There are all kinds of things that make a song heavy but it’s never just about high-gain electric guitar, tuning down and turning up. If it was then it would be easy. And heavy music doesn’t come easy.

Kirk Hammett knows this. Metallica has had their share of heavy tracks. The Thing That Should Not Be and Harvester Of Sorrow are front-to-back heavy. Sad But True perfects the art of heaviness in box-office stadium metal.

As an album, the impenetrably dense …And Justice For All has something to it that is undeniably heavy – this great wall of guitars, James Hetfield’s stentorian bark delivering über-bleak verse, while Lars Ulrich’s biscuit-tin snare hammers through a cold and hostile mix almost wholly absent of Jason Newsted’s bass guitar.

And then there are those moments; the bridge in The Four Horseman, ditto Creeping Death, the shock and awe as For Whom The Bell Tolls heaves itself into a groove. It says something that here the tempo is dialled back. Heaviness can prove elusive when the tempo is frantic. Aggression takes over.

So yes, Metallica have had their moments, but when Total Guitar caught up with Hammett in 2020, he said that he was still trying to write the perfect heavy song, to summon the very quintessence of heavy in a riff. And he had just spoken to a man who did just that way back in 1969.

Hammett was on the phone to pay tribute to the late Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green, whose famous Les Paul Standard, Greeny, is now in his possession. Some months before Green died, Hammett visited him, Greeny in tow, to pay his dues to one of blues-rock’s founding fathers.

The visit is a story for another day but the conversation with Hammett moved to a Fleetwood Mac classic that he was scheduled to play with Billy Gibbons at the Peter Green Tribute Concert at the London Palladium – and it is a song that has possessed him ever since he first heard it.

When we sift Green’s discography for inspiration, we can hear what is being done, but how? That’s the question. Green’s writing would seesaw between light and darkness, between the briny calm of Albatross and the urgent fury of Oh Well, the invigorating electric slide on the Elmore James cover Shake Your Moneymaker, the crestfallen Man Of The World. Towards Green’s final days in Fleetwood Mac, the darkness was winning.

That’s when fame, among other things, was warping everyone’s perspective. LSD enters the picture, ultimately overwhelming Green, but not before he had written The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown) – the song that captured Hammett in its spell, and, he argues, showed metal what heaviness sounded like.

The Green Manalishi was written in 1969, supposedly inspired by a lysergic nightmare about an undead dog that kept barking, and the song came to Green in the immediate moments after waking up. It’s quite the story; there are shades of Son of Sam to it. Green later revealed the themes were more about the corrupting influence of money, the root of all evil.

The backstory only goes some way to explaining the darkness in Green’s arrangements, in his haunted poetry and a riff that teaches us many lessons, chief among them that heaviness is not contingent on a Peavey 6505 head and tuning down to C. That it is about atmosphere and feel, a morbid sensibility.

“You’re so spot on with that song,” said Hammett. “To me, that song is so incredibly heavy. High-gain amps, high-output pickups, none of that stuff existed. That song sounds so incredibly dark, and so incredibly heavy, and it is atmospheric and it gets straight to the darkest parts of one’s psyche. That’s what happened to me.”

Hammett sounds like he’s getting goosebumps just talking about it.

“It just goes so deep in me,” he said. “And that song has so much voodoo in it. It sounded like it was written under a full moon, in a circle with candles, with him and the candles lit all around him, just him and the guitar…”

Hammett discovered the song as many metalheads did, through Judas Priest, who covered it on 1979’s Killing Machine (released as Hell Bent For Leather in the US), and most famously on the Metal Gods’ essential live album, Unleashed In The East, which was released later that year.

KK Downing and Glenn Tipton’s twin-guitar treatment transform it. If Green’s was nightmarish and psychedelic, rooted in the blues mythos, Judas Priest reinvented The Green Manalishi with a polished-steel production, dialling up the tempo and placing Rob Halford’s peerless vocals front and centre. It would become a staple of their live show.

In the punishing heat and humidity of the 1985 Philadelphia summer, Chevy Chase introducing them to the stage at Live Aid as Judas Priest performed it in a three-song set. The darkness cooked that day.

Priest superfans Corrosion Of Conformity covered it as a secret track on their 1984 debut LP, Eye For An Eye. Pantera used to play it during soundcheck.

The Melvins covered it, too, lacing it with a knowing venom as they stretched it out to nearly seven minutes, performed lower and slower but more in the spirit of the original.

It finds Buzz Osborne going full nocturnal vampire (was King Buzzo channelling the dog that visited Green in the night?), the Washington state alt-rock institution leaning into the uncanny vibe and latent avant-gardism of the original, reimagining Green’s ghostly vocals as a squall of noise to conclude the track.

Great songs endure reinterpretation. In Judas Priest’s hands, The Green Manalishi is chromium-plated, total metal. The Melvins drew out its weirdness and the weight of the riff.

For Hammett, the fact The Green Manalishi could be performed in a Fleetwood Mac set alongside blues standards and not be out of place just demonstrates how short the distance is between blues and metal.

“That song should have been the soundtrack to Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil,” said Hammett. “Green Manalishi reminds me of the darkest Robert Johnson songs. It is right up there with Hellhounds On My Trail, Me And The Devil Blues. It’s just right there and it is so heavy and it contributed to the blueprint that so many people jumped on.”

The Green Manalishi came together as the original Fleetwood Mac were coming apart. Green was regularly taking LSD. He was checking out. They were playing it live before they got around to tracking the single. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer sat out the sessions; he didn’t appreciate Green’s didactic manner in the studio, though later admitting to Classic Rock that he should have been “more accommodating”.

“Peter would invite me to the studio with parts mapped out for me,” said Spencer. “But I thought he should just go ahead and do them himself.”

Danny Kirwan was the opposite. He relished working on Green’s compositions. The Green Manalishi was not an easy song to record but Kirwan went the distance. It took 28 takes. Martin Birch, who produced it, was similarly inspired by the material, engineering the intro guitar tone by placing speakers in an underground car park and miking it up for the natural reverb to swallow it, the ambience a proxy for the dream logic that inspired Green in the first place.

The Green Manalishi was Green’s last hurrah with Fleetwood Mac. The song, and everything that had gone into it – everything that had inspired it – had left him drained and spent. “It took me at least two years to recover from that song,” Green said in Martin Celmins’ 1995 biography. “When I listened to it afterwards there was so much power there – it exhausted me.”

The ‘60s came to a chaotic and bloody end. By ’69 the Summer of Love felt like a lifetime ago. The war in Vietnam was ongoing, with no end in sight. There was the Manson Family murders, the carnage at Altamont. The hippie dream was dead and heavy metal was looming on the horizon.

The Beatles’ Helter Skelter and the acid-rock freakouts of Blue Cheer foreshadowed what was to come, before Black Sabbath officially inaugurated it in 1970, just a few months before Fleetwood Mac released The Green Manalishi as a single. Of all the proto-metal of the era, Hammett sees The Green Manalishi as being without equal.

“There wasn’t really much of a precedent for a song like Green Manalishi,” said Hammett. “There was dark stuff that Jimi Hendrix was writing. For sure, Sabbath. But nothing quite like Green Manalishi. Green Manalishi, Oh Well, Black Magic Woman – all blues-rock that later on contributed to hard rock and heavy metal.”

That is where Hammett really jives with Peter Green as a player – a virtuoso who knew the value in economy, in expressing a mood and letting the audience fill in the gaps. As a horror movie obsessive, Hammett can’t get enough darkness, and that is what he hears in Green’s best work.

“You think about those three songs, the subject matter, the content, the arrangements, the atmosphere, how things just switch on a dime, the heaviness and the change of moods, it’s all there,” says Hammett. “It’s all there for heavy metal to eat up and turn into a completely different plate of jello, and thank god, thank fucking God for Peter Green because, for me, his contribution to heavy metal, to the music I play, is so huge, so huge.

“It just took years and a couple of generations for it to filter into heavy metal as we know it today. But still, he put out the blueprint. I can only hope to compose a song like Green Manalishi. I can only hope to. I aspire to do that.”

In May 1988, LA hair metal band Dokken set out on the biggest tour of their career - but it would prove disastrous.

Monsters Of Rock was a travelling festival playing 30 dates in stadiums across the US. Van Halen headlined. Below them, in descending order, were Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica and Kingdom Come.

At the end of 1987, Dokken had released their most successful album to date, Back For The Attack, which hit No.13 in the US. They’d also had an MTV hit with the song Dream Warriors, which was on the soundtrack to horror film A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 (the video features its star Robert ‘Freddy Krueger‘ Englund).

But on the Monsters Of Rock tour Dokken had a problem. They had to follow Metallica.

Dokken were a melodic hard rock band with some punchy songs and a genuine guitar hero in George Lynch. But in 1988 Metallica were the fast-rising kings of thrash metal with a fanatical following.

At the Monsters Of Rock show at the LA Coliseum, a near-riot ensued during Metallica’s performance.

It was a hard act to follow, and Dokken didn’t stand a chance.

As singer Don Dokken recalled to Classic Rock: “After Metallica went out and played Master Of Puppets, we sounded like the f**king Partridge Family!”

As the tour progressed, Don asked Cliff Burnstein, co-manager of both Dokken and Metallica, if the two bands could swap places on the bill.

Don said: “I told Cliff: ‘I know we’re making twice the money as Metallica, but can you please put ’em on after us, because they’re killing us?”

Burnstein said no, and Dokken’s humiliation was complete following a show at Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

“There was this huge review in the New York Times,” Don recalls. “It said that Van Halen kicked ass, the Scorpions were super-amazing, Metallica are the new upstarts just breaking out in America, Kingdom Come was good… and there was just one line about us. It said: ‘During Dokken’s set a record number of hotdogs were sold.’ It was horrible.”

Positive community action is not something that thrash metal bands are generally known for – it’s usually seen as a bit fluffy and do-goodery for them. But Metallica have stuck their neck above that particular parapet – they’ve announced that they’re to team up with the Welsh Blood Service for their upcoming gig at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium to encourage fans to donate blood and plasma.

During the week leading up to the show on June 28 and after, dedicated blood donation sessions will run across Wales. The band have also said that they are looking to put in place similar agreements with England's NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) and the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service to coincide with their dates at Glasgow’s Hampden Park (June 25) and the London Stadium (July 3 and 5).

A spokesperson for the band explained about the idea: "Wherever we go on tour, we want to give something meaningful back to the communities that welcome us. Looking out for one another and supporting those who rely on donated blood every day is a simple act that can make a powerful difference."

"As we close out the European leg of the M72 World Tour in the UK, we're asking fans to step up and be part of something bigger."

This isn’t just UK-specific. For the band’s M72 world tour, Metallica put together a charitable foundation, All Within My Hands, which proactively encourages new and existing blood donors during the duration of the tour. One gig in Philadelphia saw fans donate 152 units of blood.

Alan Prosser, Director of the Welsh Blood Service, described the team up with Metallica as “a truly unique moment for blood donation across the UK.”

His colleague Alan Harris explained to the BBC: "We actually found out about this because of the success of a similar promotion in the United States and Australia. It's led to thousands of people donating blood, that may or may not think about donating, which is what's really important about this partnership."

And there is an ongoing need for blood, which only has a shelf life of 35 days. The NHS simply cannot do without it, for cancer patients, new mothers, those living with long-term conditions such as sickle cell, as well as in Accident and Emergency departments. "It's really important we keep a steady supply,” Prosser added.

The cliché of aspiring purchasers wandering in to a guitar store and playing Stairway To Heaven was once so well-worn that it became a joke in the 1992 film Wayne’s World. But 34 years later, has the song remained the same? Not according to a new survey by Guitar Center.

The US-based firm has published a list of their most played riffs at their stores and the Zep classic is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Number One is Metallica’s Master Of Puppets, followed by Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses and the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army.

Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto explained in an interview with Rolling Stone how they calculated the stats: “We went out to our stores leadership with survey and said, ‘Write your most overplayed songs and tell us about any anecdotes, whatever you have’. It actually turned out to be a really consistent list. What you see is, across stores, across regions, people are generally playing this type of song.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c65yR7FWJsM

Metallica and Nirvana both have two songs in the Top Ten – Enter Sandman for the former, and Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are for the latter. The rest of the list has a few unexpected entries, like Tool’s Schism and Slow Dancing In A Burning Room by John Mayer, as well as one relic from the good ol’ days hanging in at Number Ten: Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water.

As for the absence of Stairway, Dalporto says that many Guitar Center stores did indeed carry signs warning punters off playing it a la Wayne’s World and that he has “a lot of empathy for store employees who hear the same song played over and over, and sometimes not so greatly.”

Of the list, he says: “These songs are played a lot. They’re often not played well. So you hear the songs over and over, but when someone nails it, you can tell. And the store staff really appreciates it when someone is awesome.”

The ten most-played riffs in Guitar Center stores:

1. Metallica – Master of Puppets
2. Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine
3. The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
4. Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit
5. John Mayer – Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
6. Metallica – Enter Sandman
7. Tool – Schism
8. Ozzy Osbourne – Crazy Train
9. Nirvana – Come As You Are
10. Deep Purple – Smoke on the Water

James Hetfield will always remember the first time he saw Cliff Burton on stage. It was in 1982, and Burton was bassist for the band Trauma. In the audience at the famous Los Angeles club the Whisky A Go Go, Hetfield watched with his Metallica bandmate Lars Ulrich.

Speaking to MOJO magazine in 2008, Hetfield recalled snapshots of Burton's performance that night in '82:

“Lars and I seeing him headbanging at the Whisky A Go Go and saying, ‘My God, we gotta get this guy! Let’s get that guitar player… oh shit, he’s playing bass! Wow, we need him!’

“Bass solo, take one! Wah wah wah! Fucking hair flying, this skinny dude, with big bell bottoms, and playing a wah solo.

“It’s like, ‘Holy shit! This is very unique. He can’t be in Trauma, he’s gotta be with us!’”

By the end of 1982, Burton had been installed as the new bassist in Metallica, completing the early line-up that featured Ulrich on drums, Hetfield on rhythm guitar and vocals, and Dave Mustaine on lead guitar.

Indeed, the band were so impressed with Burton that they relocated at his request from LA to the small town of El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area.

By 1983, Mustaine had been fired and replaced by Kirk Hammett ahead of the recording of the band’s debut album Kill ’Em All.

Hetfield said of Burton’s role within the group: “He was a pretty strong personality, and he was also a guy who would give Lars a hard time – he wouldn’t let Lars get away with shit, and the other two guys let Lars get away with a lot of shit. So I felt like Cliff was my ally in the battle.”

Burton’s bass solo – incorporating wah, distortion and tapping – was included on the Kill ’Em All album with the title (Anesthesia) – Pulling Teeth.

His influence in the band’s music increased with the following album Ride The Lightning, on which he co-wrote six of the eight tracks including the classics Creeping Death, For Whom The Bell Tolls and Fade To Black.

On the third album, Master Of Puppets, Burton co-wrote the atmospheric instrumental Orion, the fast-paced finale Damage, Inc. and the title track that stands as arguably the definitive Metallica song.

Hetfield said in acknowledgement: “I prefer Ride The Lightning. That felt to me like the giant that Metallica has produced.

“I feel that Master Of Puppets, there’s a lot of great songs on there. Master Of Puppets being the end of Cliff Burton’s time with Metallica, his time on the Earth, it makes sense that from then on things changed for sure after that.”

It was during the Master Of Puppets tour that Cliff Burton died on 27 September 1986 when the band’s tour bus crashed in Sweden. He was just 24 years old.

As Hetfield told MOJO, it could easily have been him that died and not Burton.

“The truth of the story was that we were in a tour bus with all the glass on the sides,” he said. “This was before the buses with the steel sides came along. They just put bunks in next to the glass.

“We were in Sweden in winter time, and I wasn’t able to sleep – it was freezing in the bunks. So I would sleep in the very back of the bus. It was a little warmer back there.

“So I was on the same side as Cliff, on the same level, up on the top with Cliff. And yeah, it’s quite possible that it could be a different story there. It’s not the only time, I’m sure, that I could have gone to the other side….”

In the wake of this tragedy, Metallica eventually completed the Master Of Puppets tour with Burton’s replacement Jason Newsted.

On the band’s first album without Burton – … And Justice For All, released in 1988 – there was a song created in his memory, To Live Is To Die, with a riff written by him and a spoken word part in which Hetfield recited a poem that was also composed by Burton.

Hetfield recalled: “Obviously in the song To Live Is To Die, that’s Cliff. It’s kind of an homage to Cliff, without going over the top, or exploiting that, I guess is the word. I think it was us realising how grateful were to have that time with him.”

But as Hetfield admitted, it was only much later that he really came to terms with Burton’s death.

“I didn’t deal with it until I had therapy,” he said. “The mission was, ‘Let’s get over this grief by going on tour, just play it out, get it out on stage.’ Management’s idea. And we were so raw at that point, it’s like, ‘OK.’

“It might not have been the right move. I wasn’t able to grieve. It might sound silly, but I hadn’t learned to do that.

“All through my childhood there were no funerals for family members, no talk of death, no talk of illness. The religion we were in, there were no funerals. Just, ‘OK, the soul has moved on.’

“There was no place to grieve, to cry, to let this stuff out, get together and talk and work through all that stuff, which is very necessary, especially if you’re very attached to someone.

“But through therapy I was able to do a lot of grief work – for my parents and with Cliff.”

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich has made some pretty smart decisions in his time. Forming a band with guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield was certainly one. But when it came to naming that band, Hetfield reckons it was best for all concerned that Ulrich was overruled.

Speaking to MOJO magazine in 2008, Hetfield recalled: “The original band name Lars wanted was Thunderfuck. Okay, pretty cool! The story might have been a little different with Thunderfuck!”

What’s more, Ulrich wasn’t joking when he told the band he wanted to name their debut album Metal Up Your Ass.

As Hetfield said: “I remember Lars had the drawing, the pencil drawing, of Metal Up Your Ass. Like, that’s it, that’s gonna be the logo – a toilet with a sword sticking out of it!”

Fortunately, the perfect name for the band arrived courtesy of a metal-obsessed DJ on the early ’80s San Francisco rock scene.

“There was a guy named Ron Quintana up in the Bay Area,” Hetfield said. “He was the metalhead at KUSF radio, a college station, and he did Rampage Radio every Sunday night – all metal, all the time, for an hour.

“He had a list of names he was gonna call this fanzine that he was getting together. I think Lars saw that list, and Ron ended up choosing Metal Mania. But Metallica was on there – and Lars ‘borrowed’ it. Forever.”

In his interview with MOJO, Hetfield also reminisced about the summer of 1983, when Metallica recorded their debut album – wisely titled Kill ‘Em All instead of Metal Up Your Ass – and when they were still dreaming of being a globally famous band.

“In our minds, we were gonna surpass everything,” he said. “We were gonna be huge. We were!”

Metallica have always cited New Wave Of British Heavy Metal band Diamond Head as a key influence on their music. A lesser known band from the NWOBHM was glam rock outfit Silverwing, but Lars Ulrich was certainly aware of them.

As Hetfield said: “Lars had a poster in his bedroom: ‘Diamond Head’, in these huge, huge letters, and then below it: ‘Silverwing’. And we had a Metallica stamp made up, and Lars put the stamp under Silverwing: ‘and Metallica!’ The logo was very small, but we knew that we were gonna do our best.

“It’s weird. I can’t really describe our thoughts back then. Every time we moved forward a little bit, it was the feeling of, ‘My God, we’ve made it!’

“Like, ‘We did our first gig – yes, we’ve made it! Now we’ve got more gigs.’ Then it’s, ‘Ooh, we got out first check for $14 – we’ve made it!’ Or, ‘We’re in a van, we played in San Francisco, this is it! We got our following, we’ve got five fans – check it out! They’ve drawn Metallica on the back of their jackets – we didn’t have patches or anything, they drew it!’

“And then you make it on the fanzines, on the cover of [metal zine] Whiplash. And on it goes.

“It kept growing and growing and growing. Going to the East Coast, making a demo, making the album, all of that.

“We knew we were out for world domination. We didn’t know what the hell that meant, but we’re gonna do that!”

Hetfield said of the band photo on the back cover Kill ‘Em All: “We were sticky, zitty little kids, man! I remember Lars growing his beard to look older for Kill ‘Em All. ‘Dude, what are you doing, growing a beard? We’re gonna do pictures soon.’ ‘Yeah, it makes me look older.’ Okay!”

Ultimately, Metallica’s plan for world domination was realised.

Hetfield exclaimed to MOJO: “Thank you Ron Quintana! And you know what? Ron has not asked for anything. That’s pretty amazing. He just gets lots of love.”

