Kirk Hammett
A flash of inspiration from guitarist Kirk Hammett was the key to the reinvention of Metallica on The Black Album. Now, on the 30th anniversary of its release, he tells the story of the album’s creation
It was one simple riff that set the tone for the biggest album of Metallica’s career, and it came not from James Hetfield, the band’s rhythm guitarist and riff-maker-inchief, but from lead guitarist Kirk Hammett. The riff came to him during a tour in 1989, as he sat alone in a hotel room. And as he recalls that moment to TG, all of 32 years later, he acknowledges a debt to one of the bands that defined a new form of heavy rock at the exact same time that Metallica rose to superstar status.
“Back in ’89 I’d just discovered this new musical movement coming out of the Seattle area,” Kirk says. “I was listening to a lot of Soundgarden. I was pretty impressed with the rawness of their sound and how heavy it felt. And one thing we spoke about as a band was how much we all like bouncy riffs. So I was just sitting there with my guitar at three o’clock in the morning, thinking: ‘Soundgarden, bounce, flattened fifths...’ Almost simulating my mind to those sounds. And then this riff came out, and I thought, ‘Whoah, that works!’”
Let’s start in 1990 and where your heads were at going into The Black Album after ...And justice for all.
We’d come off that album and our mantra afterwards was very much: ‘Let’s not make another album like Justice!’ We wanted to start writing shorter songs, and that was a reaction to playing the songs from Justice, which were long and had all those changes. You have to understand that when that album came out and we went on tour, we were playing to an audience who hadn’t really digested the album, and we were seeing yawns, people looking up at the rafters or at their watches... It was a good thing we had pyro at the end of the songs to wake everyone up and bring them back around! So after seeing the reaction to that – the general progressive nature of the album - we wanted to put out something on the other side of the coin.
From this riff, a classic was created. Enter Sandman was, in every sense, the pivotal song on Metallica’s fifth album, officially titled Metallica but more commonly known as The Black Album. It was the opening song on the album, the first single, and most important of all, it defined a new direction for the band when they most needed it.
By the end of the 80s, the kings of thrash metal had outgrown the genre they had done so much to create, and it was Enter Sandman that unlocked their future.
As drummer Lars Ulrich explained: “With the first four Metallica albums, it was a journey that sort of got more and more progressive, more and more crazy and kooky and long-winded. With the fourth album [1988’s ...And Justice For All] it’s like we hit a wall. So when we got together to write the next batch of songs, the mission statement was: simplify. And the first song we wrote, onday one, was Enter Sandman.”
Metallica’s choice of producer for The Black Album was a shock to the band’s diehard fans, for Bob Rock had made his name working for hair metal stars Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi. But he proved a perfect fit for Metallica, and after an eight-month stint
And so, as you said, the focus was on shorter, simpler songs…
Yeah. A song like Battery [from 1986’s Master Of Puppets] has a gallop to it, and Blackened [from ... And Justice For All] has the open chords in the bridge. They’re good examples of bouncy riffs. So we were all trying to write bouncy stuff. The one riff that was around, that we were jamming on because it was fully realised, was the riff to Sad But True. There’s a heavy bounce to it.
And, of course, there was your riff for Entersandman...
I really wanted to find my ultimate bouncy, heavy riff. That was kind of the impetus for Sandman. And even though I kinda accomplished it to a certain extent, I’m still trying to find the ultimate catchy heavy riff, like [Deep Purple’s] Smoke On The Water. That riff is so powerful. There’s something about the silence you hear before it comes in... at One By One studios in Los Angeles, a masterpiece was completed - the measured power in Enter Sandman and
Sad But True contrasting with thrash throwbacks such as Holier Than Thou and the classic rock feel in The Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters.
Released in August 1991, The Black Album would become one of the highest-selling albums of all-time, transcending heavy metal and earning its place in mainstream popularity alongside the likes of Michael Jackson and The Beatles.
On its 30th anniversary, the man whose riff started it allhas plenty to say about the making of this legendary album. But first, Kirk Hammett reveals how, in the last two years, a certain magazine has helped him develop those flattened fifths that served him so well for Enter Sandman...
