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Metallica · S1 E5
Kirk
Dave Mustaine is fired on the bus to New York, Kirk Hammett of Exodus gets the call
A Greyhound bus heading east, April 1983. Metallica's three other members wake Dave Mustaine up, hand him a bus ticket back to Los Angeles, and tell him he's out of the band.
"Fuel" (Metallica, 1998). Pure speed, pure aggression, and Kirk Hammett's guitar burning through the center of it. When Kirk replaced Mustaine on a Greyhound bus in 1983, he brought a different kind of fire: less anger, more precision, and a wah pedal that would become the most recognizable sound in metal guitar.
The Call
The firing happens on the bus to New York, where the band is heading to record their debut at Music America Studios in Rochester. Mustaine's drinking and fighting have become unbearable, and the decision is unanimous. Within hours, they're on the phone to Kirk Hammett, the 20-year-old lead guitarist of Bay Area thrash band Exodus.
Sources
Joel McIver, "Justice for All"
VH1 Behind the Music
So What! magazine
“I got the call. They said Dave was out and could I come to New York. I didn't even think about it. I just went.”
— Kirk Hammett, Guitar World
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Kirk learn an entire album's worth of songs in time to record?
Fuel, Metallica (1998)
The riff is built on a single repeated note played so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Kirk's solo tears through the middle with the wah pedal cranked to maximum, the sound that became his signature from the moment he joined the band. Listen for how the song never lets up: no quiet section, no breakdown, no breathing room. Five minutes of pure forward momentum.
Sources
Guitar World
Rolling Stone
Kirk Hammett
Whiplash, Metallica
From Kill 'Em All (1983). The fastest song on the debut album, and the first one where you can hear Kirk Hammett's style replacing Mustaine's. The solos are more melodic, more structured, less chaotic. Same band, completely different lead guitarist, and you can feel it in every note.
Whiplash, Metallica (1983)
"Adrenaline starts to flow, you're thrashing all around." A song about the physical experience of metal played by a band that just went through the most violent lineup change in the genre. The energy is real because the chaos was real.
Who was Kirk Hammett's private guitar teacher before he joined Metallica?
The lineup is set: Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton, Hammett. Next: a record store owner from New Jersey named Johnny Zazula puts up $15,000 of his own money to record Kill 'Em All, and thrash metal gets its first album.
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