METALLICA's Kirk Hammett Featured In February Guitar World
December 23, 2007, 16 years ago
Guitar World magazine's February 2008 cover feature is METALLICA's Kirk Hammett, who is interviewed for the issue.
The following is an excerpt from the interview:
Q: Was the basic songwriting process different from the past? Or is that always kind of the same?
A: "We used an approach that was the same as St. Anger, in the sense that we'd all show up and jam on songs. The seeds for the songs on this new album came out of jams that we would have on the road, before we'd go onstage. We have this thing called "the tune-up room" at our shows. It's usually a really small room with a drum kit, two guitar amps, a bass amp, a P.A. that's never loud enough and ProTools set-up. One of us would come in with a riff and we'd jam on it. James was always the first one in the tuning room, so often he'd be fiddling with a riff when the rest of us came in.
And we would do this every time we had a show. So at the end of the tour we had over 50 hours of music. It was insane. We went through all of it, trying to narrow it down, which was a horrible process for me, because I think everything we play is great. So I wasn't any help. I let the other guys pick the riffs. Once all the major riffs were picked, we started jamming on them and turning them into songs. After about a year's time, we had 22 songs. We just refined it from there."
Read the full interview in the February issue of Guitar World, available now.