“I’ve always enjoyed Total Guitar,” he says, “but my appreciation for your magazine has really grown since the lockdowns. I’ve had a lot of time to go through all my issues and there’s so much great stuff in there. I’ve been learning how to use the flattened fifth as a substitution for seventh chords, and I love sh*t like that!”
“PLAYING MUSIC IS ABOUT MOVING PEOPLE
PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, EMOTIONALLY…”
Have you ever noticed that? You put the track on there’s two or three seconds of silence before it comes in. That silence makes the riff so ominous to me, in the weirdest way. And yet when that riff comes in, you’re there instantly. Within a tenth of a second, you’re already in – moving your head, your body feels it and gets into the motion. It’s so instantaneous. It’s like crack! It’s audio smack! I don’t know how else to put it. When you write a riff like that, it’s the ultimate. You know you’ll get people dancing, moving, energised and inspired... So many things. For me, playing music is about what I hear but also moving people physically, mentally,. emotionally. I like the idea of writing riffs that connect with people on a different level. And it means more to me now than ever before, going into my fortieth year of being a musician. I look at my instrument and think, ‘F*ck, man, there’s still so much I need to
“I HAVE A STRONG KNOWLEDGE OF SCALES AND MODES. KNOWING YOUR THEORY DEFINITELY HELPS!”
learn and do!’ There’s so much I have yet to accomplish. But, you know, writing Enter Sandman allowed me to pursue other things in the light of it. And thank god!
When did you realise that this song was something really special?
Well, it was written pretty much exactly as everyone knows it. I put it down on a demo tape and five or six weeks later we all got together and started trading riff tapes. I went over to Lars’ place and he said, ‘There’s a riff on this tape that’s f*cking great!’ He played it to me and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that one!’ And then he told me to start playing it, so I picked up my guitar. He really liked the opening part so asked me to repeat it before getting to the next bit, which is how that all came about.
Talk us through the main gear used on the album. From what we’ve seen on the documentary A year and A half in the life of metallica, you were mainly using your black ESP guitars, plus a blonde Gibson ES-295 and a black Les Paul Custom through various Marshalls and Mesa/boogies...
For Enter Sandman, it was mostly my black Skully ESP. Actually I used it for the entire song. I had that Gibson ES-295 that I did a few overdubs with here and there. I also used my Jackson occasionally. There was a blonde 1961 Strat for some of the clean parts in The Unforgiven. I think I used that Skully ESP for most of the guitar solos, if not all of them. I might have broken out my Gibson Flying V here and there. At one point my spider ESP showed up so I used it for one of the last things I recorded during the sessions, which was the solo for So What! [a cover of the Anti-nowhere League’s punk classic, which became the b-side to the Sad But True single]. That took like 45 minutes. I was really happy about that!
What about amps?
This was at a time when we were all focusing on the EMG and active pickup sound. I remember we had a bunch of amps in mind. We had the Jose-modded Marshall, plus Mesa/boogies. We stopped using the ADA preamps that I’d been using up to that point. We also had a Matchless in there, plus a Wizard, and this was for all the lead stuff. I believe there was a Fender Vibroverb in the mix as well. And they were all combined. I don’t think it was as many amps as James had for this rhythm sound! We had a pretty big combination of stuff, and it was mostly Bob Rock’s amps except for the Boogie ones and the Vibroverb, which was mine. I remember getting a Matchless amp right after the recordings because I liked the sound so much.
And you generally stuck with a Tube Screamer for extra drive.
Yeah, there was always a Tube Screamer somewhere in there. I know at one point we were using a lot of different gain and distortion pedals. We were messing with the Tone Bender but it didn’t sound good at all. I had my standard Cry Baby wah. I think for the solo on The Unforgiven we used a real Echoplex, which added the slapback on that part. At one point we talked about using a sitar for one of the solos in Wherever I May Roam, but we got rid of that right away because we couldn’t get a good distorted lead sound out of that sitar. Once I got my lead sound, I just went with it. We didn’t change it too much. On previous albums I might have switched different wah pedals or guitars. I didn’t do it that much on The Black Album. I really stuck to that ESP for my solos, and maybe
I did Sad But True with a Jackson...
