Looking back through the lens of the past 30 years, how has your view of the Ride the Lightning era changed? Today, Ride the Lightning ranks as a classic album in the metal genre.
With the die-hard metal underground already in their corner and their new backers poised to launch them out to mainstream audiences, Metallica set off on the path to becoming the biggest metal band on the planet. In the months following Ride the Lightning’s release, they were picked up by the major label Elektra and signed to powerhouse management company Q-Prime. Metallica may have entered Sweet Silence as just another thrash band, but they left as one of the most sought-after acts in the scene. The record contained Kill ’Em All–style ripping thrash (“Trapped Under Ice”), but it also incorporated acoustic sections (“Fight Fire with Fire”), epic compositions (“Creeping Death,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls”), exciting structures (“Ride the Lightning”), expansive instrumentals (“The Call of Ktulu”) and, most shockingly, a power ballad (“Fade to Black”). In two sessions spread over several months, Metallica cut the eight tracks that would comprise Ride the Lightning. In early 1984, armed with a batch of new material and fresh techniques, the band decamped to Copenhagen, Denmark (at the prompting of Lars, who is a Danish citizen), and began tracking the record with producer Flemming Rasmussen at Sweet Silence Studios.
Cliff also inspired James greatly on counterpoint and rhythmic concepts.” He made it his thing, but it was originally Cliff’s. James really absorbed the dual-harmony thing and took it to heart. “I had a grasp of music theory, thanks to Joe, but Cliff went the whole length and learned musical theory and everything. “Cliff studied music in college,” Hammett says.
PLAY METALLICA RIDE THE LIGHTNING HOW TO
They just had to figure out how to pull it off.īy all accounts, their bassist Cliff Burton-who died tragically in a 1986 bus accident-was integral to helping the band expand its horizons. But unlike Anthrax, Slayer and other thrash acts that were rising around that time, Metallica had a broader, more ambitious vision of what their sound could encompass. I felt like Lincoln walking 18 miles to go to school or something.”īack then, Metallica were a quartet of hellions who ignited the underground thrash metal movement with their blazing, neck-breaking debut, Kill ’Em All, which was released on indie label Megaforce in 1983. After we finished, I’d grab my lesson papers and bike 25 miles again home!” He laughs at the memory. So I would ride the whole way there-all huffing and puffing and sweaty-and I’d grab a guitar off the wall. And it took me over an hour and a half, because I lived, like, 25 miles away. “I didn’t have a car, so I had to ride my bike to the lessons. “Around the time we were writing Ride the Lightning, I was taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani,” Hammett says after he joins us at HQ. When Ride the Lightning was released 30 years ago, Metallica were a bunch of young musicians from the San Francisco Bay area, hungry to push the limits of the nascent thrash metal genre and willing to go to any lengths to make that happen. But Number One albums, feature films, massive tours and sprawling rehearsal studios weren’t always a part of the band’s lifestyle. At this point they’re a metal institution and one of the most successful selling artists in the world. Fitting nicely with the objective of our mission, the original Ride the Lightning stage backdrop is hanging across the rear of the rehearsal room.Īs we take in HQ’s scope and content, we’re reminded that Metallica aren’t your average working band. Today the room is staged with the band’s acoustic arsenal, as they’re in the middle of rehearsals for an upcoming unplugged gig. HQ’s massive main rehearsal area is bursting with even more gear.
A quick scan of the inventory reveals a mint of mouth-watering guitars, from vintage Flying Vs, Les Pauls and Strats to a staggering array of ESPs, Jacksons and Warwicks. Not unlike the oversized aisles of a Sam’s Club, the shelves in this room are packed to the rafters, only with gear. There’s the kitchen table over which drummer Lars Ulrich confronted guitarist James Hetfield in a particularly tense scene from Metallica’s 2004 documentary, Some Kind of Monster, as well as the electric chair from Hammett’s Kirk’s Crypt horror memorabilia collection and the Lady Justice prop head from the 1988-’89 Damaged Justice tour.īut the real gold is in the band’s storage room.
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