A number of things go into being a great guitar player, but one of the most important aspects is having a good ear for the instrument’s best music and constantly being willing to learn new things. This means listening to the sonic styles outside of the genre you play in and learning those songs to incorporate different styles into what you do. Without a doubt, Metallica is one of the bands that are best at incorporating various styles and sounds into their music.
When you listen to good bands, you can check out their range of music available throughout their back catalogue and hear different influences. This means that one album might sound totally different from another, but the tone is still reminiscent of the same band. Metallica can do this in a sense; however, you get to hear these influences on the same album, not different ones. This is the magic of Kirk Hammett’s guitar playing.
Sure, Metallica is a metal band—no questions there—but when you listen to one of their albums, you’ll hear a massive range of influences at play. This means slower acoustic sections in songs, blues-like guitar solos, and heavy metal-style riffs—it’s all in there and makes the band so exciting.
We have Kirk Hammett’s inquisitive attitude towards guitar music to thank for this. He admitted in an interview that he isn’t comfortable simply listening to music within his own genre and instead is always keen on hearing what other artists are up to and learning their songs.
“I’ll be sitting there and I’ll hear a song on the radio, like, ‘Wow, that sounds like it might be a really fun thing to play on guitar’,” he said, “And then I’ll go and learn it, you know? And then I’ll discover there’s fingerings in there that I’m not accustomed to. Okay… Good example,”
With that, Hammett starts playing ‘Turn it on Again’ by Genesis. Genesis are a band with plenty of great guitar music that often gets overlooked. The drumming of Phil Collins was such a prominent part of the band that it’s often what is only associated with it; however, there is a lot more to them than that. As Hammett suggests, ‘Turn It On Again’ is an example of some of the great guitar music on display.
“Great guitar song,” he said, “I look for stuff like that. I look for things for that are interesting and different and great for me to play, you know?… They’re interesting for me to play and they put my hands in positions that I’m not accustomed to. I’m like, ‘Yeah man, I love this type of stuff’.”
By having an open mind to various styles of music, artists ensure they can incorporate different genres into their sound while still retaining what makes them unique.