Original Metallica bassist Cliff Burton would have turned 64 this week and the man currently holding down that position in the band – Robert Trujillo – has been honouring him and talking about some of the band’s biggest songs on the Metallica Report podcast.

Talk turned to Master Of Puppets and the eight-minute instrumental track Orion. Trujillo let slip a little nugget, that the bass solo on the track was originally supposed to a Kirk Hammett guitar solo.

"He was originally supposed to play the solo there, Kirk was," Trujillo said of the track. "And he was away from the studio, came back the next day and Cliff had laid the track. He played the solo there, and there was no solo for Kirk."

Trujillo said that it was Hammett that explained the story of Orion’s bass solo to him.

"Not that Kirk doesn't get enough solos, but Cliff took his solo, which I think is just so cool."

Metallica still play Orion live occasionally and Trujillo noted that it remains a favourite not just of fans, but of the band members themselves: "This is a song that automatically brings us together and it has to do with the emotion and the personality of the song," he said. "It's so infectious that you have to be together and you also have to be together with the fans."

Part of that is that it reminds everyone of Burton. "Is it the spirit of Cliff? Absolutely. The song is probably the closest thing to the spirit of Cliff, and that's why you need to be together."

Meanwhile, back in 2026, Metallica recommence their M72 world tour, which has been going on for three years now, in May in Athens. They return to the UK in late June for dates at Glasgow’s Hampden Park, the Principality Stadium in Cardiff and two nights at the London Stadium on July 3 and 5.

When a young guitar player named James Hetfield and a young drummer named Lars Ulrich put a band together in California in 1981 and called it Metallica, they had very similar taste in music – except when it came to the kind of soft rock they heard on the radio. Hetfield hated that.

In a 2008 interview with MOJO, Hetfield talked about his formative influences and revealed how he argued with Ulrich – and with Metallica’s original bassist Ron McGovney – about the smooth, radio-friendly sound of mainstream rock acts such as Styx, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner.

Hetfield said of the late ’70s: “In America, there was early glam, like Kiss and Alice Cooper. I was into Aerosmith, Ted Nugent – rawer, crazier stuff.

“My best friend was a Kiss freak. He had every Kiss poster, and back then every magazine was Kiss. Finding Aerosmith stuff was a little tougher. I only had three of my walls done, and my friend was working on the ceiling already!”

When Hetfield attended his first concert in 1978 at the age of 15, it was Aerosmith at the Los Angeles Forum – with AC/DC as the opening act.

He recalled to MOJO: “I was a big Aerosmith fan, but I had no idea that AC/DC was that cool. I went with my older brother. I was so excited.

“AC/DC, that was the first time I heard them, and I dug it. But when you go to see your favourite band you don’t really want to see anybody else. Some Metallica fans are like that.

“So when AC/DC were playing, I was just waiting for Aerosmith. Like, ‘Get off! Hurry up!’

“I remember I bought an Aerosmith bootleg shirt, it fell apart after two washes, the sleeves were two different colours. And I remember smelling this very strange smell at the gig. I didn’t know much about pot but… learned kind of quickly!

“It was a pretty eye-opening experience, going into a big arena to see a big rock concert. Just the whole feel – the lights going out, the anticipation, the crowd, the smells… I mean, every sense was just soaking it in.

“I never got over that, man. I need to feel that, still. I was very impressed. I wanted to be on stage. I wanted to be the guy up there, not hanging around in the crowd.”

Hetfield also talked about the Foreigner fan who ended up being the bassist in Metallica from October 1981 to December 1982.

“We had this other friend, and his favourite band was Foreigner. So we kinda knew that he was a little different. Actually, his name was Ron McGovney!

“I tried to teach him, man. Like, ‘Come on, dude!’ He’s like, ‘They’re heavy!’”

Referring to Foreigner’s 1977 hit Cold As Ice, Hetfield joked: “Maybe on the next [Metallica] covers album we’ll do Cold As Ice! No, we were never Foreigner fans.”

But he said that Lars Ulrich did have an interest in some of the more melodic rock bands of that era.

“I remember when I hooked up with Lars,” Hetfield recalled. “I was so into the stuff that he had, that he brought over from overseas. We’d go to the record store and start soaking up some of the metal imports. The records – the vinyl – it was packaged differently, and it was real thick. Like, wow!

“I’d go over to Lars’ house and he’d have been shopping. He had a pretty well-off family, they had some dough.

“I remember he was unwrapping all these Styx and REO Speedwagon records and I’m going, ‘What are you doing?! What are you buying this crap for?’ He’s like, ‘I wanna check it out!’ And I was like, ‘We’re sick of that!’”

Ultimately, what Hetfield and Ulrich used as the template for Metallica was a blend of classic heavy metal such as Black Sabbath and Budgie and the new, streetwise early ’80s sounds of Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Diamond Head.

As a result, Metallica’s super-heavy sound made them outcasts in the Los Angeles rock scene of 1981 – so much so that they eventually relocated to San Francisco.

“Hair metal,” Hetfield mused. “There wasn’t a whole lot of other stuff in LA. There was punk, but that had kinda of drifted away a little bit.

“So hair metal, that’s what there was. Stuff that was…. hmm, heavy but not. You know, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, they were playing the clubs a lot back then.”

He laughed: “If you wanted to go to gigs and meet chicks and hang out, that’s where you went. But it wasn’t easy, trying to pick up chicks when you’re not really wearing the proper LA gear, you know?”

Dave Mustaine has sat down for an interesting, if volatile, interview with the Daily Telegraph. Well, two interviews if we’re being exact here – he abruptly cut off the first when the journalist in question began asking questions about the Megadeth mainman’s faith (these days Mustaine says he is a born-again Christian).

Anyway, inevitably, the subject of his ejection from Metallica, forty-three years ago, comes up. Clearly, it’s a grudge Mustaine will take to his grave. “In hindsight, I understand what happened and why, but at the time, all I knew was I was p***ed, and I wanted to be heavier and faster than they were. And so that’s what I set out to do.”

He also brings up an incident from the early days of the band: “We were at a club, and some guy was punching on a girl, and James says, ‘Kill him!’ This guy turns around and looks at the two of us and says, ‘Who’s gonna kill me?’ And James pointed at me… I had to fight the guy on the spot.”

Then in a fascinating moment of self-reflection, he concedes all that was a long time ago: “You know, I’m a grandpa now and I’m successful. I’m not begging for food anymore. I think my younger self just needed to be loved.”

He also talks about the reasons for seemingly throwing in the towel – their current self-titled album will apparently be their last: “I was feeling kind of run down, and it was just getting to be too much. I finally said to my management, ‘I don’t know how much longer I can do this’ and that started the conversation.”

Mustaine also admits it’s “challenging to sing with the same quality and conviction” as he used to. And as for shredding: “It’s painful if you don’t set up right. It’s one of those things that professionals make look effortless and it really isn’t. A lot of guitar players, their fingers get deformed because of the way that they hold the pick and the way that they fret the guitar.”

Now he’s on the final lap of his career, he seems, at least, proud of his legacy: “Megadeth music will live on forever,” he insists. “I know it’s an arrogant thing to say, but every time you hear that heavy guitar down-picking on a TV show or movie soundtrack, that’s the sound of Metallica and Megadeth. I don’t know if we changed the world, but we changed the world of guitar.”

It’s looking likely that Metallica will play a residency at the Sphere sometime in 2027.

These rumours have been swirling around for a while. A succession of band members have intimated that they would be interested and last summer local news outlet Vital Vegas said they would ready to “ready to ink a deal” with the state-of-the-art venue.

Now the biggest indication yet comes via The Sun who say that the deal is almost done. “Metallica having a residency at the Sphere is all anyone is talking about on the Strip,” the newspaper’s source is quoted as saying. “They have been to see the bosses and met all the tech team to talk through and plan out a show in principle.”

“The contracts are still to be signed but we were told they are 90 per cent there. Metallica will bring a different feel to a show there and there is a lot of excitement from bosses at the Sphere about what this could look like.”

If it does happen, it’ll most likely be next year. This summer will see the band play a series of stadium shows across Europe, including two nights at the London Stadium in July.

Assuming the Sphere residency does happen, Metallica will be following in the footsteps of U2, Dead And Company, The Eagles and Phish. This year the venue is set to hold residencies by EDM DJ Illenium, Phish (again), No Doubt and Mexican singer songwriter Carin Leon.

Meanwhile Sphere Entertainment have announced that they are looking to build a second US-based Sphere in Washington DC.

It would feature the same cutting-edge technology, including an Exosphere made of LED panels, an immersive sound system, haptic seating, and 4D environmental effects. However, with 6,000 seats it would be significantly smaller than the Las Vegas venue, which has a 20,000 capacity.

The new Sphere would be situated at National Harbor, just outside the city and built using a combination of public and private funding, including approximately $200 million in state, local, and private incentives. However the plans will need to get the final approval of Prince George’s County and the State of Maryland before they get the green light.

If it happens, it will most likely be the third Sphere, after the Las Vegas venue and one in Abu Dhabi that is currently under construction.

System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian has been talking about an often-forgotten episode in early 2000s metal – the time when he deputised for an injured James Hetfield and fronted Metallica.

At the time, SOAD were very much an up and coming name. They were the opening act on Metallica’s Summer Sanitarium tour in the year 2000, a big package event that also had Korn and Kid Rock on the bill. When Hetfield injured himself in a jetski accident, plans were thrown into disarray. But rather than cancel any dates, Metallica decided that, in time honoured tradition, the show must go on.

Talking to Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Malakian set the scene: "I met Metallica on stage playing with them. I never met them before. We're the first band. Nobody knows us. Toxicity’s not out yet. We're on our first album. And we are on the Summer Sanitarium tour.”

For Metallica’s set, Jason Newsted was singing. “Then they brought the guys from Korn on and they kind of played like this Cheech And Chong cover song or something. They didn't know what to do, because James wasn't there.

"And I turned to my tech and I go, 'Listen, man. Go tell their tech that I know a lot of their shit. Next thing you know, my tech goes and talks to their guitar tech and then my tech comes back to me. He's, like, 'All right, come with me.'”

The next thing Malakian knows, he’s on stage with Metallica. "They put me out there, and I turn and I'm, like, 'Hey.' It's Lars, it's Kirk, it's Jason Newsted. They're, like, 'What do you know?' I go, 'I don't know. Master of Puppets. OK. Count it in.'

"I'm up there with Metallica playing Master Of Puppets in front of 60,000 people. And I'm, like, 'Who's gonna sing?' I said, 'Fuck it. I'll go sing.' And I sang. You would think we were rehearsed, but we didn't rehearse it. And I didn't even know it was gonna happen. And it happened. I'm up there and I am playing Metallica with Metallica in front of an audience where I would've been in the fucking cheap seats just three years ago."

It sounds like something from a dream. But Malakian didn’t wake up sweating. He actually did well enough to be a replacement Hetfield for the next few dates.

"I got off stage. Next thing you know, they're coming to me. They're, like, 'Hey, James isn't gonna be able to play for a few nights. They want you to come and play with them. Then next thing you know, they're, like, 'Hey, get your shit from your bus, because you're flying on the private jet with us now.'”

It was, he suggests, a pivotal moment in his life. "I'll never forget it,” he told Rubin. “It still brings goosebumps that I had a chance to experience that at that point of my career."

What Cesar Gueikian is doing is highly unusual. It is not unheard of for a guitar maker to migrate to the boardroom and take on an executive role. But the Gibson CEO is moving in the opposite direction.

Every week, typically on a Friday morning, he clears some precious calendar time, puts on a pair of safety glasses, and gets hands on in the Gibson factory, and with a little help from his team, he builds an electric guitar that he designed to his one-of-one custom specs – and he has been doing this for nigh-on four years now.

“Definitely, my favourite time of the week is when I am in the factory building,” he says, joining MusicRadar over Zoom from his Nashville HQ.

Gueikian has been playing the guitar since he was 10 years old, but it was only after he became Gibson CEO that he decided that it was time to learn how to make one from scratch.

“I had tinkered anchored with them, changed things, opened [them] up, changed parts and things like that,” he says. “But I had never built one.”

If you have been following Gueikian on Instagram, you will have seen his handiwork. If you caught Metallica’s set at Black Sabbath’s farewell show at Villa Park in July, you will have seen and heard it in action.

Metallica’s lead guitarist, Kirk Hammett, played CEO#4, an custom SG, during a cover of Sabbath’s Hole In The Sky – and that guitar, along with CEO#8, a custom Flying V that Gueikian himself played onstage with Mana, are going under the hammer at Julien’s Auctions, alongside a trove of artist-played and signed guitars. All proceeds from the auction of CEO#4 and CEO#8 be going to support Gibson’s charitable arm, Gibson Gives.

The question is why did he decide to build the instruments himself, what has he learned from working alongside Gibson’s master luthiers, Jim DeCola and Tom Murphy, and their teams, and will we ever see a Cesar Gueikian signature guitar? Here’s his take on it…

What was the first guitar you built at Gibson?

“The first one was actually a Les Paul Standard that I built maybe a little bit over three years ago, three and a half years ago or so. That was a Les Paul Standard, a purple-looking quilt top Les Paul Standard [with] almost like a velvet looking top. That’s what I was going for.

“I remember I started it in September, and I finished it in December. It’s going to be four years ago almost. That was the first one and it was a big learning process.

“I mean, that one was really difficult to make and it has several cosmetic flaws. It plays well. And that one I called CEO#0, and then from there on, CO#1, et cetera. Some of them have been auctioned.”

Why did you start building your own?

“My intention, originally, was I wanted to learn how to build a guitar from the beginning to end, and then have it, because I wanted that finished product.

“And during the process, between September and December, building with the help of all of our craftsmen and craftswomen in the factory – and we call them craftories, I labelled our factories craftories from the very beginning because I couldn’t get my head around the name factory – you know what? What I really enjoyed was learning from them, and putting myself in a vulnerable situation and having the team in the craftory teach me how to do something. That was my favourite thing.

“And so, since then, what at the beginning was, ‘I want the guitar that I built’ is no longer about the guitar. It’s about spending time in the craftory, working with my team, learning from them, having them teach me.”

“I really, really enjoy that, and it’s been one of the most powerful moments, I think, for me as a leader, for lack of a better word, at Gibson. I realised that you can talk, you can say and do things, and you can inspire people, but this was the most powerful one in terms of my craftsmen and craftswomen, because I feel like I earned a different level of respect from them. It was ultimately a process that taught me a lesson in leadership.”

And like you say, it’s humbling to put yourself out there. These CEO builds are getting more and more ambitious…

“They get more ambitious, yes! Yeah, one thing I was going to tell you about the first one… I worked all those months. We give time off to where people between Christmas and New Year’s. They get time off. But I happen to be in Nashville then, so with Jim DeCola, my master luthier, him and I went to a craftory between Christmas and New Year’s. It was just the two of us. And I finished buffing it and I was going to assemble it that day.

“I finished. It took me about three hours to buff the guitar, which probably takes the team members there about 15 minutes for a guitar. It took me three hours. And that was done.

“Then I noticed a little something, a little orange peel from the lacquer on the headstock, and when I put the headstock on the buffing wheel, it threw it out of my hands, and in a fraction of a second, it was on the floor with the broken headstock. That day I learned how to fix a broken headstock.”

I was going to ask if you had Jim DeCola on speed dial for this. We’re concerned for his work/life balance here.

“He taught me how to fix the headstock. We fixed the headstock, and then I assembled it – later, of course, because we had to then do retouches with more lacquer on it. And I [still] have that guitar. That guitar is with me, and that’s the only one I keep. The rest, everything after that, has been auctioned off, has been sold, proceeds to the foundation, or will be auctioned off soon.”

Talking about the builds getting more ambitious, have you attempted a Murphy Lab Custom Shop build – or what about a semi-hollow electric like an ES-335?

“Yes! In my office here, I just got it today, [and] I just finished a Murphy Lab Les Paul. I worked with Tom [Murphy]. I was working with Tom on his desk, and I can’t remember if it was four or five days working on the ageing, and I just completed that one. I will be doing more Custom Shop Murphy Labs.”

I want to get onto CEO#4, because it’s seems right that someone has put an SG into Kirk Hammett’s hands, especially given that he’s almost playing through Angus Young’s rig on the last Metallica album, with the SoloDallas boost and the Marshalls.

“He has a ’61 Les Paul, the one that’s on the cover of the record – the white one, the two pickup white SG-shape Les Paul that belonged to Les Paul. He owns that guitar.”

I feel like he should be such a natural SG player. Did you have Kirk in mind when you made it?

“Well Kirk and I talk all the time, at least weekly, so we knew that the show Back To The Beginning was on – before it was announced – when I started building it, so I had that show in mind with this SG. And I will walk you through the specs in a second but I did have that show in mind.”

“I knew that somebody from the artists that we work with was probably going to be interested in playing it, and it was more sort of natural, because I speak with Kirk regularly, we are very good friends, we talk about guitars, we talk about shows, when we are going to see each other, when we are going to have dinner, and just in conversation with him, I brought it up.

“He was the first one I brought it up with, said, ‘Hey, this is what I am building and I think it’s going to be great if someone uses this at Back To The Beginning. Would you like to be the one?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’m in. I definitely want to do that.’ I sent him the picture when I finished it, and he was very excited. So that’s how that happened.”

What were you thinking with regards the specs?

“I wanted to build something that would have a bit of a hybrid sound between an SG and a Les Paul, so I used maple, so a mahogany and maple body, with a highly figured maple top. And I’ve always loved the… They’re not called this but I call them Super 400 inlays.

“We use them also on the Supremes, and they've been used in many other acoustic instruments as well, acoustic Gibsons. So it’s those inlays. And I love the the headstock of the Les Paul Custom with the split diamond. That has always been my one of my favourite Gibson looks, and so that’s what I decided to do – have a bound fingerboard with the Super 400 inlays, and a bound Gibson Les Paul Custom-style headstock.

“For the hardware, I went with not fully black but slightly darker hardware, and I used pretty high-output ‘80s-style Gibson pickups, which are the same pickups that we use on the 80s Explorers and Flying Vs. They’re a modified version of Burstbuckers, still passive, but higher output. So you have the Burstbuckers, the ‘70s pickups which are little bit hotter, and then the ‘80s pickups that are a little bit hotter so I went ‘80s, overwound.”

And we have to talk about the finish, the Ghost Burst.

“Well, how that happened, I also talked to another dear friend of mine, Adam Jones from Tool, and I sent him the picture of the finish – of the guitar already finished – because I knew he would like the finish, and he replied immediately saying, ‘I love that finish! It looks like a ghost burst.’ And so I told him, ‘That’s the name. I love it. You named it.' And that’s what we call it.”

We also see this finish on CEO#8.

“When I did #8 and #9, that’s the Flying V and an Explorer [respectively], I did them based on the same finish. Now, CEO#4, I wanted it to be a perimeter burst, so it was very much on the perimeter, but I didn’t do it the way I wanted.

“I mean, I had something in my head, and when I went to execute on it with a spray gun, I went in a little more than I wanted, and so a CEO#4 has that look. Now with more practice, #8 and #9 are very much perimeter bursts, which is how I envisioned it.

“And so we’re going to be releasing this finish next year, and they’re gonna look a little bit more like CEO#8 and #9.”

You anticipated my next question. Because this is also a great testing ground for new products, what you could add to the Made To Measure programme and so on.

“Yeah, we are going to be releasing several models, different shapes with the Ghost Burst finish. I don’t know exactly when. It might late summer of next year. But, yeah, I’m excited about making them available because we’ve had a lot of comments from people saying, ‘Please release this finish.’ People seem to have liked it.”

It’s a great finish. How did you feel when you saw Kirk Hammett, with Metallica, playing a Black Sabbath cover with this guitar? It must have been mind-blowing?

“I guess there are many reasons why the answer to that question is yes. First, because of Kirk; he’s like a brother to me now. We’re really close. I love him. I really, truly love the human being that he is. He’s such a kind, amazing person.

“So, beyond all of his musical accomplishments, to have him who is, obviously, the lead guitarist of Metallica, with everything that he and Metallica have accomplished, but also such a close friend of mine, play it, but then also that he played it at Back To The Beginning, which is the tribute to Black Sabbath, where everything started, and paying tribute as a result of that to Tony Iommi, who is the reason why I play guitar.

“I picked up a guitar because I heard Black Sabbath when I was 10 years old. So, all of that coming together, the guitar that I built with the help of all of my staff, in Kirk’s hands for Hole In The Sky, Metallica’s song on the set, paying tribute to Tony and Ozzy, and Black Sabbath, everything was amazing and strange, humbling and epic.”

