Kirk Hammett
Kirk Hammett
Kirk Lee Hammettis the lead guitarist and songwriter for the heavy metal band Metallica and has been a member of the band since 1983. Before joining Metallica he formed and named the band Exodus. In 2003, Hammett was ranked 11th on Rolling Stone's list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In 2009, Hammett was ranked number 15 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth18 November 1962
CountryUnited States of America
I fix things all the time. Every time I do a solo, I re-check it and correct things that don't hit the mark.
One thing I've noticed over the years is that young players - I mean 10- and 12-year-olds - really like my guitar style. There's something in my guitar style that they totally can latch onto and learn quickly, and then go from there to your Yngwie Malmsteens or your Steve Vais or whatever.
Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole.
I've learned that there's a signature Metallica sound, and if we stray too far from that, our fans get impatient, or they just don't understand, or they miss the point. And I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing; it's just something we have to contend with.
One of my favorite horror films of the Nineties was 'Event Horizon.'
I'm death obsessed. You know, I have death all over my house. I have a stuffed two headed sheep!
Getting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, 'Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies' has probably played out in a lot of people's discovery of horror.
Horror movies started to wane around the onset of World War II, and after World War II, when all the troops came home, people weren't really interested in seeing horror movies, because they had the real horror right on their front doorsteps.
Jeff Beck is one of my heroes and has been since I first picked up a guitar.
I'm not into that whole Satanic thing. It's just something to fall back on if you don't have much imagination. Singing you fiftieth song about having lunch with Satan--I'm not into it. It's silly.
The main riff for 'SandMan' was just something I wrote one night.
Much of my playing is rhythmic and choppy; I use a lot of double stops. The wah just accents all those stops and chops and brings out the rhythmic aspect that much more.
I was really, really wild in my early twenties and a bit self-destructive.
I'm very fortunate to be doing the thing I do best, which is play guitar. There aren't many other things I could do.