I cant.
Well, The Unseen is sitting right there as a song title.Yeah!
Actually, you know how I see that.
I see music as an invisible temple.
And youre in this temple listening and experiencing it.
I dont have any answers that sound logical.
Thats when we all step up.
I dont foresee that happening for at least another year.
Hopefully, thats what I see.
But in Metallica, any fucking thing can happen.
I mean, Covid really just frigging surprised the hell out of us and threw our whole cycle off.
But we managed to get our heads together and figure out a way to work during Covid.
Its not ideal, man.
I wanna feel that kick drum in my gut.
But you cant get that through Zoom.
But still, we managed to fucking focus and be as precise as we could on the circumstances.
And we made what I think is a pretty decent album.
Id actually love to hear you guys revisit some of those Nineties sounds on a future album.Who knows?
We might just say, OK, lets go back to the Nineties again.
Its not a bad idea.
We havent said that to each other yet.
It was, like, too much change.
We changed our appearance, we changed our sound, we changed the way we recorded.
Its interesting, cause nowadays I run into fans and they love that era.
But nowadays we play Fuel and people go nuts.
We play Until It Sleeps and people fucking know every fucking word.
Cause thats what I liked when I was a kid.
But over time I really came to embraceZeppelin IIIand how wonderful it is.
And now I fucking fully understand it and its place in Zeppelins catalog.
So I cut my hair so I looked better when I wore a suit jacket.
I swear to God.
That was one of the only reasons.
There wasnt like any freaking huge thing.
So James saw that Lars and I cut our hair and he fucking went for it.
It just seemed like a kind of nice change.
And Jason Newsted already had short hair by that point.
The Memory Remains, fromReload,is a great song that featured Marianne Faithfull, who recently left us.
Any memories stand out?Lars and I, we loved Marianne and we would hang out with her.
And one time Lars and I went out to dinner with her and Anita Pallenberg.
And, boy, what a dinner that was.
And the stories we heard!
Anita and Marianne really liked hanging with Lars and I, because we kept up with them.
Every fucking drink, every line, everything.
We did a lot of drugs that night.
And then Marianne, man, amazing.
She never slowed down.
Theres a definite resemblance in the hook.Wow!
You know, I dont know.
Cause James wrote that melody.
But you have a point there.
I love that song, man.
Speaking of unfairly maligned Metallica works, Ive always felt thatLulugot a completely undeserved bad rap.
I think people would be raving about it.You know, I think youre correct in making that statement.
You know, what happened was we always said, This is not a Metallica album.
We always said that from the very beginning.
This is a new thing with Lou Reed.
Were a new entity.
Its not Metallica, its not Lou Reed.
The lyrics are amazing.
Im a huge Lou Reed fan.
To be able to hang out with him and work with him musically meant so much.
And the track Junior Dad.
I cant listen to it, man.
Brings me to tears.
And he played it for James and I. I was like, Fuck Lou.
Yeah, you got me.
And you got him too.
I was like, What?
And he goes, No guitar solos.
And he went up to the mic and said, No belly-dancing music.
Oh, my God.
I guess it wouldnt have helped to point out that you personally helped popularize the Phrygian-dominant sound in metal.Exactly.
Cause I hear one, I put it on.
Everyones like, What are you gonna tell Lou?
And I was so nervous about sending it.
And so I sent it and then I see Lou later on that day.
I see Lou the next day, nothing.
And he said its OK. And that was it.
And the solo was on the album.
Well, its funny, cause he had a band with Mick Ronson and let him solo for hours.
So, hey, hes Lou Reed, he can fucking think whatever the fuck he wants to think.
Im not gonna push him or challenge him on any of that.
If he didnt like guitar solos, fine.
Fans have been trying to catalog which riffs in Metallica songs youve written.
These lists are floating around online….Always wrong, too!
Its literally a crowd of riffs and people trying to fucking randomly pick out which ones I wrote.
That album is chock-full of riffs.
And a lot of those riffs just came out of my stockpiles of, like, 400 riffs.
But that was a time when Rob took those riff tapes and went through em all.
And when he was always playing stuff to me, I would say, Thats my riff?
Hed say, Yeah.
I think thats one of the freaking heaviest things ever.
And Im still trying to write a riff that even touches the glory of that riff.
Or just steal that feel!
Steal the fire, man.
Im a big, big advocate of ripping ourselves off.
And Ive seen in the past other bands just rip themselves off.
So I think weve earned the right to reuse one or two of these techniques.
We never blatantly ever repeat ourselves note for note, but well do something like something else.
The Rolling Stones just became first band to make a hard-hitting rock album in their eighties.
I think were all pretty healthy and pretty fit.
And sometimes I freaking forget how old I am.
Cause I dont feel like Im 62 years old.
Im still able to freaking do everything.
If anything, things are ramping up around me.
And I know that Im not the only band member that feels this way.
Lars is in really great shape too.
As long as we have our health and our mind, I think we can just keep on going.
And Rob Trujillos in excellent health too.
And Rob doesnt even have gray hair, you know?
How amazing is that?
I feel like Im still in my late-thirties, and I just have no plans to give up anything.
Cause this is my life.
I work, I play guitar every single fucking day.
I have a guitar on right now.
Im OCD and I cant help it, but I still love what Im doing.
I just love music.
I can remember as a toddler hearing bossa nova music.
Jazz music, Broadway, classical music.
I can remember songs that I would hear when I was five or six years old.
I know the Beatles songs, I know the Hendrix songs I heard back then.
Theres a frigging jukebox in my head.
I can write and compose without a guitar, just by visualizing and hearing things in my head.
It almost feels like it feels paranormal, and it all feels so familiar.
Why is that?Everything seems so familiar.
The act of playing music seems so natural and so familiar.
And the effects of music on other people.
And man, that gift of inspiration is hard and heavy.
And when Im inspired, nothing can stop me until Ive played out that inspiration.
I dont like my celebrity.
I have a real hard time balancing it all.
Cause I want to be inspiring, but then I dont want a lot of the attention.
Cause thats what I feel like is what Im here to do.
And everything that comes in the wake of that is just gravy.
But I have no expectations.
I have no financial expectations.
Im not looking for status.
Whats your take on that?I love that.
But you know, is he gonna call Eddie Van Halen a boomer guitar player?
You know, I really like his style.
Its really unique, and in terms of technique, its amazing.
But then, its the age-old question: How relatable is it?
Its good to listen to, like, three or four times.
Can you really relate?
Sometimes people just wanna listen to music and not feel challenged.
Sometimes people just want to feel raw emotion.
Is he hitting on raw emotion?
Well, its only accessible to people who like that, or can understand that.
Yeah, its amazing playing.
And Polyphia, theyre great at what theyre doing.
And once you understand the breadth of it, its huge.
Or fucking Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Or maybe put on the Misfits or something.
Whats the story there?Bro, I love that episode.
And it just is so hilarious because its shot in Malibu, right?
So just had to put that scene of him with a surfboard on a guitar.
And a lot of people want me to put that out as a mass-produced guitar.