These guitars are going up for auction, CEO#4 and CEO#8. How much to you think they will fetch?

“I have no idea. Honestly, I don’t know what this will get. I hope it raises a lot of funds for the foundation. One hundred per cent of what we get out for this will go out.

“I really hope that, because of everything that we just talked about – the historic moment, Kirk, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Back To The Beginning, the fact that I built a guitar – I hope that because of all of that this becomes a highly coveted, highly bid guitar in the auction. I hope it’s the one that raises the most of all of the CEO builds. [currently it is sitting at $17,500]”

It almost feels like, like we’re kind of building up to the point where you might have a signature model in the Gibson collection. Is that something that you would be interested in?

“I don’t know. I don’t think I will do a signature model, but the ones that we’re going to be releasing are going to be based on these guitars that I built, with these features, in the Ghost Burst finish, and so I guess it’s not a signature model, but they are built on the basis of the specs of what I did.”

It’s like you are caretaker of that series almost, because we can see your design aesthetic running through them.

“I didn’t want to name them the Cesar line or CEO line. So what we agreed with the team is that we’re going to call them DES, which is what I love on everything, which is ‘Do epic shit.’ So they’re gonna be the DES collection. And then that, one day, if it keeps going and it keeps growing based on other things that I build, hopefully it will outlast me.”

• For more information on the Gibson Gives auction, which sees CEO#4 and CEO#8 go under the hammer, head over to Julien's Auctions

The one-of-one custom SG that Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian built from scratch and loaned to Kirk Hammett to play during Metallica’s set at Black Sabbath’s farewell show, Back To The Beginning, is officially heading to the auction block – and it’s in pretty good company.

Gibson and its charitable arm, Gibson Gives, have joined forces with Julien’s Auctions for its Played, Worn & Torn auction – an annual event that puts some bizarre, brilliant, and holy grail lots under the hammer.

Expect super-rare guitars, amps, and all manner of rock ’n’ roll ephemera – and this year in particular, some true Gibson rarities.

You want bizarre? This year’s event gives Elvis fans the chance to by the King’s service bayonet from his time in Germany. Brilliant? How about a Gibson Custom Explorer, in Ebony, full-on tuxedo mode, signed by Cheap Trick? That is just one of the Gibson lots supporting its Gibson Gives fundraising drive.

There is also a stage-played Kramer Lzzy Hale Voyager, with Hale's signature guitar signed and resplendent in Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle finish. The Halestorm frontwoman has also signed the guitar case.

This is also your chance to own a custom Dave Petillo semi-hollow once owned by Danny DeVito, and the Penguin has signed it too.

But back to the Gibsons. There are some special artist-signed Les Pauls; a Les Paul Custom ‘70s signed by Rise Against and played onstage by Zach Blair, and another signed by Gibson signature artists Sergio Vallin of Maná.

And then, headlining the auction, you have those unique electric guitars made by the Gibson supremo himself, the SG CEO#4 and the Flying V CEO#8. Both have a finish that Gueikian developed himself, Ghost Burst. Adam Jones of Tool gave it its name.

“I sent him the picture of the finish, the picture of the guitar already finished, because I really I knew he would like the finish,” says Gueikian. “And he replied immediately saying, ‘I love that finish. It looks like a ghost burst.’ And so I told him, ‘That’s the name.’ And that’s what we call it.”

You’ll notice the difference in the finish between CEO#4 and CEO#8. Gueikian tells us that he had always envisioned it as more of a perimeter burst, and has perfected it on the latter model, and in CEO#9, another of his custom builds.

Gueikian says he knew that one of the Gibson artists would be into this and Hammett declared his interest.

“I created it as a tribute to Tony Iommi, the father of heavy metal, who defined the genre with a Gibson SG,” says Gueikian. “After the show, Kirk signed the guitar, and it remains untouched since strings included. The guitar also comes with my backstage pass from that historic event.”

Seeing Hammett play it at Villa Park, honouring Black Sabbath, playing the guitar he made, was kind of mind-blowing all things considered.

“To have him, obviously, the lead guitarist of Metallica, with everything that he and Metallica have accomplished, but also a close friend of mine play it [was incredible],” says Gueikian. “But then also that he played it at Back To The Beginning, the tribute to Black Sabbath where everything started, and paying tribute as a result of that to Tony Iommi, who is the reason why I play guitar. I picked up a guitar because I heard Black Sabbath when I was 10 years old.

“All of that coming together, the guitar I built with the help of all of my staff, in Kirk’s hands for Hole In The Sky, Metallica’s song in the set, paying tribute to Tony, Ozzy and Black Sabbath, it was amazing, and strange, and humbling, and epic.”

Now, you can bid for that guitar. It’s officially a piece of metal history now, and Hammett has signed it too.

If CEO#4 was intended to be a cross between a Les Paul Custom and an SG, with its figured maple top, plus the Supreme-style inlays, then CEO#8, applies this hybrid design to the Flying V Custom. Again, this is a stage-played instrument, but this time it was Gueikian who broke it in in front of a live audience, joining Mana onstage at the Bridgestone Arena, Nashville

It’s a particularly gnarly build that gives the V a Les Paul Custom headstock, and you can check it out and the Gibson lots – and bid if you’re feeling flush – over at Julien’s Auctions. Bidding is open now with the auction event happening on 20-21 Nov at 10:00am CST, Nashville.

Megadeth’s – allegedly – final album is being prepared for release next January, and it looks as though the confirmed tracklisting might include a version of Metallica’s Ride The Lightning, which of course was co-written by Megadeth's founder Dave Mustaine.

How do we know? Well, the band have gradually been revealing the tracklisting via social media, with letters of the various tracks gently coalescing together. As you can see, track 11 is shaping to be Ride The Lightning.

Or it could be a similarly-titled track? Look at it closely below – track 11 could be ‘Ales Are Shining’, couldn’t it?

Anyhoo, if it is Ride The Lightning, it would fit with what Mustaine mentioned earlier this year on a Norwegian radio show, Stjernepose. Talking about the final album, he said: “We have 13 new songs for the new album… One of the songs is a cover song but I actually wrote it, so it’s kind of like a cover, kind of like my song.”

Its inclusion would speak volumes about its author. Even after 42 years it seems Mustaine is still smarting about his exit from Metallica. He just can’t let it lie.

Ride The Lightning was the title track of Metallica’s second album, released in July 1984. By that time, Mustaine was long gone and Megadeth were already up and running. They’d release their debut Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good! the following year.

That was the first of 17 Megadeth albums, with the final one due on January 23 next year with a simple title: Megadeth. Among the other confirmed tracks are the recent single Tipping Point, as well as I Don’t Care, Puppet Parade, Made To Kill and the brilliantly-titled Let There Be Shred.

And there will be a farewell tour to accompany the farewell album. No dates have been confirmed as yet, although we do know that the band will support Iron Maiden on a number of dates next autumn, including shows at Montreal, San Antonio and Los Angeles.

Gibson and Kirk Hammett have expanded their signature guitar lineup with a seasonal update on the classic Hummingbird acoustic guitar that channels Edgar Allan Poe at his most morbid.

It’s called the Raven, and it is really rare bird. They are only making 100 of these, and they come hot out of the Gibson Custom Shop at Bozeman, Montana, in a custom black guitar case with a raven skull inlay, foreshadowing the necro mother of pearl headstock inlay on the guitar itself.

Fundamentally this is a Hummingbird and we won’t be told any differently. It has the solid Sitka spruce top, mahogany on the back and sides.

Scramble around for it in the dark and you will feel something – a shape in the gloom – quite familiar, square shoulders, a dreadnought-sized body. But it if is a Hummingbird, well, this one was found some way down the Left Hand Path.

It’s like the Hummingbird only evil. Of course, rosewood would have been too bright for a guitar like this. Hammett’s Raven swaps that out for ebony, and we have star inlays here. There is also a double pickguard and tailpiece accent that’s just too cool. The mahogany neck has a rounded profile – happy days for chord work.

The Metallica lead guitarist is reported to have been heavily involved in its design, and it shows. As we all know, Hammett is a horror movie fanatic. His number one ESP signature model features graphics from The Mummy (not the Brendan Fraser one, the original from 1932 featuring Boris Karloff). Pre-code horror is a theme on his electric guitars.

He also has ESP signature models with White Zombie and Bride Of Frankenstein graphics. This approach would not have worked on an guitar like the Raven.

Again, we’re working with Hummingbird DNA. But the aesthetic is very on brand with Roger Corman’s The Raven, Boris Karloff and Vincent Price and all that. Play some spooky chords on it.

Or lean into the considerable lung power from its build – that scalloped advanced X-bracing under the spruce top – and hit an open G chord with gusto. When you do you’ll appreciate some more of Hammett’s custom appointments.

This has a flatter fingerboard radius than your common or garden variety Hummingbird, 16” as opposed to the Gibson standard 12”. It’ll be a good player. Like the Hummingbird it has a 24.75” scale length.

Other details worth noting include the 43.82mm nut width (Graph Tech TUSQ), the nickel Rotomatic tuners with kidney bean-style buttons, the compound radius dovetail neck joint, and the LR Baggs Element VTC +4 acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system, with its controls nested in the soundhole. Lovely.

Priced £4,399/$4,999, the Kirk Hammett Raven is available now. See Gibson for more details.

Metallica’s Master Of Puppets is a rite of passage for any young player building up their chops in metal guitar, and it is a punishing, unforgiving hellscape of down-picking that’ll fill your forearm full of lactic acid should there be any inefficiency in your technique.

Of course, don’t let that put you off. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions players have made it through the other side and lived to tell the tale. The pop-cultural high of its Stranger Things moment, when the bravura epic title track from Metallica’s imperious 1986 studio album was anywhere, everywhere all at once, has surely spread its appeal far and wide – dramatically increasing the number of players who can play it nose-to-tail, inside and out.

But can you really say you’ve mastered Master until you can play it backwards? Back-to-front? With sections flowing in order but – to borrow a term from Anthrax – the riffs and rhythm figures are following strict Efilnikufesinian logic and are played in reverse?

That’s the question. Well, one guitarist has done just that. Some readers will know him as a frontman/guitarist of English thrash stalwarts Evile, others for social media, and his name is Ol Drake. And he has turned Master Of Puppets inside out and shown us what that sounds like – and what it looks like.

It’s an interesting exercise. Sticking one’s head into a beehive might have been less traumatic experience than getting this one under the fingers but Drake has always had the chops for this sort of metal madness. It requires a certain amount of unlearning the original recording, and Kirk Hammett’s rhythm fill that introduces the verse rhythm figure becomes a considerably challenging cross-picking challenge.

How does this sound? Someone in the comments jokes that it sounds like Anthrax. And it does. It sounds like Metallica, too. Someone says it makes them feel like their having a stroke (which in the parlance of heavy metal, this is a compliment).

But maybe one commentator has got it right. As David ‘Davu’ Voiculescu of Romanian death metal sickos Rotheads suggests, ”Now do it with upstrokes only.”

Now we're talking...

If Drake is really going to commit to this inversion of Puppets, perhaps he should really commit and perform all of James Hetfield’s parts with upstrokes. That, just maybe, might be one of the days when sticking the head in a beehive looks more appealing.

Anyway, check it out above. Don’t try this at home. Or do! Just don’t blame us for the carpal tunnel. If you want to play the riff the conventional way, well, we've got a video for that too. See below. You can see more of Ol Drake's adventures in thrash guitar on Instagram.

Metallica have a documentary coming soon about the impact their music has had on their fans, and at a festival screening last week, Lars Ulrich and director Jonas Akerlund took part in a post-show conversation about the film.

The film – entitled Metallica Saved My Life - was screened as part of the California Film Institute’s Mill Valley Film Festival and in amongst the questions you’d expect about its making, one attendee asked Ulrich what advice he would give to young artists looking to follow in Metallica’s footsteps.

"Stick with it. Focus,” the 61-year-old drummer said. “You've gotta put the time in. There are many different ways you can put the time in it.

"It could be in book form or at the receiving end of teaching or whatever. But you can also literally play guitars or drums or whatever you're doing and listen. There's no right or wrong path."

He continued: "I think it's pretty clear that with anything, you've gotta put the time in. Whether you're making films or running movie festival, film festivals or whatever, you've just gotta put the time in. And then maybe be honest with yourself about your motives.

"Now, again, there's no right or wrong motives. Do you wanna play music because the passion burns inside you? Do you wanna play music to get famous? Do you want to play music to get wealthy? There's nothing wrong or right with any of it.

"But don't bullshit yourself what your motives are, if you know what I mean, because that will also lead you to wherever it is you wanna go with probably fewer forks in the road or fewer obstacles."

Rather than a straightforward band doc, the film tells Metallica’s story through their fans and their own stories of identity, loss and redemption through the band’s music. It’s an interesting approach. The idea, Ulrich told the San Francisco Chronicle was to celebrate "the diversity and the depth and the dedication and the passion of Metallica fans.”

"We kept seeing the same faces in the front rows, and so getting an understanding of their back stories, that was the most eye-opening thing for me,” the drummer said.

At present, Akerlund is still trying to secure a distributor for Metallica Saved My Life. Ultich indicated at the event that it’s likely to have a theatrical release some time around spring 2026.

Former Metallica producer Flemming Rasmussen has been talking about his work on the band’s 1988 album ...And Justice For All and the notorious absence of bass in its final mix. Essentially, he’s still baffled by it.

The album – Metallica’s fourth – was the third that Rasmussen had worked on. He came into the project late. Recording had begun with Guns N’ Roses producer Mike Clink before Rasmussen reshuffled his schedule and came onboard. As he explained to Chilean radio station Futuro, the band’s decision to eschew bass puzzled him.

“Lars (Ulrich) has a thing that every time they've done an album, he comes and plays it to me," the producer said. "And he always hopes that I nod and say, 'That's a good lad.' And when he came and played … And Justice For All for me, I just looked at him and said, 'What's that?' He said, 'That's the mix.' I said, 'No, it's not. You forgot the bass.' But there's no bass on there."

He continued: "By the time I got there, they already got some hotshot Los Angeles mixers, Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, to mix it," Rasmussen recalled. "And the story is that Metallica flew in, listened to what they'd done, and they went, 'No, no, no.' 'Where's my drum sound?' 'Where's my guitar sound?' And actually Lars said, 'Now take the bass down so you can just hear it.'

Part of it, Rasmussen speculates, was that the band were still grieving bassist Cliff Burton, who had died in a bus crash in 1986. "I think half of it is because they were on tour with Van Halen, and they flew in and heard the mix," he said. "And I think that's the point where Lars and James realised, 'We don't have Cliff anymore. It's not his bass. It's a totally different sound.' And I just think they couldn't relate to that at that point."

There was also an element of Ulrich and Hetfield testing out new bassist Jason Newsted, Rassmussen suggests: "What they hated most about Jason was that he was such a Metallica fan. So every time they asked him anything, he just did it. So I think they took it down just to piss him off, 'cause they were expecting him to say, 'Can you turn the bass up?' And he probably never did. That's why the bass is so low."

There is an irony in all this, Rasmussen says. "I read somewhere recently that …And Justice For All is the number one album in the world that people say is the reason why they started their own band," he said. "So … And Justice For All has created more new bands than any other album in the world. So if you want to start a new band, don't be a bass player."

The internet has long been awash with rumours that Mesa/Boogie built James Hetfield a signature guitar amp but it never saw a release – and the high-end amp brand's founder, Randall Smith, has confirmed that it was indeed true.

Speculation reemerged recently when the Metallica frontman joined lead guitarist Kirk Hammett in a video greeting wishing ESP a happy 50th anniversary.

The footage was shot at the metal giant’s rehearsal space, with Hammett and Hetfield sporting their ESP signature guitars. But the sight of an unidentified Mesa/Boogie head, with what looked like the initials “JH” on the front, plus an oversized dial in the middle of the control panel, had ‘Tallica tone sleuths on edge. What was this?

If your working theory was that somehow this would combine the Metallica-approved solid-state architecture of the Roland JC-120 with a Mark Series Mesa/Boogie and/or maybe a Diezel tube amp, too, then you would be on the money.

Smith, who founded Mesa but has been out of the picture since his controversial exit in August 2024, says that this Hetfield amp was to be just that, a three-in-one head, one amp to rule them all [see the pic below for what this would have looked like] .

Replying to a YouTube commenter, Mesa Sean, who had asked that very question: what was going on with this amp? Smith explained what went down.

By the sounds of it Smith, had not seen the ESP video but he knew exactly what amp he was talking about, and said he had already spoken about it in his YouTube channel.

“Not sure what you’re seeing there,” replies Smith. “I mentioned the JH amp that was to be, and we did get pretty far with it (a combo of Roland Jazz Chorus, Diesel and Mark IIC+) but he wanted all that at an undoable selling price.”

Given the prices of some of today’s tube amps, we’d like to see what an undoable selling price looked like. There would surely be many a deep-pocketed player who could and would pony up for an amp that could legitimately claim to be the ultimate Metallica amp.

As Smith explains, John Marshall, childhood friend of Kirk Hammett’s, former Metallica tech and Metal Church guitarist, was involved with the design.

Marshall has been working for Mesa/Boogie since February 1995. You might remember that he filled in for Hetfield when he broke his arm in a skateboarding accident in 1986, and then again in 1992 after the pyro engulfed the Metallica frontman during their set at Montreal. Hetfield returned to the stage just 17 days later with Marshall on guitar.

“Yes, JM knew Kirk from way before Metallica and teched for Cliff [Burton] ’til the bus wreck,” replies Smith. “James is cool and wanted everything in his rig put into one small amp, which JM did [our italics]. James also wanted an unrealistically low price so production never occurred.”

So there you go, the James Hetfield signature amp that never was. But then with Mesa/Boogie reissuing the Mark IIC++ as a limited edition production model, maybe you have all you need to to put those things together and build the ultimate Hetfield rig. It’ll cost you.

What won't cost you is a subscription to Randall Smith's YouTube channel, which is well worth checking in on as a source of Mesa/Boogie history straight from the horse's mouth.

What would have happened to Metallica had Dave Mustaine stayed in the band? Would he have knuckled under as the group diversified their sound in the 1990s? Would he have cut his hair?

That’s the question author Greg Prato asked Megadeth’s Dave Ellefson when he guested on the bassist’s podcast. Prato has recently published a book on Mustaine’s post-Metallica outfit, The World’s State Of The Art Speed Metal Band: The Megadeth Story 1983 – 2002, and he was curious whether Ellefson thought Metallica did his colleague a favour by kicking him out of the band early doors.

"Not at all, and there's a reason," Ellefson replied. "Look, things go the way they go, right? As much as it sucked to start over, I saw Dave become a vastly better guitar player pretty quickly after Metallica. I met him about six weeks after he got let go."

The bassist then explained what might have been a factor in Mustaine’s sudden improvement as a guitarist: "I remember that summer we had this friend that would go to GIT, Musicians Institute, and he'd come over and he'd smoke pot with us and he'd show us shit that he learned. Like, he'd go, 'Hey, here's this harmonic minor riff, this is exactly what fuckin' Uli John Roth is using in Speedy’s Coming or Sails Of Charon.”

"And we would sit - and his name was Ed - Ed and Dave and me we would sit there and we would go over these, and I'd learn the bass parts. I'd learn the guitar parts on bass."

So in other words, Mustaine knuckled down, improved and with a simpatico bass player alongside him was able to launch Megadeth within a year of his exit from Metallica. The rest is rock history.

The World’s State Of The Art Speed Metal Band: The Megadeth Story 1983 – 2002 is available now.

Lars Ulrich has been giving his thoughts about the passing of Ozzy Osbourne and the icon’s last gig at the Back To The Beginning show.

The Metallica drummer appeared on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM show this week and was asked how Ozzy seemed in the run-up to the gig. "He was very eloquent and very sharp in his answer,” Ulrich explained.

“We were just sitting doing small talk, but it was so warm and he was very present, coherent. It was just his body that was not in good shape, but his mind … he was eloquent and talking and in the moment."

Ulrich, was one of the few who had seen Black Sabbath soundcheck and knew then that the reunited band would do a great job. "All the rest of us were just losing our f***ing minds and then they started playing War Pigs with the lights on and the show and air raid sirens and then we were obviously, as fans - and I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn here or being disrespectful - as fans I think there was a sense from all the other musicians and friends of Black Sabbath who were there.

"We were hoping for the best. We wanted it to be the best. We wanted it to be a grand slam, but we didn’t know, because ultimately none of us knew what kind of shape they were in ...