Sadbuttrue has quite a deceptive riff that’s a lot harder to replicate in feel because of its behind-the
beat drag...
You have to be so behind the beat. Because if you’re in front, you’ll lose the whole groove and power of it. And yes, it’s a riff that sounds easier than it is. There are little things you have to get right and the drag is one of the most important. The same goes for the bit where we hang on one note and bend just before the verses. And, to be honest, we haven’t used that technique much since – we generally play fast...
Holier than thou has some frenetic triplet rhythms. What’s the secret to getting those thrashy rhythms so tight?
The trick to getting those triplets right is really just sitting down and repeating those up-down-ups, starting slow and then getting quicker. Or you could look at them more like a fast gallop. Or, if you want, you could just play along to Whiplash (from Metallica’s debut album Kill ’Em All). One of the exercises Joe Satriani showed me when I started taking lessons was double and triple picking on open strings, as well as tremolo picking... And that’s Whiplash, right there! I would do that across all six strings and back. It was a really good exercise. Later on, I started looking into other exercises I could do to improve my wrist picking and found out that one is pretty much the best one you can use. It improves the velocity of your picking on one string. Then you can break it up into triplets, quarter notes, all sorts of stuff. I’ll usually pick the most difficult single-string chug and use that to warm up before we goon stage... And, you know, it works! There are some rhythms or riffs that you might feel you can’t play, but after a couple of weeks or months you can play them in your sleep. You absorb them and they become a part of you, if you practise enough.
Don’t tread on me has a very grand opening symphony, almost reminiscent of bands like Queen.
That all goes back to our love of harmonised guitars. Brian May did it in such a cool fashion. Thin Lizzy harmonised the hell out of everything. Then there’s Judas Priest. We always loved the sound of that. It can add a different sort of mood or colour, and felt appropriate for this intro.
The god that failed is very Thin Lizzy at points.
The way the chords modulate in the chorus is really cool. There’s a lot of movement in there, but it never loses momentum. Instead, the power carries through. The guitar solo I played was basically the first riff and then variations of it. I’m basically repeating the riff over and over again but changing it each time. I knew what I wanted to play, I heard it in my head and sang it. Then I sat down with my guitar and worked it out.
Through the never has some of the album’s finest riffs, particularly the one three minutes in as James sings “On through the never!”
That middle part had been around for a while, before the song came about. It was one I would play here and there, warming up for shows. And when I showed it to those guys they were like, ‘Great, this is f*cking heavy!’ But when James put on those gang vocals it brought it up to the next level. And I one hundred per cent agree with you - the riff is heavy, but when the vocals come in it all gets even heavier. The intro riff is another thing that had been around for a while on one of my riff tapes.
It was me trying to be fast and heavy... Like Slayer! Hey, I love Slayer, what can I say? They’re the greatest. Kerry King has such a smooth technique when he plays. He can move from super heavy to super fast to totally jagged, and he does it effortlessly and fluidly. Kerry doesn’t get enough credit as a rhythm guitar player. He’s a great rhythm player and a great lead guitarist, too. He’s always aggressive and I love consistency.
My friend of misery is the longest track on the record, similar to the Master of puppets era in ways.
Well, it was originally going to be an instrumental and then management told us it was too good to be just instrumental. The vocals were added as an afterthought. So I guess that’s why it might feel reminiscent of Puppets.
As far as opening gambits go, the stabs that initiate Of wolf and man are quite a musical statement.
The main riff after the stabs is one that I came up with on the Justice tour. The interesting thing was I played it backwards... Or we’re playing it backwards now! It started with the higher bit on the fifth fret of the E and A strings and then went down to the first fret and open chords. Lars heard it the other way round. In hindsight, it was a good idea because we could use the open E chord stabs to ramp up into that main riff.
Nothing else matters has some beautifully layered acoustic parts. What exactly are we hearing?
I think James played all the acoustic stuff on that track. We rented some acoustics, and there might have been a Martin in there. We didn’t have as much gear back then, but nowadays we have enough for twenty bands! Bob Rock had so much, and then there was this whole multitude of stuff we ended up renting – from compressors and preamps to acoustics and amps, like Marshall JCM. I know the JCM played a large part in the recording of Nothing Else Matters and it was our first time using one in the studio.
