(Credits: Far Out / Carlos Rodríguez / Andes / Daigo Oliva)
Fri 19 December 2025 22:30, UK
In the world of heavy metal, there has never been a band that has been equal parts loved and hated as much as Metallica.
While they deserve kudos for being one of the greatest metal acts on the planet and exposing the genre to millions of people, the lows of their career are still mystifying to this day and don’t deserve to be glossed over all that often. But even in their most significant moments, the thrash titans were always paying tribute to what was in their record collections.
From day one, every member of the band were fans before anything else, and they would gladly talk about the acts that set their worlds on fire when they first picked up guitars. Black Sabbath were obviously going to be big frontrunners, but when James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich first began working together, it was all about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, whether that was listening to Diamond Head and Angel Witch or the living legends of the time like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.
And it didn’t take long for them to start incorporating their favourite songs into their own tunes. The breakdown of ‘The Four Horsemen’ was already taken from the main riff of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, and even when making their masterpiece Master of Puppets, the ballad ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ had come from an obscure metal band called Bleak House before Hetfield stumbled upon the same chord progression.
It’s impossible to copyright chords, but it’s another matter entirely to steal entire riffs. Hetfield may have spent months upon months trying to get the exact right sound for any of their tunes, but when they reached the big leagues in the late 1990s, he did manage to give a subtle nod to Aerosmith when they started working with the San Francisco Symphony for the album S&M.
Arranger Michael Kamen deserves a lot of credit for helping bring their old songs to life for this performance, but when they had the makings of a new song called ‘No Leaf Clover’, hearing them finish it with the full orchestra was just weird enough to pull off, especially with all the strings underscoring the gravity of every single line Hetfield sings. But when we get back into heavy territory, though, the riff is actually the same as Aerosmith’s ‘Last Child’.
Hetfield would be the first to say that Aerosmith was a major influence on him growing up, but the similarities between both riffs is uncanny. They’re not in the same key, and there’s a healthy amount of distortion on the Metallica version, but if you look at where the accents of the notes are, they are near-identical half the time, especially when the orchestra hits those same stabs along with them.
But what’s interesting is how both of them sound within the context of their respective songs. ‘Last Child’ laid down one of the meanest grooves in hard rock with Steven Tyler leading the charge, but if that felt like a smooth boogie, the Metallica version sounds like a lumbering giant slowly stomping across the land. And considering the tune is all about someone who has made mistakes throughout their life and is having it all blow up in his face, that riff may as well be the musical equivalent of the devil creeping up behind him.
Tyler and Joe Perry may not be itching to call their lawyers any time soon, but there’s a case to be made for them to at least get a small writer’s credit on the tune. Because as heavy as Metallica could be during their career, sometimes the best way to get people hooked on their music is to borrow from the sickest riffs from their childhood.
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