"Then Ozzy came in singing and sounded great, hit all the notes and the lyrics and the timings and everybody was like: 'This is gonna be fine, they’re gonna f***ing kill it'."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BTBQj5foVM

Meanwhile Sharon Osbourne has said that Ozzy was deeply moved by the outpouring of love at the Back To The Beginning gig. In fact, just days before he died, he apparently admitted as much to her.

“He turned around and he said to me that night, ‘I had no idea that so many people liked me’. Ozzy’s always been in his own bubble.”

Sharon was speaking to the online platform Pollstar and said of the Villa Park gig: “It was a huge success, because it was a phenomenal event. It was the first time, I think, that anybody’s gone into retirement and done it, where the show is streamed and it goes to charity. So it’s the first time anybody has said goodnight like that, it’s the perfect way, when you’ve had such a long career, to end it.”

She also revealed that she has been working on a BBC documentary about the gig and Ozzy’s final chapter. Entitled Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, it was filmed over the last three years of his life and will be screened on BBC1 on August 18.

It’s looking increasingly likely that Metallica will be the next big name to play a residency at Las Vegas’s Sphere venue.

Nothing has been confirmed as yet. But Vital Vegas has suggested that the band could be eyeing up a run of shows in autumn 2026.

Cut to Lars Ulrich being interviewed by Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show last night (6 August) and when Stern brought up the possibility of playing the Sphere, the drummer didn’t exactly distance himself from the rumours.

“I’m not going to confirm anything, because there’s nothing to confirm,” Ulrich told Stern. “ But I’m not going to deny it, because we’re all such fans of this venue. It’s something that we’re considering, [but] nothing is etched in stone or green-lit. It’s something that we’re looking at at some point when the 2026 tour is done.”

Ulrich said that he had seen the opening night of U2’s run at the venue in 2023 and had been “blown away” by what he saw. “It’s not signed, sealed and delivered, but speaking to me and asking my opinion I would fucking love to do it.”

This comes a few months after guitarist Kirk Hammett was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter and suggested that he was open to playing the Sphere. “Oh, heck, yeah!” he exclaimed. “That’s a great example of how venues are changing. That’s using modern technology to the fullest, to really up the levels of production and entertainment, connected to AI and making it a crazy experience.”

Stern also asked Ulrich about the possibility of Metallica doing the half time show at next year’s Super Bowl, which will be in the band’s hometown of San Francisco. And he seemed positive about that too, saying, emphatically: “Fuck yeah of course we would. First of all we would do it. Second of all to do it in San Francisco would be a dream come true and would be the right fit.

“Certainly as somebody who’s represented San Francisco all over the world and shouted for decades about San Francisco and our love for the Bay Area, that part of it is the right fit. Ultimately it’s not our decision.”

Tomorrowland, the Belgian dance music festival which lost its main stage to a massive fire last week, went ahead as planned over the weekend, thanks to... Metallica.

Truly, saviours don’t come more unlikely than the thrash metal veterans. But with the main stage reduced to a smouldering cinder just hours before the festival was set to open on Friday, organisers brainstormed and asked if they could borrow Metallica’s stage, which just happened to be in storage in Austria. One phone call later and the stage was air-lifted to Belgium in time for Friday evening.

The DJ Martin Garrix, who played the festival on Friday, took to Instagram and posted a photo of himself with Lars Ulrich: "I cannot believe I’m actually typing this… but my set at Tomorrowland is still happening!" he wrote. "Massive love and a big shoutout to the incredible Tomorrowland team for pulling off miracles – and to Metallica for coming through with the new stage parts."

And Metallica responded in the most Metallica way possible - answering with a single black heart emoji.

The stage was being kept in Austria after the band’s M72 world tour finished at the London Stadium a couple of weeks back. Rather than take it back to the US, the band decided to keep it in storage in Europe before they resume the tour in Australia this autumn.

Anyway, the Tomorrowland punters were stoked that the fest went ahead as planned. One wrote on social media: “Metal + Dance Music unite forever!” Whilst another posted: “Makes me so proud to be a Raver AND a Metalhead.”

“Imagine all the hate Metallica or Lars gets all the time,” wrote another. “This is why their peers are always talking positively about them. Metallica has been doing stuff like this behind the scenes for years. They have their own charity @allwithinmyhandsfoundation . I just wish the fans would be more appreciative.”

When Metallica started out in Los Angeles in 1981, their uncompromising music – super-fast and super-heavy – made them outcasts in a rock scene dominated by glam metal stars such as Ratt and Mötley Crüe.

Metallica relocated to San Francisco in 1982, and rose to prominence as the kings of thrash metal, leading a revolution in heavy music.

Guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield, in common with most Metallica fans, had nothing but contempt for all those big-haired pretty-boy bands.

So Metallica’s choice of producer for their fifth album was a shock to those diehard fans.

When it was announced in 1990 that Bob Rock would be producing the band, cries of ‘sell out’ quickly followed, for this was a guy who’d made his name working for the enemy – not only Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi, but also other lightweights such as Loverboy.

Many felt that Metallica had lost their minds – and their balls too.

But it turned out that hiring Bob Rock was one of the smartest moves they ever made.

Metallica had reached a dead end with their 1988 album …And Justice For All. That album was so dark and convoluted, it seemed they could go no deeper.

The band that had reinvented heavy metal on three groundbreaking ’80s albums – Kill ’Em All, Ride The Lightning and Master Of Puppets – were now in need of their own reinvention.

For Metallica’s reset, simplicity was key, and drummer Lars Ulrich explained that the inspiration had come from his obsession with another legendary band.

“In 1990 I spent six months listening only to AC/DC,” Ulrich said. “And it changed my entire approach to songwriting.”

As the new songs came together, Hetfield still harboured a nagging feeling that something was not right.

“We wanted shorter songs that were meatier,” he recalled. “But I couldn’t help but think this is very easy to understand, very singable.”

But he need not have worried. That remit – shorter and meatier – was nailed in two monolithic songs: Enter Sandman and Sad But True. And in both, the influence of AC/DC was evident.

Enter Sandman, based on a sinister-sounding riff, had the measured power and epic feel of Hells Bells, the opening track of AC/DC’s Back In Black, while Sad But True had a crunchy, halting riff which recalled that album’s title track.

There were echoes of the glory days of thrash metal in Holier Than Thou and Through The Never.

And what was begun in 1984 with Fade To Black – in part, a rock ballad in the classic tradition – was developed in two songs with heavy emotional weight: The Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters.

Hetfield had felt conflicted about Nothing Else Matters.

“What was it about not wanting to write a love song?” he said. “That’s pretty easy. It’s a huge sign of weakness. You’re in Metallica. This is hardcore. What the fuck are you doing? But that song was for me. It’s about being on the road, missing someone at home. But it was written in such a way that it connected with so many people. It wasn’t just about two people. It was about a connection with your higher power, lots of different things.”

Equally personal to Hetfield, and again addressing the subject of belief in a higher power, were the words he sang in The God That Failed – in part a requiem for his mother Cynthia, who refused treatment for cancer because her religion forbade it, and died in 1979, when Hetfield was 16.

Musically and lyrically, The God That Failed is one of the most powerful tracks on an album on which Metallica pushed the boundaries on every level.

The new album was titled simply Metallica. But with another echo of Back In Black in its cover – solid black, save for the faint outline of the Metallica logo and a coiled snake – it would forever be known as The Black Album.

And just as Back In Black became AC/DC’s biggest record – moreover, the best-selling rock album of all time – so the Black Album would be Metallica’s greatest success. It hit No.1 all across the world.

To date it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. And ultimately the controversy over Bob Rock was unfounded.

The huge, deep sound of this album – illustrated most powerfully in Enter Sandman, the definitive ’90s metal anthem – was instrumental in Metallica becoming one of the biggest bands on the planet.

Kirk Hammett’s guitar collection is getting a lot of attention these days. Gibson made a feature-length YouTube video about it, and is documenting it in a deluxe coffee-table book. His most-famous electric guitars – Greeny, the Mummy, his ‘Factory Black’ 1959 Les Paul Standard et al – are household names.

But the Metallica guitarist has a problem. It’s a problem that many some players might relate to, an occupational hazard in Hammett’s instance. He has too many guitars. So many that he admits he has been selling them anonymously online to shrink his collection.

In a recent interview with Metal Hammer, Hammett says he has been sneaking onto eBay and Reverb to thin out the herd.

“I’ll list them on eBay or Reverb and I don’t say they’re mine,” says Hammett. “I get anxiety because I believe guitars should be played… I don’t believe in just storing them away and forgetting about them. I feel guilty! So I have been on a quest to shrink my collection and get rid of the ones I don’t play.”

People collect guitars for all kinds of reasons. Some just can’t help it. Others might see it as an investment. Players like Hammett collect guitars to play them, to have another tool for the stage or studio.

That is one of the reasons you will always see him out on tour with Greeny, his 1959 Les Paul Standard owned by two late blues guitar icons, Peter Green, from whom it takes its name, and Gary Moore.

Speaking to Total Guitar in 2020 for a tribute to Green, Hammett insisted that Greeny needed to played, shared with the world. When asked what should happen to it after he dies, Hammett insisted that the guitar should be played.

“I don’t know, but I hope it is someone who can keep on playing it, and keep on recording with it, and keep on touring with it, so that people who love the guitar can go see it and hear it in real time,” he said. “If I could find someone who was capable enough and qualified enough, sure, then by all means. This guitar needs to be out there. It’s a gift to the music world and I should just keep giving that gift.”

Back to the issue at hand, giving away the guitars is one solution, too. Hammett has been there, done that.

“I try to trade them off because it’s better than just doing a cash deal,” he says. “Everyone leaves with a smile on their face and has something they want! Another way is to just give stuff away.”

The guitars Hammett has been selling off are probably not the ones you will see in The Collection. He won’t be getting rid of his vintage Gibson Flying Vs any time soon. He owns is another Les Paul Standard that was once owned by Moore, and Moore said that this one sounded even better than Greeny. We are not going to find that on eBay.

But maybe if you see some ESP KH-2s on sale, and the seller is posting it out from Hawaii… Well, then maybe, just maybe that KH-2 Hammett’s signature guitar and go-to electric for all Metallica business is coming from the man himself. This, of course, is all guesswork. All we know is that a lot of the guitars came were from the Death Magnetic era.

“I played them on that tour, then as soon as that tour stopped they went into storage again as I’m not playing those songs,” says Hammett.

Looking back on that era, there was a black Jackson Rhoads with the gold pickguard. We haven’t seen that in a while. He was also rocking a black KH-2 around then with a mirror pickguard and metal control knobs. Or could some of these guitars come from his stockpile of custom graphic ESPs? Speaking to Gibson’s Mark Agnesi, Hammett said he might have up to 40 of them.

You can find out more about Kirk Hammett: The Collection at Gibson. The book was written my MusicRadar alumnus Chris Vinnicombe (who also wrote Slash: The Collection) and features exclusive photography from Ross Halfin.

The first time Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr saw Metallica live in concert he was 14 years old. It was at the Lakewood Amphitheatre in Atlanta, the year 1989, and Metallica were tearing it up on the Damaged Justice Tour. It was a “very profound” experience. Starr remembers it to this day.

But maybe the second time he caught the Bay Area behemoths live will live even longer in the memory. Speaking to Otis Gibbs for his YouTube channel, Starr says it was not only a date with metal royalty, but a chance to play one of the most iconic electric guitars of all time.

Starr was attending Metallica’s 2019 show in Birmingham on the invitation of his friend, Richard Brent, the curator of the Allman Brothers Big House Museum in Macon, Georgia.

“He’s a guitar nerd like the rest of us also, and so that’s perfect because he – basically – was the caretaker of Duane Allman’s ’57 Goldtop, and the guy who owned the guitar at the time, and the guy who owns it now, will allow Richard to take that guitar and be played by people they approve,” says Starr.

If you are in Macon, look up the Big House. You will no doubt see the 1957 Goldtop on display. This is the guitar Allman bought in ’69, developing the archetypical southern slide guitar sound on it. Allman played it extensively during the tracking of Derek and the Dominos’ Layla.

Few guitars and their owners wrote themselves into music history in such a brief period of time. Allman swapped it out not long after Layla, trading it plus $200 and a 50-watt Marshall tube amp for a cherry burst 1959 Les Paul Standard. Tragically, Allman would die in a motorcycle accident in 1971, aged just 24.

Very few players are on the approved list. Billy Gibbons has played it. Derek Trucks has played it – he actually owns one that is one serial number away from Allman’s. Vince Gill has played it. Starr is lucky enough to have played it many times. “Great guitar,” he says. “Definitely, you feel a ghost in that guitar.”

This was a day in which Hetfield was going to get to play it. With Metallica having fully embraced digital amp modellers for their live show, Starr and Brent thought they’d take something suitably old-school to complement the Goldtop. Grabbing a Fender Princeton tube combo, they set off for Birmingham.

“We go in and James, the tour manager, and James’ tech, Chad [Zaemisch] come in and they’re fantastic, so friendly, and great hosts. We play the guitar and pass it,” says Starr. “James Hetfield and I are passing Duane Allman’s guitar back and forth – it was crazy.”

People might point to the Mesa/Boogie MK11c+ head, or the legendary – and sadly missing Marshall – as the secrets to Hetfield’s tone. Having watched him up close, playing backstage on the Goldtop, Starr says its all technique. “He sounds like James Hetfield playing through a Princeton,” he says. “On that right hand it was just like [tails off].”

Starr and Hetfield had a moment. They were swapping pictures of guitars on their phones. Hetfield had something cool with him to show Starr, too, and gets Zaemisch to bring in a ’58 Gibson Explorer. Starr’s mind is so blown he doesn’t even notice Kirk Hammett has arrived. He wants to have a shot on the Goldtop, too.

But he also might just have one of the few Les Pauls that can rival it for historical significance, Greeny, the 1959 Les Paul Standard that was once owned then named after the late Peter Green, then owned by the late Gary Moore, before Hammett picked it up in 2014 and has been playing it onstage and in the studio ever since.

When Hammett asked if he would like to play it, Starr was taken aback. In the moment he forgot Hammett even owned it. When he picked Greeny up, it did not disappoint.

“I said, ‘You’re kidding?’ He said, ‘Yeah, go get it.’ So his tech goes and brings it in,” says Starr. “Man, it was just this surreal experience. That guitar is so worn, and loved, and broken and repaired. And so the first thing I do is put it in the middle position and play Oh Well. That’s what you do! Then we took pictures.”

At the time, Hammett’s purchase of Greeny – which has led to a whole line of Gibson and Epiphone replica signature guitars – was the subject of much conjecture. Just how much did Hammett pay for it? Some people had suggested crazy money. Hammett put the question to Starr.

“He goes, ‘What do they have me paying for this guitar?’ I was a little like, ‘I’m not supposed to say. You’re not supposed to ask me that,’” says Starr. “‘Shit, man, I don’t know.’ But I think at the time people were like [whispers] four million. ‘I dunno, man. Lots.’”

“Well I can’t tell you what I paid for it,” replies Hammett. “But I can tell you what I didn’t pay for it, and it ain’t what you’re all saying!”

We can say how much Allman’s Goldtop was worth that day. It sold at auction in 2019 for an eye-watering $1.25 million via Gotta Have Rock and Roll.

If you’re not on the list of approved players, that’s okay. You can still check it out if you happen to be in Macon, Georgia. Just head to the Big House Museum. You can hear more from Otis Stiggs and Starr at Stiggs' YouTube channel

On June 4, 1996, Metallica’s sixth album Load was released — arguably the most highly anticipated metal album of that entire decade.

The band’s previous LP — titled simply Metallica, but better known as The Black Album — was a multi-million selling phenomenon that elevated its creators into one of the biggest bands in the world.

And the five-year gap between The Black Album and Load raised the public demand for new Metallica music to fever pitch.

Ahead of the release of Load, the four members of the band spoke to Kerrang! magazine.

Strangely, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett ended up talking more about other guitar players he admired than the album his band had just made.

“I love Carlos Santana,” Hammett said. “He’s so humble it freaks me out. And Buddy Guy —he’s a part of the generation that pretty much defined electric blues.”

However, on the Load album there had been a significant change in Hammett’s role — as was explained to Kerrang! by the band’s rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist James Hetfield.

“As far as letting Kirk play rhythm guitar and shit goes, maybe I’ve not mellowed out, but just broadened my scope,” Hetfield said. “Maybe I'm actually being a little more confident in myself to let someone else do it. I'm not so afraid that he [Hammett] is doing it.

“I guess I was a little bit afraid before. I still freak out about it, but I hold back and let Kirk do his thing.

“We still have a focus on what we want. I'll still say, ‘That’s a little bit not good — play something better!’

“But on this record, we've opened our minds to a lot of new shit, discovering how some of these other band members are actually pretty good! Everybody's brought something new to the table.”

Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich had always been the dominant forces in Metallica’s creative process, and bassist Jason Newsted confirmed as much when he discussed his own input to Load.

“James has the last word on everything,” Newsted admitted. “I submitted more material than ever before for a Metallica record, but it's just not where James was — or Lars, for that matter.

“We tried some of [his own] songs, but it just wasn't working out. James writes this shit that is so good it's hard to compete with it.

“I feel more satisfied putting my bass parts on James's cool writing than I would getting five of my songs on the record — I really do.”

Newsted described the style of Load as a new departure for Metallica.

“If anything, it's groovy,” he said. “Every song has its own vibe.

“The experimentation factor is higher than ever. The guitars and bass are definitely looser.

“For the first time, we're doing what 98% of other bands do — putting the bass down right on the drums and then the guitar after that. Kirk is playing rhythm guitar for the first time. Also that adds a lot to the character of it. The last album was great, but this one is a bit more real.”

It was Lars Ulrich — always the most outspoken member of Metallica — who revealed the most about the making of Load.

“This is the most relaxed this band has ever been,” he said, “and I think that ultimately shows up in the music. The word experimental is so corny, but we went into the studio before we were done writing.

“I don't think anyone really knew where this record was going to end up when we started it. We're just blessed with the fact that whatever we do ends up sounding like Metallica, but still a little different.

“We recorded a lot of this album live as a band right off the floor," Ulrich said. "So it has much more of a band sound than ever before, more of a group spirit and a whole other level of confidence and attitude.

“This the new rock 'n' roll Metallica. The riffs are becoming much greasier, bluesier, dirtier. We really cruise through it because we know we can do this better than anybody else.

“We’re a lot more confident than on the last record, and we're more comfortable with [producer] Bob Rock.

He continued: “We’ve been playing simpler grooves stuff for five years. We started with Enter Sandman and Sad But True. Before that, we were still doing ten minute jazz fusion songs!

“The word ‘loose’ comes up a lot. To me, it means we're trying not to get stuck into one thing. It's different, but it's still Metallica.

"12 years ago, when we started opening up on Ride The Lightning with Fade To Black, a lot of people said, ‘What the fuck is this about?’ And we said, 'We don't want to be stuck doing one thing.’

“I know this album is different," Ulrich said, "but I also know it's really fucking strong Metallica.”

He also spoke of his drive to succeed and how this shaped The Black Album.

“One of the long running jokes is my obsession with all of this,” he said. “When you’re creating it's always there. What are you going to call the record? What are you going to call song seven?

“It's very hard for me to listen to anybody playing music without analysing the arrangement, without thinking about the snare drum sounds — it’s part of your gig.

“In the last few years, I've realised that I could mentally remove myself from it for periods of time, and I find it gets easier for me to pull away.

“But he hungriest I've ever been was with The Black Album. The whole year leading up to that record, I knew what was going to go on. Maybe it sounds arrogant, but I could feel it. It was lining up — the right the songs, the timing of what was going on around us.

“I just knew that after ten years, everything was coming together at the right time, and I was pretty determined to see it through.”

Ulrich admitted that he may have over-indulged in the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle during the early ’90s.

“I think it culminated in 1992 when we toured America with Guns N’ Roses. I was looking into some of that rock star stuff a little bit, hanging out with some of those guys, kind of exploring their world a little bit.

“James was off on his own trip, doing a lot of things by himself, and for a couple of months in 1992 it could have gone off the tracks. But I think that the second we feel something is amiss, we pull together.

He concluded: “With the success of The Black Album, the only thing that matters is we got through it — and this, now, is the strongest we've ever been as a band.”

New deluxe editions of the Load album are released on 13 June

Dave Mustaine has been picking at some old bones of contention between him and his erstwhile bandmates in Metallica.

The Megadeth frontman was interviewed on The Shawn Ryan Show podcast and suggested that Metallica's Enter Sandman riff may have something in common with one from fellow thrash band Excel, in their song Tapping Into An Emotional Void.

It’s not the first time Mustaine has done this. Comparisons have been made over the years and indeed there’s no denying that there are certain similarities. But though Excel did apparently consider suing at one point, no case has ever been brought against Metallica.