You ended up using some real choice notes for your solo in The-unforgiven – which, as evidenced by the documentary, was perhaps challenging at points.
It wasn’t happening and then Bob Rock accused me of not doing my homework. I don’t know what he was talking about, because I arrived into the studio with all these ideas, but they just didn’t work! I had to throw them all out. I was bare naked with no idea what to do. Bob told me he would try to tweak the sound for me and when he did that it really helped. They said, ‘Just play!’ and I was like, ‘Arrrgh!’ I had maybe a minute to put myself into a real mood. I just needed to block everything out and go deep emotionally. We hit record and I didn’t know what the f*ck to play but something was going to come out... Something always does. And that’s what came out. The cameras caught
a large portion of what ended up on the record, which is a pretty cool thing looking back at it. But that solo was raw emotion. I had no idea what to do, it all came to me as I played – real improvisation. I was so happy after that, really excited and inspired. I knew I needed to do more of it and ever since that moment, I’ve worked on being better at improvisation and completing music thoughts that are very much listenable. Forming complete solos naturally, if you know what I mean. For The Black Album, I came in with eighty per cent of the stuff worked out and twenty per cent was improvised, including The Unforgiven solo. Nowadays I prefer to have it the opposite way, with twenty per cent worked out and eighty per cent improvised, because it’s more exciting, more spontaneous and honest. I don’t know what’s going to be on the album as much as anyone else! It feels right doing it like that, it feels better – rather than composing something and making it fit, sometimes forcing things where they might not feel right. Pure improvisation is more real and human.
The big harmonised bends at the end of The unforgiven also add greatly to its overall symphonic weight.
Now I think about it, I remember wanting to double those parts in the studio. It’s been so long, it’s hard to remember.
You used the Phrygian Dominant mode of the harmonic minor scale for parts of the Wherever i may Roam solo, really capitalising on its exotic feel.
Yeah, I used some Phrygian Dominant in that. What I always do when I get to where the solo is look at the rhythm chords. You need to look at the notes in the riff and apply the necessary scale. Find the one with the most amount of notes that the chords do and co-ordinate them. In this case, it was a lot of Phrygian and Phrygian Dominant. I’m more inclined to use harmonic minor these days than the straight major scale modes because I feel you can get away with more! I recently played with Kamasi Washington, he covered My Friend Of Misery. The tonality of the chords during my solo worked well for harmonic minor because it had some similar chromatic notes. When I played pentatonics over that bit, it sounded in but it didn’t really jive in the same way as it did modally. I tried harmonic minor and I was in. I tried harmonic minor with even more chromatics and I was even more in. Which is how I came up with the solo for Wherever I May Roam, looking at the chords in the riff and what kind of scales they’re suggesting. The whole song is in Phrygian when you look at it. So Phrygian Dominant would definitely work! I have a strong knowledge of scales and modes, if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to reach the same melodic conclusions. Knowing your theory definitely helps!
And it’s interesting how you have continued to use the trusty pentatonic scale as your launchpad for other tonalities, mixing in seconds, sixths and beyond...
The trick is to add notes when you want to. I might play in E minor pentatonic and then add in a C sharp, and suddenly I’m in Dorian. Then I might go back to the pentatonic and go down to the seventh fret and use the E minor shapes there. Then
I might go up two frets and find a relative minor there [Editor’s note: the C# Locrian mode here would mirror E Dorian]. I just add notes when I feel like it. Sometimes people might not notice this – I think you’re the very first person to actually point it out
– but I might go from pentatonic to modal for just three or four seconds before going back. I love the pentatonic sound because that’s what I grew up on. Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix... That’s the sound, man. For me it’s not about the completely modal thing, like Eric Johnson or those kinds of players.
I still love modal stuff and the European sound of it, so I tend to write melodies and compose using modes but when I’m improvising it’s about pentatonics and chromaticism. Those are the notes I like to play.
“THIN LIZZY HARMONISED THE HELL OUT OF EVERYTHING, AND WE ALWAYS
LOVED THE SOUND OF THAT”