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
A good horror movie should have peaks and valleys, a good horror movie should move you emotionally; a good horror movie should be exciting to watch and energizing in a weird kind of way.
There's something about a wah pedal that really gets my gut going! People will probably say, 'He's just hiding behind the wah.' But that isn't the case. It's just that those frequencies really bring out a lot of aggression in my approach.
For 'Death Magnetic,' I used what I always use, which is my standard touring rack, which is filled with some Boogie stuff and a Marshall that I've had forever.
When I see my kids totally into their Legos, it brings me back to the days I was hanging out and playing with my monster models. It brings me there in a second.
On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.
When people are confronted with something they've never seen before, they really don't know how to react.
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.