Mustaine, though, seems unwilling to let this go. Or his exit from the band back in the early 1980s, which he discussed at length during his three-hour conversation with Ryan.

“I made sure not to ever say that I quit, because I wanted people to know that I was unfairly dismissed and that I didn’t give a shit,” the Megadeth man of his time with Metallica. “Because we may not be as big as they are. Hell, their biggest song, Enter Sandman - go look up the band Excel right now. Look up their song, I think it’s something ‘Into the Unknown.’ Pretty similar.”

By ‘Into The Unknown’ Mustaine was presumably referring to Tapping Into the Emotional Void.

“At the time, I was really mad and I didn’t wanna forgive them for what they did,” Mustaine said of his ousting from Metallica. “And I told them when I left, ‘Do not use my music. And of course they used it. Ride the Lightning, I wrote. The Call of Ktulu, I wrote. Let’s see, what else? There’s Phantom Lord, Metal Militia, Jump in the Fire, The Four Horsemen. And I wrote a bunch of Leper Messiah, too. They didn’t give me credit on that. You listen to the riffs, you know they’re my riffs.

“It’s, like, you think I’m gonna all of a sudden hear my riff and say, ‘That’s not me.’ So, yeah, I wrote a lot of their music that made them, and all the solos on that first record were mine - the best Kirk [Hammett[ could [do was] try and copy them.”

Dave Mustaine left Metallica in April 1983 – over 42 years ago.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here is Tapping Into The Emotional Void:

And here’s Enter Sandman.

Compare and contrast.

PRODUCER WEEK 2025: In early 1986, Metallica’s rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist James Hetfield was in bullish mood, talking about the band’s new album as it was being mixed at Amigo Studios in Los Angeles.

“I know that on this album the fast ones are some of the fastest we’ve ever written,” he told Sounds writer Steffan Chirazi. “We’d never try to forget what Metallica formed for, no way. It’s just that maturity in style breeds better material all round.”

The album in question was Master Of Puppets, and its title track was everything that Hetfield promised.

It was fast - 220bpm at peak velocity. It had a sense of artistic maturity in its epic scope and dramatic twists and turns, playing out over eight-and-a-half-minutes through several tempo and time signature changes.

It was a guitar onslaught incorporating airtight staccato riffing, clean arpeggiated chords, harmonising twin-lead runs and a shredding, frantic solo from lead guitarist Kirk Hammett.

And it would become an anthem for one of the most innovative and visionary metal bands of both the 1980s and of all time.

1986 was a landmark year for Metallica and their contemporaries from the thrash metal scene that had revolutionised heavy music in the early '80s.

It was the year of Slayer’s Reign In Blood, Megadeth’s Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, Dark Angel’s Darkness Descends, Kreator’s Pleasure To Kill and Destruction’s Eternal Devastation.

But in the three years since Metallica had kickstarted that revolution with their breakneck debut Kill ’Em All, they had broadened their sound and created in Master Of Puppets an album so ambitious and unique that their rivals were left playing catch-up.

During the Puppets tour, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said: “It’s never been that pre-planned. We’ve just been following our own instincts, doing our own thing and letting it go in whatever direction feels natural. There’s never been a specific attempt to create a new sound or anything – that just happens.”

But if the initial creative spark was as instinctual as Ulrich claimed, this was music crafted with a meticulous attention to detail.

In the making of Master Of Puppets, Metallica’s focus was razor-sharp.

As James Hetfield told Steffan Chirazi: “On a lot of numbers there are little things that demand a lot of attention. The album demands this sort of shit, man, and we know it’ll make the difference."

It was on 3 September 3, 1985 that Metallica began the recording sessions for Master Of Puppets at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, with the studio’s in-house engineer Flemming Rasmussen as their co-producer.

“It was a long time ago,” Rasmussen said in a 2022 interview with Total Guitar. “But I remember it all so clearly.”

Metallica had made their second album Ride The Lightning at Sweet Silence with Rasmussen at the controls back in 1984, and it was Lars Ulrich who prompted that decision.

As a fan of Ritchie Blackmore, the legendary guitarist of Deep Purple and Rainbow fame, Ulrich had loved the sound of Rainbow’s 1981 album Difficult To Cure, produced by the band’s bassist Roger Glover at Sweet Silence with Rasmussen as engineer.

“Before I started working with Metallica I didn’t know anything about them,” Rasmussen admitted. “But when I listened to Kill ’Em All I heard a lot of energy, for sure. And when I met them, I loved the attitude.

“It was Metallica against the world in those days. You see this attitude a lot in young bands but Metallica was beyond that – they had that drive and the chemistry between the four guys.

“We talked about Kill ’Em All and they were pretty stoked with it, but they didn’t like the sound of it. But they’d heard what I’d done with Ritchie Blackmore and they all loved the sound on that.

“So we scrutinised the guitar sounds from Kill ’Em All and my impression was it was good but I felt we could do a lot better – which I think Ride The Lightning proved.”

There was one major problem during the recording of Ride The Lightning.

Hetfield’s modified Marshall amp had been stolen during a European tour. As a result, Rasmussen spoke to several Danish metal bands, including Metallica’s friends in Mercyful Fate, who brought various amps to the studio for Hetfield to try out.

“We had 10 or 11 Marshall stacks set up,” Rasmussen recalled, “and James tried to figure out which of them sounded like his that was stolen.”

Ride The Lightning was a real breakthrough — a big leap forward for Metallica artistically and commercially, selling enough to secure the band a major label deal with Elektra in the US.

In the wake of that success, it made perfect sense for the band to return to Sweet Silence and continue with Rasmussen as co-producer.

All of the material for Master Of Puppets was written and complete when the band arrived at the studio.

“Metallica made pretty elaborate demos,” Rasmussen said. “They worked with those cassette tapes of riffs and they’d stick the riffs together and take a part from one song and stick it into another song. So all of that was more or less done when we started on Master Of Puppets.”

For much of this album, Hetfield was playing his iconic white Gibson Explorer (the standard ceramic humbuckers were replaced with EMG 81s in 1987), but the recording of one absurdly heavy track, The Thing That Should Not Be, saw him turn to a Jackson KV1 and down-tune for the first time.

His watertight distortion was achieved not with FX – “The last time I used a distortion pedal was on Ride The Lightning,” he noted in 1992, “and it was hell!” – but from the molotov cocktail of a Mesa/Boogie Mark II C+ rewired as a preamp, and a 100-watt Marshall power amp with 4x12 cabs.

On lead guitar, Kirk Hammett was more relaxed about effects, favouring an Ibanez Tube Screamer and a Dunlop Cry Baby. And he fell back on his old axes, including a Gibson Flying V (either ’74 or ’78) and a Fernandes Strat copy with a Floyd Rose.

Like Hetfield, Hammett was also in thrall to the fusion of Mesa and Marshall. “Boogie made those heads for a short time in the mid 80s,” he told Guitar World. “There’s something about Boogie Mark II C heads that was really unique and very individual in their gain stages and sound. Most of Master of Puppets was tracked with Boogie heads and Marshall heads combined.”

Elaborating on the album’s amp sound, Rasmussen explained: “On this album they got the Mesa/Boogie endorsement, so they all played with five-band EQ. They got these new amps and they were all stoked, but when we tried them out, we thought… ‘What the fuck?’

“You twist the knobs and when you turn up the table you expect more top, right? But it was more or less the opposite. So we really messed around a lot with them.”

He continued: “We set up these Mesa/Boogie amps and we hooked up their new cabinets. I think we used two different cabinets on all the guitars.

“I used a variety of six mics on each guitar. I had two Shure SM57s right in the cone. I had two BMKs – they’re called DPA now, a test mic by a Danish company – I used them for room mics, so there’s one room mic on each cabinet.

“And on top of that I used AKG Gold tubes, in a 45-degree angle out from each cabinet, three or four feet away. So three mics on each cabinet, and every time we did a new part I’d fiddle with these mics till we got the right sound.”

Rasmussen worked on three Metallica albums - Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets and 1988’s …And Justice For All.

As he says now: “All the albums I did with Metallica were recorded on 24 track analogue tape.

“There’s not a computer in sight, so there’s no editing – everything is played. So we only had the 24 tracks in principle, but we used a synchroniser so we had 46 tracks available.

“You’d do the drums, and once they were done you’d start doing the rhythm guitars. I was always waiting to put the bass on till after the rhythm guitars, which is very important in metal music which is guitar riff-based.

“The bass player has to adjust to the riff the guitar is playing – not the other way round.

“So we didn’t record the bass until after the rhythm guitars, which was good in the case of Cliff [Burton, Metallica bassist until his death in September 1986], because he was a player who played to what he heard.”

Metallica’s studio process was notable for Hetfield recording rhythm tracks for both himself and Hammett to ensure the intricate riffing was matched to millisecond perfection.

As Rasmussen explained: “On the albums I’ve done, James played all the rhythm guitars. Kirk doesn’t play a single rhythm guitar on Master Of Puppets.

“We’d set up James’s gear and Kirk’s gear and James would alternate between the stacks to do the parts.

“Most of the main guitars started out on James’s Firebird and then we would swap guitars all the time.

“Most times we would start with James’s rhythm guitar, with two tracks in stereo, so we had the main guitar. We would then dub that on one track playing on Kirk’s equipment, which was sometimes a power amp and one Marshall pre-amp.

“So we had two double-tracked rhythm guitars doing James’s part, and then he would play Kirk’s part on Kirk’s guitar.”

Rasmussen added with a smile: “James can strum to anything. He’s the rhythm master. He’s tight as fuck. That was never a problem.

“I rate James as the best rhythm guitar player on the planet. He’s unbelievable.”

On recording the iconic title track, Rasmussen remembered: “There’s a lot of melodies in there, and depending on what we needed we would do six, eight, 12 tracks of melody guitars.

“James is playing his rhythm part, then he’s doubling his own rhythm part on Kirk’s equipment, then he plays Kirk’s parts on Kirk’s equipment and then he goes back to his own gear and double tracks Kirk’s part with his sound.

“So we’ve got four rhythm parts, two James and two Kirk, all played on different guitars.”

Whilst Hetfield was taking care of the track’s complicated and extremely technical rhythm parts, Hammett would be writing and perfecting his lead parts.

“Kirk would have a lot of spare time,” Ramussen said. “They were all hanging around the studio while we were recording. It was very rare that I was there alone.

“There was not a lot they could do in Copenhagen in winter. So Kirk would sit in the TV room, composing his solos while we recorded rhythm guitars and drums.

“It would be me, Lars and Kirk, and [Kirk] would play the solo he’d composed.

“Some of the solos are really long. Lars especially had ideas of how it had to be, like, ‘We want a Ritchie Blackmore-type thing here.’ Lars has a huge knowledge of music.”

He added: “Kirk’s solo, going from beginning to end, we would punch in. He’d do it bit by bit – so that he got the performance that he wanted and we wanted. Kirk’s a damn good guitar player.”

As for pedals, Rasmussen noted: “We tried everything we had. The set-up was pretty

elaborate on the Boogies. I had a studio parametric EQ inserted at the back so I

could sculpt the tone in the control room.

“The amps were in the control room and we had the cabs out in the studio [room]. On top of what was going on on the amp I had inserted a studio EQ.”

As for the distinctive twin-lead harmonies that lead the song’s middle-eight section, he said: “Most of that was Kirk playing. On some of the solos we have a wah coming in and going out again, so obviously we used a wah pedal, but for distortion we probably had Tube Screamers and whatever I had lying around – Marshall boosters, all sorts of stuff.

“But we would boost the amps quite a bit, so a lot of the distortion would come from the amp.”

The recording of Master Of Puppets finally wrapped on Christmas Day morning, 1986.

Lars Ulrich enjoyed the festive period at his family’s home near Copenhagen while Hetfield, Hammett and Burton flew back to California.

The band reunited for a gig in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve before the album was mixed in LA by Michael Wagener, the German producer who had worked on hit records for various metal bands including Mötley Crüe, Dokken and Accept.

Master Of Puppets was released on 3 March, 1986, and went on to become Metallica’s first million seller.

As Flemming Rasmussen said in conclusion: “It really is an amazing record.”

Kirk Hammett has recorded some of the greatest solos in metal guitar. He is Metallica’s lead guitar power-up, and while there are leitmotifs in his work – he is a flamboyant proponent of the wah pedal – there’s all kinds of solos in his discography.

You’ve got the gnarly energy of the Kill ‘Em All era, Metallica’s Megaforce debut exploding out the gate with face-ripper from The Ripper on Hit The Lights. You’ve got the magisterial display of melody and fretboard pyro on Creeping Death, similarly dark magic performed on Master Of Puppets, and there was all kinds of modalities being referenced on …And Justice For All.

Then The Black Album came along and freed up all kinds of avenues for expression. Enter Sandman gets all the attention for the riff but that solo is scorching. But which of Hammett’s solos is his greatest work?

Guitar World recently put that question to him and, with some difficulty, Hammett had an answer, and it was from the Load era.

“I think I’ll say it’s the one from Hero of the Day. Every note counts and fits perfectly,” said Hammett. “I feel like everything is in its right place and the solo lifts the song to another level, which I always try to do – even if I’m not always successful. The track has a different level of intensity afterwards.”

Not for nothing, his solo on One, recorded at the 11th hour, would be a contender in our book. It, too, takes the track to a different level of intensity. …And Justice For All is the sound of Hammett in full force.

The Shortest Straw has to be in the conversation, but if pushed, Master Of Puppet’s downtuned doomer, The Thing That Should Not Be would be take home our Palme d’Or, just for the sheer Lovecraftian horror of it, that electric guitar tone – and it’s concise.

Hammett had other solos in contention. Fuel, from Reload, was one. “The solo in Fuel was done on the green Strat from the I Disappear video,” he said. “I love that guitar so much. I still have it; that thing just feels like an old friend. So I really love how that solo came out.”

Unforgiven III, from 2008’s Death Magnetic, was another. But Hammett admits he can’t play it anymore; the recorded is a little out of time and recreating something that’s out of time is too counterintuitive to get his head around.

Hammett bringing up two Load era solos might be where his head is at right now. A couple of weeks ago, Hammett told the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast that he had 767 riffs stockpiled away and that maybe now was the time to revisit a sound that divided opinion.

“It’s interesting, ‘cos nowadays I run into fans and they love that era – they love Load and Reload,” said Hammett. “But when those albums first came out, it was, like, ‘Fuck Load!’ Fuck Reload!’ Fuck Metallica!’ But nowadays we play [Reload song] Fuel and people go nuts.”

Metallica could have packed it all in and walked away after the tragic bus crash that claimed the life of bassist Cliff Burton on 27 September 1986. But they didn’t. They persisted, recruiting Jason Newsted from Flotsam And Jetsam, and putting together the most audacious – perhaps the most brilliant – album of their career.

…And Justice For All was never going to be an easy record. Not for the band. Not for the audience. Even now, it sounds audacious. Never before or since have James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett committed such a hostile electric guitar tone to tape.

With its dense, byzantine arrangements, tricksy time signatures, and a mercilessly bleak atmosphere, …And Justice For All stands as the apogee of Metallica’s musical ambitions – at least as far as thrash metal was concerned.

Their debut album Kill ‘Em All helped inaugurate that art form in the summer of 1983. Ride The Lightning (1984) would widen the canvas, testing the hypothesis that headbanger savagery and a burgeoning appetite for musical progressivism could be held in perfect equilibrium, and two years later, the crystalline front-to-back perfection of Master Of Puppets presented material evidence that this hypothesis would hold true.

…And Justice For All doubled down on all that came before. It had to. And the album’s centre-piece, the anti-war epic One, realigned the stars for Metallica. Alternating between fatalist balladry of the verse and the rhythmically unwieldy riff violence of the chorus, before going full metal jacket on its rat-tat-tat second act, its explosive dynamics shattered the glass ceiling for underground metal bands.

Anything was possible now. In 1990, One even won Metallica their first Grammy for Best Metal Performance, after Jethro Tull famously usurped them the year previous. They broke their own rule, too, and shot a promo video.

But if it was instrumental in finding a wider audience it would do so on Metallica’s terms. One is all kinds of brutal, lyrically and musically. We could see One as the thematic successor to Disposable Heroes, or For Whom The Bell Tolls, or as completing a thrash power ballad trilogy that started with Fade To Black and Welcome Home (Sanitarium).

The song itself was inspired by the catastrophically injured protagonist in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, a war veteran who loses his limbs, sight, hearing and speech while his mind remains sharp, wishing for death. Hetfield’s lyrics give him a voice and they could scarcely be darker.

As with all the best ideas in metal, the inspiration for the melody came from Venom, whose B to G chord progression on Buried Alive [from the seminal 1982 album Black Metal] had been stuck in Hetfield’s brain, and he would find a use for it during the opening section for One. The thrash violence came after the fact.

“The kick drum machine-gun part near the end wasn’t written with the war lyrics in mind, it just came out that way,” Hetfield told Guitar World in 2009.

But the most significant modulation on One is not from B to G; it’s from those pristine clean tones those scooped EQ thrash tones courtesy of a Mesa/Boogie Mark C++ head.

By this point, Hetfield was a devotee of the Roland JC-120 Jazz-Chorus, the solid-state combo with onboard chorusing and a credible claim to being the best clean guitar amp of all time.

Would Hammett have used one too? Perhaps. But as he remembers it, in the same Guitar World interview as Hetfield's, the A/DA MP-1 preamp rack module was responsible for his cleans.

“I used an ADA preamp and an A/DA MP-1. It was a programmable digital amp that had tubes in it, with a separate rack-mounted Aphex parametric EQ,” said Hammett. “I remember blending that thing with the Boogies for lead sounds and clean sounds. The clean sound on One was done almost exclusively with the A/DA MP-1.”

Hammett’s guitar for the one sessions was his ESP KH-1, the all black first-generation S-style signature guitar from the brand with the skull-and-crossbones fretboard inlays. When speaking to Mark Agnesi for Gibson TV’s The Collection, Hammett described his KH-1 as a “Flying V in a Strat body” with one particular modification mandated by the demands of performing One live.

“All my ESP guitars have had the same specs ever since 1988 or ’89. It’s just paint jobs. That’s the only thing that changes,” he said. “There’s a slight scallop from like the 17th fret. It’s only so I can do the guitar solo for One. [Laughs] The only reason why it’s scalloped! That’s the only reason why. Nothing else. Because I am not a right-hand [tapping] technique guy.”

And yet on one he is, tapping out a pentatonic arpeggio in the upper registers. Hammett told Guitar World that he might have sweated over his lead parts on One but that tapping came easy. With Ulrich working those double kick drums, the staccato strobes and pyro of it all, how else could he play it?

“The main guitar solo at the end, with the right-hand, Eddie Van Halen-type tapping, came almost immediately,” said Hammett. “That guitar solo was just a breeze; what was going on with the rhythm section in that part of the song was just very, very exciting for me to solo over.”

The other solos, not so easy. Hammett credits Hetfield for inspiring his first solo. It came from a melody the Metallica frontman was playing around with. The clean picked arpeggios in the first solo came from a chord exercise but sounds anything but. As for the solo in the middle of One? Hammett was going to suffer for that. But this was never going to be an easy album.

…And Justice For All had a difficult birth. Mike Clink, who had produced Guns N’ Roses’ incendiary debut, Appetite For Destruction, was in the control room, only to be replaced by returning Master Of Puppets producer Flemming Rasmussen. The finished mix would immediately be controversial on account of Newsted’s bass guitar being all but inaudible.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, Hetfield admitted that a relentless touring schedule, epic sets at high-volume, had fried their hearing and this ultimately affected the mix – especially with Hetfield and Ulrich more involved in the control room.

“I know there’s quite a few people that love that record; there’s a real punchiness to it, and because it’s somewhat progressive, that does fit with it a bit,” said Hetfield. “You can hear things a little better.

“Obviously there’s not much depth to it as far as thickness goes and, you know, it is what it is because that’s Lars and I trying to venture into producing ourselves and discovering… Well, you can tell who produced it because the guitars and the drums and the vocals are really loud.”

The walls were closing in. Metallica were running out of time, and mixed …And Justice For All during their run on the 1988 Monsters Of Rock Tour, where they where sharing a bill with Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and German hard-rockers Kingdom Come. Hetfield said this was fine while they were on the East Coast. As the tour ventured westwards it proved to be a logistical nightmare.

“On a day off, Lars and I would fly… well, fly or drive. Most of the times, drive,” he said. “I remember at the time limos were a big deal and it actually had leg room for me.

