{"id":362420,"date":"2026-01-10T07:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/362420\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T07:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:56:08","slug":"the-song-kirk-hammett-wants-to-be-remembered-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/362420\/","title":{"rendered":"The song Kirk Hammett wants to be remembered for"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kirk<\/p>\n

(Credits: Epiphone)<\/p>\n

Fri 9 January 2026 23:00, UK <\/p>\n

In 2022\u2019s The Menu, Ralph Fiennes plays a Michelin-star chef who\u2019s pushed to murderous extremes by his infuriating interactions with elitist billionaires, when all he really wanted, it turned out, was to set aside his fancy training and just make a nice, basic cheeseburger, and I have a feeling Kirk Hammett<\/a> might relate to this.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying the longtime Metallica guitarist has a secret desire to murder his wealthy fans, for they\u2019re the only ones who can afford to come to his concerts, but it seems a safe assumption, though, that after more than 40 years of stadium gigs and awards shows, inner-band squabbles and angry fan backlash, Hammett sometimes daydreams about those simpler days back in the early \u201880s, when he was a wide-eyed kid from El Sobrante, California, playing in an upstart metal band with everything to prove.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a fairy tale come true,\u201d a 21-year-old Hammett told his hometown paper, The Oakland Tribune, back in 1985, when Metallica were touring Ride the Lightning and building their international audience, gushing, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flashing forward three decades to 2015, Hammett was then a middle-aged man with essentially nothing left to prove; Metallica had evolved from a dangerous thrash metal act into the biggest mainstream rock band in the world, having become Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-ers, revered ambassadors of their trade, and multi-platinum commercial monsters. <\/p>\n

But when Hammett took part in a survey that year by Guitar World<\/a> magazine, asking various artists to choose a song that they\u2019d most like to be remembered for, he didn\u2019t go with any of the obvious, titanic mega-hits from his band\u2019s catalogue, not \u2018Master of Puppets<\/a>\u2018, not \u2018One\u2019, not \u2018Enter Sandman\u2019, not even any of the big ballads like \u2018The Unforgiven\u2019 or \u2018Nothing Else Matters\u2019. Instead, he went all the way back to the beginning, naming \u2018Motorbreath\u2019 from Metallica\u2019s 1983 debut album Kill \u2019Em All as the song he\u2019d most like people to associate with him when he\u2019s dead and gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose it because it has the breakneck tempo we were so fond of in our early days\u2014plus the lyrics set the tone for our lives over the next ten years,\u201d Hammett said, \u201cAnd unlike the songs we wrote later, \u2018Motorbreath\u2019 is under four minutes long!\u201d<\/p>\n

Diehard fans might not be that surprised by this selection, considering \u2018Motorbreath\u2019 has continued to pop up on Metallica setlists well into their later years, but the song wasn\u2019t a single on Kill \u2018Em All, and it\u2019s not exactly front-of-mind as a trademark track even for fans who prefer the band\u2019s more visceral 1980s material. The song, which was written by James Hetfield and includes the late Cliff Burton on bass, is something of a blunt instrument: just three minutes and seven seconds of relentless attack-mode, with riffage that owes as much to Mot\u00f6rhead (hence the title) and hardcore punk as traditional heavy metal. But that may be precisely the point, as \u2018Motorbreath\u2019 captures the band and Hammett before the mythology hardened, and before Metallica became an institution.<\/p>\n

Hetfield actually wrote the track when he was still with his previous band, Leather Charm, although an embittered Dave Mustaine also later took credit for writing the song\u2019s intro. When Hammett arrived in 1983 after Mustaine\u2019s ousting from Metallica, however, he helped shape the track into what it became. His playing throughout Kill \u2019Em All<\/a> is less about finesse and more about propulsion, locking in with drummer Lars Ulrich to push the music forward and create a form of speed metal that didn\u2019t have to compromise on quality tunes, and \u2018Motorbreath\u2019 embodies that effort, requiring none of the production bloat that sometimes over-complicates even the best songs from Metallica\u2019s mainstream era.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Kirk Hammett\u2019s simple, delicious cheeseburger, and who could blame him for wanting to be remembered for that?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Epiphone) Fri 9 January 2026 23:00, UK In 2022\u2019s The Menu, Ralph Fiennes plays a Michelin-star chef…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,40034,25229,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-362420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-kirk-hammett","tag-metallica","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}