It’s been over 30 years since Metallica wrote Master Of Puppets, but the metal legends still hold a strong attachment to the Carlson Boulevard garage where they put their masterpiece together - and now James Hetfield even has a guitar built out of wood from their old rehearsal pad.
In an interview for Metallica TV, Hetfield shows off the guitar he dubs Carl, built by Ken Lawrence out of timber retained from the garage where the group wrote Puppets and Ride The Lightning.
The garage was later demolished, but a friend of the band retained eight pieces of wood and passed them on to Hetfield.
Most of the clean songs that I do, when there’s picking at the beginning or something, it’s usually done on a Ken Lawrence guitar
Hetfield then passed them on to Lawrence, saying, “I knew he could work with that wood.”
“I was worried about him making it too clean, and that he did not,” the frontman continues. “There's no splinters, but you feel the wood, you feel the grain. It's almost like grooves in vinyl.”
The guitar also features inlays that depict the line-up from that era, Cliff Burton’s passing and the garage from which the wood was taken, as well as other Hetfield constants, including a mahogany back and ebony fretboard.
“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’s usually done on a Ken Lawrence guitar, because it’s got such a great sound to it in the clean department especially,” Papa Het adds.