“Sleeping on an eight-hour drive in a limo to wherever from somewhere in Iowa or wherever when we were mixing this thing in upstate New York. So we were pretty fatigued, ear-fatigued as well. That’s a big factor in it, I think. There’s a lot more high-end and it had to cut through our deaf ears at that point.”

Physically, they were on their feet. Hammett had not yet finished all of his solos and time was of the essence. He, too, had to make the commute back to the Hit Factory in New York to track lead guitars under Rasmussen’s guidance.

“When we were recording that album I really didn’t have as much time to do the solos as I’d wanted to,” said Hammett. “I think we had to leave for the Monsters Of Rock Tour on a Saturday and it was Thursday but we were still recording guitar solos. I can remember showing up at 10 or 11 in the morning and working on solos and that leading to two or three o’clock in the morning the next day. It was just ridiculous: 15 or 16 hours of recording. And I had four or five days of that.”

Monsters Of Rock would have been an occasion to try out some of the new material but only Harvester Of Sorrow made it onto the setlist – which is ironic considering just how much trouble it was giving Hammett. That was one solo that he just couldn’t put away, and Rasmussen was not going to push him for it.

“I was so tired, it was so late at night and my fingers and hands were so fatigued that I had trouble bending a note in key to another note,” said Hammett. “I remember Flemming saying, ‘Okay, just bend it this much. Just bend it a half-step and I’ll take it up with the harmoniser for the other half-step.’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Is this really necessary, or can we just stop and do it all over again properly tomorrow?’ But there wasn’t a tomorrow. We had to do it that way.”

That middle section solo to One was still haunting Hammett. “I must have recorded and rerecorded it about 15 million times,” he told Guitar World. “I wanted a middle ground between the really melodic solo at the beginning and the fiery solo at the end.”

He didn’t get it. What he did get was more air miles and more late nights. He finally tracked it on the eve of their performance at the RFK Stadium, in Washington DC, on 10 June. He had the solo, a piece that could sit between the melodic grandeur of One’s first act and the artillery fire of the outro. The Washington show sucked but so what. One was complete.

It would make its live debut on 11 September 1988 at the MTK Stadion, Budapest, Hungary, on the opening night of the Damaged Justice tour, when Metallica, similarly damaged but renewed, would open a new chapter for the band.

…And Justice For All was the ne plus ultra of thrash metal progressivism. There was no way to top it. Maybe this was reason enough for Metallica to seek Bob Rock’s counsel and engineer a box-office refresh of their sound on 1991’s Black Album. But the momentum towards mega-stardom and the conquering of the world’s stadia was gained on the battle to finish One. Just as well. If you are going to perform it live, then you need a big venue with all those flash bombs and pyro going off.

• ...And Justice For All is out now via Rhino/Blackened.

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett says that the band’s next album could be a return to the style of their late ’90s albums Load and Reload - a style that drummer Lars Ulrich liked to describe as “greasy”.

Speaking in the latest episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Hammett responded positively to the idea of Metallica making another record in that vein.

"Who knows?” Hammett said. “We might just say, 'Okay, let's go back to the '90s again.' It's not a bad idea.”

But he added for clarity: “We haven't said that to each other yet.”

Hammett says that the Load and Reload albums have been reassessed in recent years.

“t's interesting, because when Load and Reload came out, there was a lot of derision, there was a lot of backlash.

“It was too much change. We changed our appearance, we changed our sound, we changed the way we recorded.

“I was even playing different guitars and fucking tuning to E flat and listening to a lot of blues and jazz.

“And so all those factors came out on Load and Reload… and [those two albums] are so different from anything that came before it.

“It's interesting, 'cause nowadays I run into fans and they love that era — they love Load and Reload. But when those albums first came out, it was, like, ‘Fuck Load!’ Fuck Reload!’ Fuck Metallica!’ But nowadays we play [Reload song] Fuel and people go nuts.”

In the same interview, Hammett also claims that he has an enormous stockpile of new riffs for the next Metallica album.

"Oh, it's ridiculous, bro,” he says. “Because, okay, let me see how many riffs I have at this point. Okay. Oh, man. All recordings — 767. New ones. New ones, bro!

“Oh God. It is such a nightmare going through this stuff, too. I can't do it. And I'm the one responsible for all of it, and I can't do it.”

He says that the band’s bassist Robert Trujillo helps him sort through the material.

“Rob Trujillo is an extremely patient individual, and he doesn't mind taking on a task like that, and I just shake my head and say, 'God bless you, man! You're my bro. There's a reason why you're so much my bro,' because it's just a lot of material to go through."

Hammett says of his songwriting process: "I've found over the years that the stuff I don't think about is usually the best stuff, because it just comes to me, and if it just comes to me in a natural way, there's kind of like an organic sort of feel to it.

“And so that's how I come up with everything these days. I just sit there with my guitar and see what happens.

“I refuse to work hard on anything. I mean by 'working hard', just like analysing it and trying to see, 'Oh, if I change this note' and 'this has to work with this' — it feels like I'm doing algebra after a while.

"I don't want it. I failed algebra two years in a row. I'm not gonna fucking wanna do algebra when it comes to music. I wanna sit there and see what the universe and the muse sends me.

“And, bro, in the last 10 years I've gotten great results. And all I really have to do, and I do this practically every day, I go, okay, I sit here, clear my mind and start just moving my fingers, moving my hands, and inevitably something comes. And it's a beautiful thing.

“And I feel so blessed and lucky that this is happening, 'cause I'm 62 fucking years old, and a lot of artists, when they're 62 years old, they're winding things down.

“I feel like I'm still fucking climbing the summit, bro. I haven't reached the top of the mountain yet. I still feel like I'm improving and I still have a lot of fricking creative momentum and energy in me, to the point where it's just, like, I'm creating more work for myself.”

Hammett also reveals that he is making more solo music to follow on from his 2022 E.P. Portals.

"Right now I'm just actively getting ideas together,” he says. “And I guess the best way for me to describe it is it's gonna be a fusion of all sorts of styles, but not necessarily a fusion album. It's not jazz fusion…

“All of a sudden I'm writing fucking classical progressions and all of a sudden I'm fucking writing more heavy stuff and all of a sudden I'm writing like a funk thing. I'm like going, 'Okay, I guess this is what it is. This is what it is.' It's a fusion of different styles.

“And it's gonna be a full-length album. There will be vocals, because the songs that I wrote just scream for vocals this time around. So I'm, like, 'Okay.' Who's gonna be doing the vocals? I don't know. I hope I'm not, 'cause I already have too much to do on stage.”

He continues: “It's interesting because I started to read Ancient Greek. And I've been obsessed with a lot of ancient Greek texts.

“Pythagoras, he's the father of fucking musical theory!

“And so there's so much reference to music in the ancient text in regards to rite, ritual and magic, and it's so interesting to me because I see parallels. The Greeks used to use music to augment the rituals, their secret rites. And music was so highly regarded back then.

“And I'm reading all this and I'm shaking my head going, 'Yes, I can see how they would use all this.' 'Cause I firmly believe that if there's any true, real true example of what magic is in this world, it's music, bro.

“Music is magic. Magic is music.

"Music is magic, because all you need to do is sit in front of someone and play an instrument and they're moved by it.

“You have the ability to change the situation in the room by playing music. When people hear certain types of music, they're transformed.

“If you don't think that's magic, what is it? Science. Come on, give me a break. It's more than that. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like this. Sorry to say!”

Gibson Publishing has launched a 400-page coffee-table book documenting Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett’s epic gear collection, photographing his most famous electric guitars and telling the story behind them.

The Collection: Kirk Hammett is written by MusicRadar alumnus Chris Vinnicombe and features photography from Ross Halfin, including some deep cuts from Halfin’s archive.

And it features a lot of guitars that Metallica fans – not to mention Fleetwood Mac and Gary Moore fans – will be more than familiar worth. Never mind Hammett, the star of the show here is Greeny, the legendary 1959 Les Paul Standard previously owned by the late Peter Green, then the late Gary Moore, and has been owned by Hammett since 2014.

We say owned but Hammett himself will say that he is just its present custodian – a guitar he describes as “his Excalibur”.

Speaking to the Metallica Report podcast in October 2024, he says he is consistently inspired every time he picks it up and plays it.

“Every day she’s really great to me. I play her every day. Riffs fall out of that guitar pretty much every single day,” he said. “I really feel like that guitar was calling for me and I answered the calling. And once that guitar and me got together, great things started to happen for both of us! It’s a magic piece of wood. It’s blessed! It’s beyond words. I can’t even begin to fully describe the guitar’s effect on me.”

Gibson has released a number of Greeny replicas in recent years, offering it as a Kirk Hammett signature guitar from the Custom Shop’s Murphy Lab, as a standard Gibson USA model, and as a more affordable Epiphone model – and Hammett has said that the Epiphone guitar is his favourite of the production runs.

As with Slash’s 2022 book from Gibson Publishing, The Collection: Kirk Hammett follows Hammett’s appearance on GibsonTV, where brought out some of the rarest and most unique pieces in his collection (a signature ESP KH S-style with an actual theremin!?) to show Gibson’s Mark Agnesi.

And having gathered all those guitars together for the shoot, it made sense for Hammett to sit down with Vinnicombe to talk about them, and for Hammett to get Halfin to shoot them for posterity.

“I’ve worked diligently on this curated collection of vintage and modern guitars for the book,” says Hammett. “I feel the book captures the rich history and artistry behind each of these unique and rare instruments.

"Every picture tells a story and thanks to Ross Halfin and his exceptional photography, every picture in this book is worth a million words! This book could not be possible without the help of Gibson, so I’d like to thank them for making my passion for Greeny, and guitars a reality. I hope all of you enjoy this journey as much as I did.”

This being Hammett, there will be a lot of Flying Vs. Besides Greeny, there will be Les Pauls. And there will be some guitars that have lived a full life before coming into Hammett’s possession. We rarely think of Hammett as an SG player a la Tony Iommi or Angus Young and yet that’s what he was using when Metallica tracked Load.

And here, Hammett reveals that he owns the 1961 SG Custom that John Frusciante used to record the breakdown section of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication cut Otherside – it’s also in the video for Fortune Faded. Better still, he owns Les Paul’s SG Custom, a true unicorn dual-humbucker version in white that Paul appeared with in publicity photos.

There are more doozies where that came from. Vinnicombe says Hammett has “one of the coolest guitar collections on the planet”. It’s not all electric either; Hammett’s 1964 J-180 Everly Brothers acoustic guitar also makes an appearance.

Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian says the project has been years in the making.

“It was a thrill to put this together and it took a village to get it done!” he says. “I hope everyone appreciates the work that went into this book and enjoys every story behind the guitars.”

The Collection: Kirk Hammett is being offered in three hardback editions: Standard (£129/$149), Deluxe (£249/$299) and Custom (£649), the latter two both signed by Hammett.

The Custom Edition is limited to 300 units worldwide and arrives in a presentation box, measuring 19” x 14.5” and has a lenticular cover. Inside there is a framable print of one of Halfin’s portraits of Hammett, and Axe Heaven mini-replica of the Metallica man’s Flying V, plus a guitar pick tin and COA.

The Deluxe Edition ships in a presentation slipcase decorated with pictures of Greeny, inside which you will find an exclusive 33” by 23” A1 poster and COA.

The Collection: Kirk Hammett is available now. See Gibson for more details.

James Hetfield has a long-standing signature guitar collaboration with ESP, made his bones playing a white Flying V knock-off, and is one of the world’s most high-profile proponents of the Gibson Explorer. But among the Metallica frontman’s arsenal of electric guitars are a handful of custom builds by a Californian luthier by the name of Ken Lawrence.

Lawrence is not your typical guitar builder. In fact, he was not really a guitar builder. At least, that was not his specialty. Bass guitars were his thing. So how did he end up making some of Hetfield’s most-famous six-strings – including an Explorer-style electric named Carl that was put together using the floorboards of Metallica’s old garage?

In a recent interview with Guitar World, Lawrence reveals all, explaining how Doug West, the now director of R&D at Mesa/Boogie, was his Metallica connection. West thought maybe then-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted would be interested in one of his friend’s designs.

“I would leave instruments at Mesa for Doug to show to whoever might be stopping by,” says Lawrence. “He took one of the basses to a Metallica rehearsal when they were working on their guitar rigs, to see if Jason Newsted might be interested. Doug told me that James liked the workmanship on the instrument and he kept flipping it back and forth, studying it. Then he asked if we could meet.”

The answer was yes. But there was a problem. Lawrence only had basses. Luckily, Hetfield could see the potential.

“That was kind of a strange interview because I didn’t have a single guitar to show him,” says Lawrence. “I went for a guitar commission with a carload of basses! I laid them all out on the floor, and he went, ‘Okay, let’s make a guitar.’”

That guitar would be an Explorer-style electric. Lawrence based the shape off one of Hetfield’s ESP and got to work. The headstock design would be radically different to the six-in-line headstock found on the ESP. This one was based on design by one of Lawrence’s friends and was originally intended for a five-string bass.

It looked like it you could hunt wild boar with it, which is probably why the guitar resonated with Hetfield. Lawrence tells Guitar World that the Metallica frontman liked what he saw.

“I brought those patterns to James and it was an instant fit,” he says. “In retrospect, there are elements of that headstock that actually mirror the Metallica logo – it’s funny how things in the cosmos line up.”

It wasn’t just Lawrence’s headstock designs that came out of left field. He had a taste for exotic tone woods and started sourcing some from Central America. The first Explorer-style electric he made for Hetfield – the Hunter – ended up with a mahogany body and a Chechen top. Lawrence has now made seven guitars for Hetfield and says an eighth could be on the cards.

That eighth would do well to have a better back story than Carl, which was made out of the floorboard’s of Metallica’s old garage. Carl is named after Carlson Boulevard in El Cerrito, California, Metallica’s Bay Area home and HQ from 1983 to 1986. They wrote Master Of Puppets in that garage.

When the garage got torn down, Andy Anderson, vocalist from local crossover champs Attitude Adjustment, saved some of the wood and gave it to Hetfield. Hetfield turned it over to Lawrence and he got to work. In a video posted to Metallica’s YouTube channel, Hetfield said he didn’t need to give Lawrence too much direction.

“I knew he could work with that wood,” said Hetfield. “I wanted it rustic. I wanted it like the garage was. The artists that we work with, if you give them too much direction then it’s not their art, in my opinion. You like an artist because you know what he does. Same with Ken. I know, as far as woods [go], he’ll make this thing playable, smooth, workable, so I wasn’t worried about the finish of this.”

What Hetfield worried about was Lawrence making it too clean. But the finished guitar still has the nails on the top. That top still looks like repurposed flooring. “You feel the wood,” said Hetfield. “You feel the grain. I mean, it’s almost like grooves in vinyl!”

Lawrence told the story of Metallica and their garage through that guitar. The inlays feature Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich (with lightning drum sticks), Hetfield, then there is the late Cliff Burton at the 12th fret.

“Ken is very into meaning and drew a story about what he thought would be fitting for this historical piece,” said Hetfield. The inlays are also a code, arranged in 3, 1, 3, 2 groupings to signify Metallica’s old address, 3132 Carlson Boulevard. The details are incredible.

There are four silver half-dollars on the back for each member, and another commemorative Master Of Puppets detail on the inside of the control cover. The design’s practical too – that control cover is magnetic for easy access for Hetfield’s tech to switch out batteries for the active electric guitar pickups. It sounds great, too.

“Most of the clean songs that I do, whether it’s Nothing Else Matters or One, or Sandman, when there’s picking at the beginning or something it is usually done on a Ken Lawrence guitar,” said Hetfield. “Because it’s got such a great sound to it in the clean department especially.”

Metallica rocked the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, on Friday night, headlining the Helping Hands Concert and raising money for their All Within My Hands Foundation, and took the opportunity to play fast and loose with their songbook.

Or should that be slow and low with the songbook, because this was an opportunity for Metallica frontman and rhythm guitar kingpin James Hetfield to demonstrate exactly what he meant when he told MusicRadar that the Load and ReLoad era was a time when the thrash pioneers were letting their blues guitar influences show, by reworking Fuel as a slack-tempo’d groover in baritone tuning.

Hetfield’s white Flying V copy, his Gibson Les Paul Custom, and arsenal of ESP signature guitars could sit this one out. Instead, he leaned upon a bona fide MusicRadar favourite, and a notorious purveyor of low-end twang, Danelectro’s ’58 Longhorn Baritone.

Presenting Fuel in a lower register is not something we had on our Metallica bingo card but then over the years the Bay Area behemoths have been full of surprises. The original, tracked a half-step down in Eb, is all high-energy – the music to match the lyrics. In baritone tuning, it sounds more Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Maybe this was how they wanted to do it all along.

“On Load and ReLoad we tried to get a little looser, a little bluesier,” said Hetfield in 2009. “Greasy is the word. I love to riff, to down-pick, alternate-pick, gallop… That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”

With Hetfield working this muscular redux of Duane Eddie’s electric guitar tone, clearly Kirk Hammett wanted to get in on the twang, choosing a Fender Esquire. We’d have expected him to play “Greeny”, his 1959 Les Paul Standard, previously owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore. Or maybe his factory black 1959 Les Paul Standard. But the twang was the thang and the tone was on the money.

The performance was streamed via YouTube, but there is some cool fan footage that captures the reworked Fuel. The band was joined by San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist Avi Vinocur, who also played on a rare performance of The Unforgiven II, which hadn’t been played live for nine years, and on ReLoad deep cut Low Man’s Lyric – that really is a rarity. The last time that was played for an audience was 1998.

That one had not been played since 2015. Though, in fairness, we can’t remember being at too many Metallica shows where the crowd has been crushing cans of beer on their foreheads and baying for Low Man’s Lyric.

There were more guests. Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam joined them for Kill ‘Em All rager Hit The Lights. Master Of Puppets closed the set. Delivered straight-up. No messing around.

Mesa/Boogie has brought back one of its all-time classic tube amps and quite possibly ended your epic quest to find a super-rare vintage model with the reissue of the Mark IIC+ as a 100-watt head and a 1x12 combo. Which is just as well, because it might have financially ruined you.

Given its designation, you could be forgiven for thinking the Mark IIC+ was simply a transitional model for the Californian high-end guitar amp brand. It didn't last long, and was only in production for a couple of years before being discontinued as the Mark III arrived in to take its place. But what an impact it left in that time.

Just ask Metallica fans – such as Dream Theater’s John Petrucci – and the players who have used it over the years, a roll call that includes Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, Neal Schon, Blue Öyster Cult’s Buck Dharma, Bruce Springsteen and, yes, Petrucci himself, it is one of the GOATs. Prince reportedly used one. Petrucci’s signature model, the Mesa/Boogie JP-2C, is based on the Mark CII+.

Even the team at Mesa/Boogie were surprised by the legacy of the Mark IIC+. Doug West, director, Tone Lab, Gibson Amplifiers and Mesa/Boogie, said they had been besieged by requests to do a reissue.

“Since the Mark IIC+’s replacement by the Mark III in late 1985, players have asked the question ‘When will you do a Re-Issue of the Mark IIC+?’” says West. “Little did we know then that the Mark IIC+ would continue its rise in popularity long after its production lifespan and become one of history’s most sought-after and coveted amplifiers, synonymous with rock and metal’s biggest artist’s iconic tones.”

But putting together the reissue was not as simple as reaching into the drawer and fetching all the components. West says this was three years in the making. There were “countless hours of brutal comparisons”. Those components from way back were not readily at hand.

Clearly, a lot of details had got lost in the shuffle as the Mark Series evolution continued apace. We are on Mark VII now. Also, why let those evolutionary discoveries go to waste? What the Mesa/Boogie R&D team had learned over the past years – “tone tricks” and construction epiphanies – was brought to bear on this “Mark IIC+ redux”.

Speaking of which, the Mark VII is quite possibly one of the most feature-packed guitar amps on the market, a “greatest hits” Boogie with Multi-Watt power, three channels (and yes, with three modes each), a 5-band graphic EQ, onboard CabClone IR tech, yadda yadda yadda. The Mark IIC+ presents a relatively more streamlined presentation of what the Mark Series is all about.

It faithfully reproduces cutting-edge amp design from the ‘80s Mesa/Boogie shopfloor that somehow still seems cutting-edge today.

West promises it “delivers all the explosive attack, dynamic excitement and percussive intensity of the originals”, and you have the peace of mind that comes with a brand-new build and the warranty that comes with it.

“Any Mark IIC+ fan owes it to themselves to try one of these new IIC+s before going on the daunting quest to find an original,” says West. “We feel sure you’ll agree that this new build is as legit and as inspiring as the legend demands. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be doing it!”

The Mark IIC+ is a serious amp. As the name suggests it evolved out of the Mark II (which is now known as the Mark II-A), the world’s first dual-mode amp. Unlike some more contemporary Mesa/Boogie amps, the Mark IIC+ presents its controls in a single row. Like many Mesa/Boogie designs, you can really take a forensic approach to sculpting your electric guitar tone.

Technically, it is a single-channel amp, but the two Clean and Lead modes are footswitchable and allow the amp to behave like a dual-channel design. One set of tone controls serves both modes, with push-pull functions for fine-tuning your sound. Some of these behave differently depending on what mode you are in.

Then you have the 5-band graphic EQ, which can come in especially handy for shaping the Lead mode. You can switch the graphic EQ in and out on the fly, via the Auto EQ toggle on the front panel, or, more efficiently, with the footswitch.

The Mark IIC+ can be run at a full 75-watts in the Simul-Class setting, in which all four power tubes are deployed and the amp uses a hybrid configuration in which two of the power tubes are wired in Class A, the other in Class A/B, bringing you the best of both worlds.

“Combining these two types of wiring and operating classes creates a superbly musical and harmonically rich character that filters out the harsher artefacts associated with Class AB, while the more pleasing elements are accentuated and showcased from the Class A-wired tubes,” explains Mesa/Boogie.

Alternatively, you can run the amp Class A at 25-watts, which will give you less volume but a “warmer, smoother transition into clip”. You might also notice some more upper-harmonic action in Class A operation.

Also on the back of the amp there is a buffered series effects loop, Slave Output for use with Wet/Dry/Wet rigs and external IR readers, Reverb and Presence controls, plus a pair of four-ohm speaker outputs, and one at eight-ohms. The tube-driven spring reverb is also footswitchable.

It is one heck of an amp, and it is available now, priced £3,699/$3,599 street for the head, £3,999/$3,899 for the 1x12 combo, which comes fitted with a Celestion-designed Mesa Black Shadow speaker.

For more details, head over to Mesa/Boogie.

It’s taken a while but someone has come out and said that Metallica were right all along in their fight with Napster at the turn of the century.

That someone is Charlie Benante, the drummer with fellow thrash icons Anthrax. In an interview with the Irish Times Bentate started off bemoaning the fate of the modern musician. “We get taken advantage of the most out of any industry. As artists, we have no health coverage, we have nothing.

"They fucked us so bad, I don't know how we come out of it. You'd probably make more money selling lemonade on the corner."

Bentate revealed he doesn't subscribe to Spotify. “I think it is where music goes to die. We have the music on there because we have to play along with the fucking game, but I'm tired of playing the game.

And when asked about Metallica's public battle with Napster in 2000, Benante saluted the band for the stance they took. "They were absolutely right about it. You see where it went. All those people who said, 'Fuck Metallica. They are rich bastards'. They were protecting their art, their intellectual property so that some asshole does not come along and take your art.”

"They make the money while you just make the art and you just give it away. People don't know anything about this. Until you have lived the way we live and do what we have done, then you can comment on it."

For those who don’t remember – in 2000 Metallica took legal action against Napster, a turn of the century peer to peer file-sharing service, over copyright infringement. Metallica won in court, but in many ways it was a pyrrhic victory.

At the time it did considerable damage to the metal icons’ image – Metallica were seen as the overbearing multi-millionaires stopping the kids sharing music with each other. At the time few fellow artists stuck their heads above the parapet to support them. File-sharing and illegal downloading were seen as cool and groovy; nobody wanted to be seen as fusty old Luddites.

In Benante’s eyes, it was a turning point in the gradual devaluing of music. “Nobody did anything about it. They just let it happen,” he said. “There was no protection, no nothing. Subconsciously this may be the reason why we don't make records every three years or whatever because I don't want to give it away for free.

"I take music very seriously and what I do and what I write is very personal and, for someone to take it is not right. It is like I pay Amazon $12.99 a month and I can just go on Amazon and I can get whatever I want. It is basically stealing. It is stealing from the artist – the people who run music streaming sites like Spotify."

27 September, 1986 was the darkest day in the history of Metallica, when the band’s bassist Cliff Burton was killed in a tour bus accident in Sweden during the Master Of Puppets tour.

But within two months, the band were back on the road to finish that tour with new bassist Jason Newsted alongside guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and drummer Lars Ulrich.

And as Lars explained in an interview with Sounds in January 1987, they never considered breaking up the band - and believed that Cliff would have wanted them to carry on.

"I don't understand how anyone who knows what this band is about could honestly think that we'd give up,” Lars said. “The question was not: are we gonna pack it in or not? It was: how fast can we get the whole thing back on its feet again?"

“First of all, Cliff would be the first one to get pissed off if we sat around and cried and whined and shit. Secondly, with all due respect to Cliff, it's, like, history, there's nothing we can do about it.

“For the five years that we've been doing this, Metallica's always been about fighting against all the shit that's been in our way. Something always comes up and we always push on.

"Obviously, there'd never been anything like the shock and the whole disaster of what happened in the accident, but we never thought of packing it in. And now it's like we have even more reason to continue because we have to do it for Cliff too, if you know what I mean."

"Cliff was the strongest of the four of us emotionally," Lars said. "And if he saw us sit around and feel sorry for ourselves for the next year on a couch in San Francisco he'd get pissed off. I know that he'd come round and kick us in the ass and tell us to get back out on the road and continue where we left off.

"I think everyone knew without even saying it to each other. It was just a matter of getting it out in the open.

“We had a meeting between the three of us and our management, and we decided that evening, which was the night before Cliff’s funeral, that we wanted to start as fast as we could.

“So we left the Japanese dates in the itinerary because we thought if we left them in — they were only about five weeks ahead — then that would give us the pressure of getting our shit together in a hurry so we wouldn't just sit around for six months.

"It was obvious from the beginning that we didn't want, with all due respect to Bob Daisley [veteran bassist, ex-Rainbow and Ozzy Osbourne], a 35-year-old hired musician to come in. We wanted someone young, someone hungry, someone new, a bit 'unknown' or whatever, and not someone that people would associate with another band.

"We started asking around in the underground and at independent record labels about the happening young bass players. There wasn't really time to advertise it, and we weren't sure that we wanted it advertised anyway. We just sort of spread the word around, and Jason's name was, for some reason, the one that came up most.

"We started auditioning around October 20, just doing one song with each of them — in, out, next, see ya. We did about 60 people in one week and we decided that we wanted to ask four of them back.

“What we wanted to do was spend a whole day with each of the four of them because for us it's more than just about whether he can play a song well. The whole vibe and the attitude of the person, how we would get on with him and the friendship and all that was just as important.

"We set up each day of hanging out with the person and Jason was second of the four. We played all day and went out for a meal, and then we went for the big test which was obviously the drink test. And somehow, I swear it wasn't planned, me and James and Kirk ended up in the toilet together pissing.

"So we're standing there pissing at three in the morning, out of our faces, and all three of us weren't saying anything, and I just said without looking at anybody, ‘That’s him, right?’ And the other guys said. ‘Yeah, that's him.’ And that was it."

Tetrarch guitarist Diamond Rowe recently made history with the launch of her signature guitar - the first signature Jackson for a female player, and as the first artist model for a black female performing heavy metal for the industry as a whole.

Now she tells MusicRadar all about her evolution as a player, her formative influences and her approach to creating super-heavy tones.

Your band recently released a new song called Live Not Fantasize, which almost has a Rob Zombie kind of stomp to it…

“A lot of people have mentioned they can hear Rob Zombie in there. The main riff actually started out as a joke! I was at home, it was late, probably around one in the morning, and I was sat at my computer experiencing writer’s block. I started demoing the dumbest riffs, almost as if to go back to square one.

“And I remember thinking it had that four-on-the-floor beat, that Rob Zombie stomp type thing. We went into the studio with 20 songs and for some reason this one kept making the cut.”

Well, it’s funny how the music can guide you in ways like that…

“The working title for it was Ha Ha and because we couldn’t get rid of it, we kept adding things to it. The more we added in terms of electronics and other sounds, the more cool it started to sound cool. So it’s funny, this lead single started its life as a throwaway!”

There are some interesting effects and electronics, which adds to the industrial flavour…

“When I started to get a vision for the song, after we realised it wasn’t going away, I decided it would be cool to push the industrial element. We’d never really done that before, so that’s why the strong effects and electronics ended up being really prominent. My DigiTech Whammy is literally everywhere. Now when we all meet up, they ask me ‘So did you bring your Whammy?’ It seems I’m the Whammy girl now.”

You even use the Whammy to divebomb, almost like using a bar…

“I do! I’ve started to do that a lot. You’re right... good ear, man! Funnily enough, I tracked the solo to that song with a Jackson Soloist, so there was a bar on the guitar which I ended up using as well as the Whammy, making it all sound even crazier.”

There’s a tapping section in your solo. Where did you learn how to do that?

“I think that bit came from all the Metallica songs I learned as a teenager. They’re my all-time favourite band and I had all the tab books. I spent months jamming along really badly, trying to get better and better. After that my influences were all over the place.

“As a kid, I never discriminated over different types of metal – you know, you get people who only listen to hardcore or metalcore or whatever. I would listen to Korn, Disturbed, Nirvana, Linkin Park... anything heavy. It didn’t matter what kind of heavy. The tapping stuff came from Kirk Hammett and Dimebag Darrell. When we started thinking about what Tetrarch was going to sound like, we wanted a lot of that nu-metal vibe – big choruses and creepy melodies. But a lot of those bands didn’t have guitar solos.”

So that’s something you had to learn how to implement?

“Yeah, I made it my mission to fit solos into that kind of sound. I’m a lead player, that’s just what I love. I worked at bringing those shred techniques into our sound, while also using things like the Whammy to make it all sound weird and uncomfortable. But it’s the older generation like Zakk Wylde and Dimebag who taught me how to solo.”

What kind of amps are you using on the latest recordings? We noticed you were plugged into an EVH head for some of the Jackson promo footage...

“The new album was tracked with Neural DSP Gojira plug-in and then we reamped later through the EVH heads. What’s funny is that the reason we tried out EVH heads was also because of Gojira. I believe Joe Duplantier uses the Stealth and Christian Andreu has the EL34. We tried those exact amps because of how crushing Gojira sound live and it worked out great for us.”

Other than the Whammy, what kind of pedals would we find on your ‘board?

“We call my tone ‘The Freak Tone’ because it has the modulated, Korn-inspired kind of sound. We stumbled upon it years ago and were actually using Line 6 Pod Farm to obtain it. I think there was this sine-wave chorus that we couldn’t find anywhere else. Now Pod Farm is antiquated, apparently, so we use analogue pedals. I have a Dunlop Uni-Vibe, a Boss DD7 and a Boss Super Chorus, but all at the same time to create one effect.”

You mentioned there’s a new album on the way. What makes it different to 2021’s Unstable?

“On these new songs, we’ve really tried to write the biggest choruses we can. We’re really proud of that. Our influences were always gateway metal bands that anybody could listen to and enjoy. Obviously we make music for metal fans first and foremost, but we want everyone to enjoy listening to us.

“It’s the same as Enter Sandman – anyone can listen to that, even if they’re not a metalhead. This album has moments that are really catchy, some of my best lead work and some interesting electronics, like on the first single. Some of the songs are quite basic when you strip away the leads and textures, but that’s how we created so much character and personality. I sing on this record, too!”

That’s interesting! What do you sound like as a singer?

“I’ve done some backing vocals in the past, just for textural stuff. But this time round I’ve actually sung my own verses and sections. It came out really cool. Honestly, I don’t know how I sound!”

From a production standpoint, what’s the secret to the aggressive guitar tones you are best known for?

“Anything EQ-related is [singer/guitarist] Josh’s wheelhouse. He’s the audiophile in the band, along with our producer Dave Otero, who is a death metal guy. Dave has done Allegaeon, Cattle Decapitation and Fallujah... those types of records. We’re the softest band he’s worked with!

“So I think some of the aggression comes from how he mixes, that’s just what he’s used to. I think it’s cool because we don’t get mixed like other bands in our genre, and it makes us sound extra heavy. Josh and I are heavy right-hand pickers. We both hit our guitars hard. We don’t play super technical riffs, instead we write ones that bite and make you go ‘Hell yeah!’ We play really clean so you can hear all the intricacies. The heaviness is a mixture of different things.”

There’s something special about the chemistry between you and Josh. What’s the secret?

“Josh and I have been playing together since we were 12, so we’re very locked into each other. We grew up together as guitar players, so it’s a very natural chemistry. What I’m lacking, he picks up and vice versa. I’m a gain fanatic, you’d probably think ‘Oh my god’ if you saw how much I usually turn it up to. I will start at five and work my way up to seven! Josh is more moderate, on the other hand, and wouldn’t go that high. So that works out really cool.

“My tone is more saturated, his is more clean. I have the body and heaviness, he has the clarity. He uses the EVH Stealth and ESP pickups with the EMG 57/66 set, which is aggressive but more vintage-sounding than my 81/85. A lot of people have mentioned that it’s good to see EMGs in a signature again. And I realised that recently a lot of signatures have had Fishmans or Seymour Duncans or whatever. I always tell EMG ‘I’m your girl’ because they always sound great.”

If you could get a guitar lesson from any of your heroes, who would you choose?

“I’d choose Kirk and James from Metallica. I started playing guitar along to those guys, watching all their DVDs and documentaries. They were my teachers. I’d love to jam with them. I know so many of their songs, it would be fun to pick up some guitars and run through Master Of Puppets or One.

“That would be a full-circle moment for me. I’d also love to hang with them as human beings. Because it’s easy to see them as larger-than-life gods who are untouchable. It would be nice to hang out as normal people and just talk about music and life in general.”

What’s next for you as a player – how exactly do you hope to develop?

“That’s a good question. I always happen upon new things I want to try by accident. I never really set my mind to things. Because when I do that, I just crash and burn out. If I organically walk into something new, I will find it more interesting to explore. I’m definitely the kind of player who is song-focussed and looking to make even the most basic song sound interesting. I like to layer different leads and melodies on top of each other, a bit like how Korn do.

“I could sit in a room with pedals for hours, making up weird sounds and layering them over each other. Josh will come into the room and ask ‘Are you high or something?’ And I don’t even smoke, I just like getting lost in the music. My main ambition is to keep on getting better at writing songs and creating sounds, rather than learning new techniques and things like that.”

And do you ever absorb much from players outside of metal?

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to look at players from other genres and appreciate what they do. I was watching footage of John Mayer the other day and thought, ‘That dude’s a really freaking good guitar player!’ His stuff is so out of my wheelhouse but it did inspire me to sit down and mess around with that kind of sound. I think his chords and tones are awesome. But coming from a metal and hard rock background, I’ve never spent much time learning other styles. I’m all about Dime, Zakk and players like that!”

In the early ’90s, Jerry Cantrell shaped the sound of alternative rock with Alice In Chains. But in his new solo album, I Want Blood, he’s taking inspiration from the classic two-guitar bands of the ’70s and ’80s: Judas Priest, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden and more.

In a new interview for Total Guitar, Jerry says: “With every record, it’s interesting to see what I can achieve through harmonies. I’m such a huge fan of guitar duos. I hear Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing [from Judas Priest].

"I hear the Schenker brothers [Scorpions]. I hear Kirk and James from Metallica. I hear Joe Perry and Brad Whitford [Aerosmith]. I love Thin Lizzy, what can I say? Those elements are always in me.”

Jerry also freely admits that his new song Off The Rails has an intro influenced by Iron Maiden’s 1986 track Wasted Years.

“F*ck yeah, dude!” he says. “I’m a huge fan of Iron Maiden. I wanted Alice to be a guitar duo band precisely because of bands like that. And we kinda are now, since [lead vocalist/guitarist] William DuVall joined.

"Earlier on, Layne [Staley, original Alice In chains frontman] would pick up a guitar and play a little bit, but we were mostly just a three-piece with a singer. Now we actually have two guys playing a lot of guitar, so I got my wish!

“But when we initially talked about starting a band I wanted another guitar player and that was purely because of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith [in Iron Maiden during the ’80s]. Or the guys from Priest and Aerosmith. I love the Young brothers [AC/DC]. There’s something special about bands with two guitar players working as a unit.

"And yes, I hear Iron Maiden in that intro for Off The Rails. I’m immediately drawn to those flavours, just because I love that band. It’s cool to hear your influences coming out organically, because you don’t sit down and intend to do anything. It just happens and you can tell that it’s in there.”

The full, in-depth interview with Jerry Cantrell appears in the final issue of Total Guitar, on sale now.

James Hetfield of Metallica is insistent that Metallica won’t ever rest on their laurels and become a ‘legacy’ band.

In a recent appearance on the Metallica Report podcast, the frontman discussed how the band were slotting in songs from last year’s 72 Seasons album into setlitsts on their current world tour and how they will never rely wholly on their extensive back catalogue.

“The fact that the 72 Seasons album is well received and some of the songs that we’re playing live work and they kind of fit seamlessly in with all the catalogue, all the albums we have,” explained Hetfield. 

“We’re not afraid of (playing new songs), but we’re not overindulging in it as well. We know people want to hear the best of, and you’ve got to challenge them to listen to some of the new stuff as well.”

“We certainly don’t want to be a legacy band that just plays its greatest hits and then that’s it,” he added. “(Playing new material is) all a part of it.”

Becoming a ‘legacy’ or ‘heritage’ band is something most, perhaps all, A-list acts end up having to succumb to eventually. Rare is the artist whose work is still vital after 25, 30 or 40 years on the rock n’ roll treadmill. 

Some embrace it fully, others begrudgingly accept that their best years are behind them and fans invariably come to shows not to hear the latest album but for ‘the hits’ that they associate with their own summer years. Metallica sound like they’ll be in the latter camp, forever raging against the dying of the creative light.

In the same podcast Hetfield said that the band were currently playing with a lot of confidence, The reason, he suggests, is because they’re comfortable with making the odd mistake. Indeed, by the sounds of it, they are - in the sage words of Brian Eno - honouring them as their hidden intention.

“All mistakes are a part of the show,” Hetfield argued. “That’s part of what we say before we go out. ‘Hey, all mistakes are free.’ And it’s not a mistake, really. That word is kinda ridiculous. It’s just a unique way of playing (a song) that night.”

“Frankly, I think it's a challenge, when a song falls apart and it could be devastating to other bands,” he continued. “For us, it's just, ‘OK, we fucked it up. Let's start it again. Or, ‘Hey, let's take it from here.’ Or, there's been times when I've edited out a whole middle section and then at the end of the song say, ‘Oh my God, I forgot to play that part. Here, let's just play it for you.’”

“There's a freedom up there that the fans allow. There's a grace that they allow us to be human. So there is a confidence that you can't go wrong. You show up and you do your best and you know it's from the heart.”

In the latest edition of The Metallica Report podcast, the band’s lead guitarist Kirk Hammett talks about the inspirational qualities of the famous guitar that came into his possession 10 years ago - the 1959 Les Paul Standard named after its former owner Peter Green, who sold it on to another legendary player, Gary Moore.

“I’m having a long running love affair with a guitar called Greeny,” Kirk says. “Every day she’s really great to me. I play her every day. Riffs fall out of that guitar pretty much every single day.

“I love that guitar! Somebody said about three years ago - they pointed at me and pointed at Greeny - and said, ‘That’s your Excalibur!’ And you’re absolutely right - it is my Excalibur. I really feel like that guitar was calling for me and I answered the calling. And once that guitar and me got together, great things started to happen for both of us! It’s a magic piece of wood. It’s blessed! It’s beyond words. I can’t even begin to fully describe the guitar’s effect on me.”

Kirk goes on to describe his role as custodian of this unique instrument. “People have known about that guitar longer than I’ve known about it,” he says, “and that’s not a guitar that is content to be in any kind of retirement situation. That guitar has gone through Peter Green and Gary Moore and now it’s come to me.

"I’ve played it on the last two Metallica albums and I’ll continue to play it. And when people say, ‘Can I play Greeny? Can I take a picture of it?’ Absolutely! Cos who am I to deny them? It’s the people’s guitar! I just came into the situation as a caretaker.”

Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery has been talking about the time he auditioned for Metallica, his brief tenure with Smashing Pumpkins and how he believes he was never a good fit for either of those bands.

Avery was considered for the vacant bassist role after Jason Newsted left Metallica in 2001, but in the end the band plumped for Robert Trujillo. In a new interview with Guitar World, Avery was asked whether he thought his career would be different if he’d joined either of those bands full-time.

"I have,” he considered. “I've thought about what that would be like – and it's not all to the positive. Well, I shouldn't say that in both of those cases. For different reasons, I went into them thinking that I didn't hope to get the gig because I really thought that I wasn't right for them.”

"So I entered into them as experiences, like, 'I'm gonna have a life experience; I'm gonna create a memory.' Not every day does one travel to Santa Rosa (California) to play a few songs with Metallica, you know? I didn't see it as a job audition; and in that way, it really delivered. They were great to me, too. I came away with a great day from my human lifetime."

A few years later Avery joined Smashing Pumpkins for a couple of weeks. Regarding that time the bassist said: "In the case of the Pumpkins, at the time, I didn't know Billy Corgan, but I knew he wasn't the easiest person to work with. And because of my tendency to have trouble not speaking truth to power, if power needs speaking to, I just thought, 'This is not going to last, but it'll be interesting. It'll be an interesting week or two.' And it really was."

But he added: "I found Corgan to be quite an inspiring guy to work with for the two or three weeks that I did."

Avery has had a varied career outside of Jane’s Addiction. After the group’s original split, he and guitarist Dave Navarro teamed up on the short-lived Deconstruction, he has also been part of Alanis Morrissette’s backing band and an unofficial member of Garbage for their last three albums. Then there was also his Nineties solo project, Polar Bear.

As for new music from Jane’s, Avery said he was “guardedly optimistic” that they’d be a new album eventually from the reformed band: “The phrase that Dave and I were talking about the other day is: ‘If there is a Jane’s Addiction in 2025, then there will be new music for sure.’ But you just never know if there’s going to be a band at all.”

An 11-year-old guitarist has wowed the judges on TV talent show America’s Got Talent with her incredible performance of Metallica’s Master of Puppets, and gone viral in the process.

The young shredder is Maya Neelakantan and whilst she got through her audition with a rendition of Last Resort by Papa Roach, for the quarter finals she turned her attention to a thrash metal classic.

She was accompanied by a full band and was playing a Gibson Dave Mustaine Flying V Exp in a silver finish, a nod perhaps to Mustaine’s early stint in the group. And she knocked it out of the park. She even switched effects and used a Neural DSP Quad Cortex to make her guitar sound like a sitar, a little homage, maybe, to her Tamil heritage.

Cue a standing ovation and much praise from the judges. The comedian and actor Howie Mandel said, “That was like Van Halen reincarnated. You're amazing on that thing. And not only that, but you were mixing it in with your culture, like a sitar making it sound like a guitar, and your smile, it doesn't end. You wouldn't think it would come from you. You are a surprise. You're amazing and I love you.”

Heidi Klum added, “You are amazing. You're perfect. You're perfectly you. I love that you didn't pick dolls. Maybe you have, but you picked this instrument instead.”

Even Simon Cowell was impressed, saying “That was wild... I gotta say a big, big thank you to Metallica for giving you that song. That doesn't happen very often. I just think you're one of these people that has a God-given talent and it's always brilliant to be surprised.”

Sadly, despite all the praise Maya’s performance wasn’t enough to get her into the semi-finals.

This surely won’t be the last we hear of her though. Maya has already been hanging out with some premier league guitarists. Gary Holt, of Exodus and Slayer fame, flew down to Los Angeles to cheer Maya on at her audition earlier this year. And you may remember that after her incredible Youtube performance of Tool’s 7empest went viral in 2022, none other than Adam Jones who played on the original, gifted Maya his signature Gibson Les Paul. Maya described it as “the biggest day of my life.”

If Michael Schenker is to be believed in our new interview, he hasn't actively listened to music by other artists in over 50 years. Still, it's hard to avoid radio and television, and once in a while the German guitar icon will hear things – including self-confessed Schenker fans Metallica.

“Do I ever listen to Metallica and hear my own licks? Not intentionally," he tells us, "But I’ve accidentally heard amazing songs by Metallica like The Unforgiven. They're a fantastic band." That Black Album song features one of Kirk Hammett's finest solos, and Hammett has never been shy in namechecking Schenker as an inspiration. So what does the former Scorpions and UFO man hear his influence?

"I think Kirk is very good at the classical stuff," Schenker tells us. "It’s maybe not so much to my taste when he plays electric lead guitar… 

“To my ears, it sounds like me when I was 15 years old, when I was playing on [Scorpions debut] Lonesome Crow," he adds. "People who copy that particular style will sound a little undeveloped because my vibrato wasn’t right. But some people liked how I played early on and copied that style. When I listen back to what I did now, it feels like a very different stage of my development to where I am today. It took me years to develop a more natural vibrato and get my guitar to sing the way I like it!"

The theme of reflecting on his own progression is something the guitarist touches on elsewhere in the chat. “If I listen back to my recordings from the beginning of my career, they almost sound undeveloped, you know?" notes Schenker. "It’s easier when there’s nothing to compare to. A vintage car that once really stuck out won’t be able to compete with the cars made today.”

Schenker's new album My Years With UFO – released 20 September as part of a new three-album deal with earMUSIC – sees the guitarist revisiting his seminal '70s era, this time with a host of special guests including not only Slash, but surprisingly his bandmate Axl Rose too.  

“It’s a bit of a coincidence, just like everything else," says Schenker of the coup in securing the elusive vocalist. "Life is all about circumstances. Slash came into the studio in Frankfurt for recording. While he was getting ready, he told me that he’d mentioned the collaboration to Axl Rose and Axl said ‘I want to sing on this album too!’ So I told Slash to help make it happen.  

Slash obliged. 

“In the end, Axl ended up singing three songs – Too Hot To Handle, Only You Can Love Me and Love To Love – but he didn’t like his performances on the first two, so we decided to just focus on the latter," Schenker reveals. "He did a fantastic version of that song, I really like how he sang it. All of the musicians on this album are fans and friends. It’s like I did for them what Led Zeppelin did for me. And it keeps going. Guns N’ Roses ended up doing things for the next generation. It’s a very natural thing.”

Check out the full interview with Michael Schenker and preorder the new album My Years With UFO, here. 

Metallica have curated and launched a virtual exhibition in tribute to original bassist Cliff Burton, who was tragically killed when the metal giants' tour bus overturned on a rural road in Sweden in the early hours of 27 September 1986. 

The exhibition, named Orion: A Tribute To Cliff Burton, is the first of four planned collections honouring the bassist, and features a slew of video interviews, hand-written letters, memorabilia, and plenty of archival performance recordings. It's a Burton- and Metallica-fan's goldmine. You can find Orion in Metallica's online museum [requires sign-up but free].

In a video featured in Orion, alongside other interviews with the likes of Faith No More's Mike Bordin and Anthrax's Frank Bello, as well as plenty of band and family insiders, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich talks extensively about first encountering Burton, his subsequent integration into the band, and his creative contribution.

"The first time I saw him," says Ulrich, "James and I had gone to the Whisky a Go Go in, I think, sometime in '82 and there were a bunch of bands from San Francisco playing, one of them being Trauma. 

"We went down to check that out, and we saw Cliff play, and just absolutely lost our minds."

On the bassist's impact on the band's growth, Ulrich says he "added a whole other dimension to the Metallica sound and to the Metallica hype... obviously he'll always be a significant part of whatever we get up to. And I think for a lot of his fans will always be. 

"He'll always have a place in their hearts."

The members of Metallica have never been reticent in paying tribute to their lost bandmate, and have repeatedly gone on record about Burton.

Speaking to Gibson TV (below) in 2020, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett recalled a rip-roaring performance.

"The last show that we played with Cliff was a spectacular show," Kirk recalls in the interview. "It was the first show after maybe six or seven weeks when James [Hetfield] was back on guitar because he had broken his arm during the Ozzy tour. 

"His arm was healed enough so he was able to play guitar and it was the first show where we had James back… and it was the night that Cliff died.

"Everyone was just so happy James was back and to have James's guitar fuelling everything again, rather than me and John Marshall [tech and stand-in guitarist] sharing that duty. 

"We played really, really well and felt like we were back 100%… so that last show was one of the best shows we'd played all fucking year and in retrospect I'm glad Cliff's last show was special in that regard. 

"It really was, in all respects, one of the best shows we'd played and Cliff was very, very happy. So knowing that is a good thing."

"Cliff and I used to room together, so we were super close – we were like brothers," Hammett continues. "We'd hang out, arms around each other and then ten minutes later we could be arguing and wrestling on the ground. That's the kind of relationship we had – total, 100% honest. Emotions just out there all the time. 

Cliff would say this so much; 'There's power in the truth – you've got to be honest all the time and if you have problems with me I want you to tell me' and I would tell him, then he would tell me. Then he'd suggest ridiculous things like, 'Let's wrestle' or fisticuffs, a drinking contest or 'You've got to show me this lick!'

"I get emotional when I think about Cliff and when we're together we think about Cliff. I know that James and I, we get really, really emotional. 

"I would say for me, there's still some grief. after all these years I can still feel that pain."

Ulrich, speaking to Revolver in 2013, also acknowledged Burton's foundational impact on Metallica's whole career.

"My fondest memories of Cliff are his total disregard for convention and his total disregard for playing things out the way you expected them," said Ulrich. 

"He was up to challenge the normalcy, to challenge the status quo, to just fuck with things musically, attitude-wise - the way he dressed, the way he carried himself, his sense of humor, his relationship with the music that inspired him, the music that he played. It was always very unconventional, and it was very unusual."

Ulrich continued: "You could certainly argue that me and James [Hetfield] at that time were more kind of the squarer guys, 'cause we were more like, 'Motörhead, Iron Maiden!' Heavy metal T-shirts, and long hair and bang our heads into the wall. 

"Cliff was just so fast in his palette of things that he was into and things that were inspiring him and the things that he was doing."

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, James Hetfield was explicit on how Burton's musicality has influenced him throughout his career.

"I love harmonies and Cliff Burton has planted a seed in me that continues to grow on that. And I love it. 

"I always loved Thin Lizzy and bands that pull off these really cool harmonies. There’s so many cool voicings that you can do and it just interests me a lot."

Coda - a mother's blessing

Replacing Burton was always going to be a massive task, and Jason Newsted, who joined the band from 1986 to 2001, remembers getting an all-important blessing during his third try-out.

Speaking to Metal Hammer, he recalled, “That third night, they had ‘the elders’ come in for their blessing."

“Torben Ulrich, the Burtons, a couple of the crew guys, people that had been there from the get-go… We got through about six tunes: Master [Of Puppets], [Fade] To Black, [For Whom The] Bell Tolls, the masterpieces!”

Crucially, it was Burton’s mother who approached him immediately after he finished playing.

“So I am just composing myself for a second, putting my bass down, turning off Cliff’s amp – I’m playing fucking Cliff’s amp dude!” said Newsted. “Jan comes walking in the room by herself, and she grabs me, and gets my attention. She says, ‘Great job, son’ and I’m like, ‘Oh fuck!’ 

“She embraced me, and it seemed like it was quite a while, and she said, ‘You’re the one, you must be the one. Please be safe, we love you,’ and she gave me a kiss. That was 35 years ago, and I'll never, ever forget it.”

Jason Newsted is selling over 60 rare electric guitars and basses via internet gear retail giant Reverb, many of which have been played onstage with Metallica or used in the studio, some of which really are wholly unique.

Take his 1992 Alembic Europa Custom 10-string bass guitar. There is only one of these in the world. While it did make it out on the road with Metallica, Newsted admits that he never quite got the best out of it, and he would like to see it to go to someone who can put it to good use. 

Whoever that might be, they’d best be strong, and will preferably have a thick, padded guitar strap in their inventory.

“This thing is a beast, an absolute beast,” says Newsted. “The weight of it itself, you have to be a straight-up badass just to carry it let alone play it. Somebody who could really make this thing happen, I want to get it in their hands. I want to see what this thing could actually do. 

“I was never able to give this thing enough time but I did take it on tour, Black Album tour… even some studio stuff I think. But there you go, really, really special piece of history, piece of metal history. That’s a one-of-one right there.”

If 10 bass strings seems like six too many, how about three? That’s another bona fide unicorn from Newsted’s collection, a Tony Levin Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay with just three-strings, extra spacing between the strings to accommodate Levin’s percussive “funk fingers” approach that he developed with his tech, Andy Moore. If you’re the sort of player who likes the idea of drumstick fingers, this is the instrument for you. Again, they did not make many of these.

“They wound the pickup custom and everything,” says Newsted. “There’s only maybe a half dozen of those on the planet, if that. I couldn’t figure out what to do with it so I am hoping that someone who is inventive [will] maybe do slide bass or something crazy.”

There’s pretty much something for everyone in Newsted’s Reverb shop. You don’t have to play bass with a pick in the world’s biggest metal band to find something that might fit your style. Indeed, first instrument he shows us in the launch video is a Gibson Barney Kessel, which is top-tier jazz guitar for comping and throwing around your best chord shapes. It might struggle with Rhythm Figure 1 of Blackened. We like the looks of that ‘70s ES-335 12-string too.

One of the weirdest guitars in Newsted’s big ol’ sale is a weird V-style that has been custom finished by Newsted himself. Newsted says there will be “one little handful” of these available, each assembled from a kit, hand-finished with his own custom artwork. 

If you’re looking for something that looks less radical but has a sound that you don’t hear everyday, maybe the Hofner 459 VTZ ‘Beatle’ guitar is more your speed. It's a very rare piece, but be warned; Newsted says it takes a “delicate touch”. 

Jason Newsted's official Reverb store goes live on 24 July. To find out more and sign up for an alert when it's online, head over to Reverb.

Metallica have become the latest big-name act to enter the parallel world of Fortnite.

The game’s developer Epic Games has announced that they will play a series of virtual gigs in the Fortnite Festival mode on June 22nd and 23rd next week. Fans will have a chance to glimpse them, or to be more accurate their digital avatar versions, at 2pm, 5pm and 11pm on the Saturday and at 10am, 2pm and 5pm on the Sunday.

Don’t expect a normal-length set though. They’re only due to play six songs in the ‘concert’, which is entitled ‘Metallica: Fuel. Fire. Fury’.

In addition to this, players will be able to participate in Metallica-themed quests within the game and help themselves to Metallica collectables, including outfits. Fortnite Festival are also introducing a new Battle mode, where anything up to 16 players can ‘face off’ against each other via a song chosen at random.

Fortnite Festival was launched in 2023 as the game’s foray into the world of music. It’s more similar to games such as Rock Band in that in its ‘Main Stage’ mode gamers play popular rock songs, hitting notes to the rhythm in the main stage on either lead, guitar/bass, drums or vocals. In its ‘Jam Stage’ players can cooperate to create remixes, using any song in the Festival mode.

So yes, it’s not just running around killing people. Although there is some of that too.

Indeed, in the other slices of the game there will be a Metallica presence. In the Battle Royale mode, by using a Ride The Lightning guitar you can create a lightning arc in the sky that your squadmates can ride. There’s also Metallica Loot Island where, in the middle of every match, a floating island emerges from a hole in the sky. On the island is a stage inspired by the band’s current M72 World Tour.

Previous featured artists in the game include Billie Eilish, The Weeknd and Lady Gaga. Even before that Fortnite pioneered the concept of artists performing virtually within the game – rapper Marshmello becoming the first to do so in 2019.

Fortnite is, of course, one of the most successful video games of all time. Launched in 2017, its initial version enabled teams of players to co-operate in a battle against common enemies and quickly gained a reputation – especially amongst parents of teenagers - for being highly addictive. Since then it has diversified into many different modes, of which Festival is just one.

"I'm so grateful it doesn't shut off," says James Hetfield of his desire to keep playing music, even when he's off the road. "Whether it's just an escape from life or whatever it is, I love my little music room basement. I've got a computer and a few guitars and a little rig set up. It is my soul-nourishing place to go in there and just play, and write."

The Metallica legend checked in with The Metallica Report podcast for a rare interview as the M72 world tour gets back underway, and as is often the case with the big man when he does speak publicly these days – he's candid about his fears as well as hopes as a musician.

"My faith and where it comes from is strong," he says of his lyric writing. "And just like when you're onstage and you don't know what you're going to say, that sacred moment when you walk up to the mic and you say what you're supposed to just then. Trusting that moment, trusting the moment the lyrics will be there when they're supposed to. 

"The lyric journey is kind of its own thing," adds Hetfield. "Music, yeah, it's a collaboration of all of us. Then lyrically, I can freak out, like I don't know what to write about. Then I just start somewhere and it ends up going somewhere else. You start somewhere then, oh that kind of sounds like this story or that sounds like this character or whatever. Then you have the metaphor of what does it mean. There's a deeper, vaguer attachment to something else that hopefully everyone can relate to so it's not just about my struggle with darkness or whatever. There's definitely a theme there but [it's] being able to riff off of that and go to other places. So yes, trusting that it will find its uniqueness."

But Hetfield admits he's well aware that faith and confidence in his creative process can be undermined: "The mind is the enemy most of the time," he notes. "And just trying to avoid that overthinking and then just stream of consciousness – just be connected to a higher power or whatever you want to believe in. That what's supposed to come through me is supposed to right at that time, and not will it to happen."

By now you'd imagine Hetfield knows the Metalica back catalogue off by heart ahead of a tour. Then you remember just how demanding his role is physically and mentally as the rhythm guitarist, vocalist and frontman for the biggest metal band on the planet. He's well aware of that pressure too.

"Over the last month I will say the normal thing happens when I start to doubt myself, I start to feel insecure that we're too old and we can't do this blah blah blah – all that bullshit that everyone tells themselves before they go into something that they care about, that's important. 

These fears can manifest themselves in Hetfield's dreams.

"Having the nightmares of, I'm the only one who cares about what we're doing here – where is everyone?" he recounts. "I show up at the gig and everyone's goofing off and there's 200 people backstage and where's my stuff? Where's the setlist? What songs are we doing?

"And then typical things of, oh the guitar neck is made of rubber and there's only to strings on it, and where's my roadie? The cord won't let me get to the microphone – silly stuff like that that has to happen, and I don't freak out over it."

Instead Hetfield trusts the process that's served him well.

"You practice, and it comes back pretty quickly. It's part of the cycle – it still is. You have anxiety buildup and don't let it get the best of you because you have that balance of anxiety and faith, and as soon as you get up there it's gonna be good."

Hetfield's acceptance that things don't always go to plan onstage is reflective of the personal growth he's made in recent years.

"There's no reason to feel self-conscious about something that goes wrong at the show. It's like, hello! It's happen. Let's deal with it. And the old me of fear, anger, shut down and blame, or whatever – why?"

Check out the full podcast interview above. For Metallica's summer tour dates visit metallica.com

• "If it gets mushy at all, he's out": Metallica producer Greg Fidelman confirms James Hetfield used a very specific blend of four amps together in the studio for the 72 Seasons album

Metallica debuted their longest recorded song at a gig in Munich on Sunday night.

Clocking in at 11 minutes, 10 seconds, Inamorata was one of the highlights of their 2023 album 72 Seasons. James Hetfield introduced it at the Olympiastadion by describing it as “one of my favourites.”

He also said, “This next song we have never, ever played live before. And, you know, in our band, we don’t recognize the word ‘mistake’ — cause there are no mistakes. There’s just unique moments that happen. That’s what we need to tell ourselves.”

The studio version of Inamorata concludes with studio chatter, with the band talking about how it ends with the ‘best’ button. 

Talking to Rolling Stone last year, Lars Ulrich explained this curious reference by saying: “Well, ‘button’ is a term for the end of a song. So the last few hits or the outro is the button. If you talk to 10 artists, you’ll probably hear 10 different sets of lingo and quirky explanations for what they call stuff when they work together. What we call the very end of a song is the button.”

Sunday’s gig was the second Munich date for the band who are playing two nights at every city on the M72 world tour, with different set lists and support acts each night. Friday saw them supported by Architects and Mammoth WVH, whilst on Sunday fans could see Five Finger Death Punch and Ice Nine Kills.

Bassist Robert Trujillo has previously talked about how the band have thought carefully about pacing their sets on this tour. “Initially, we thought it would be really clever and exciting to open the show with an instrumental, like The Call Of Ktulu or Orion,” he told Classic Rock in an interview last year. 

"We found that an instrumental is very powerful for the set but it sits much better in the middle of a set, it’s a chance for the fan to absorb and embrace the song.

"Rather than just coming out throwing a curveball at them, we would rather come out with a Whiplash or a Creeping Death, something that kind of smacks you in the face.”

Friday’s concert was memorable for the thunderstorm that occurred while the band were playing. As the band tore through Master Of Puppets, fans could see lightning flashes in the sky above, a totally metal backdrop which would have surely pleased the band.

After Germany, the M72 tour moves onto Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Spain, and then onto North America in August. No UK dates have been announced as yet.