We’re continuing the roll out of Consequence’s with a list of 10 albums that Metallica’s Kirk Hammett thinks every guitarist should own. See where Hammett lands on our list, and keep checking back throughout the week for more lists, artist-driven content, games, and more.
As one of the greatest to every play the instrument, legendary Metallica lead guitarist KIRK HAMMETT has surely influenced many aspiring musicians over the last 40 years. But there was a time when Hammett was an aspiring musician himself, drawing from various influences as he cut his teeth on the guitar.
In celebration of Consequence‘s Guitar Week, Hammett checked in with us to graciously and exclusively share a list of 11 albums he turned to as an aspiring guitarist. As you’ll soon see, most of the LPs he picked were released between 1975 and 1980, during the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s formative teen years.
Among Hammett’s selections are albums from heavy music giants like Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and Black Sabbath, alongside less obvious influences like Al Di Meola, Journey, and the Tony Williams Lifetime project. Below, find all of Kirk Hammett’s selections (in no particular order), along with his explanations for each choice.
Forty-plus years into an iconic career, Hammett is as busy as ever. He just released a 400-page coffee table book titled the collection:kirk hammett, which features stunning photos of the metal veteran with his prized guitars in Hawaii and Los Angeles, as well as the stories behind the instruments .
Additionally, Hammett will hit the road with Metallica for a new North american leg of their ongoing “M72 World Tour” beginning April 19th in Syracuse, New York. Throughout the outing, Hammett will also be partaking in a book tour in select cities.
UFO — Strangers in the Night (1979)
UFO put out the live album Strangers in the Night in 1979, and I picked that live album because it’s kind of a compilation of UFO’s best concert songs. And Michael Schenker’s playing throughout that whole show on that live album is just so brilliant and just so fluid and melodic and aggressive. He’s at the top of his game right on that live album. And I would recommend that album to any guitar player who just wants to learn how to play in a way that really makes a statement. And what I mean by that is Michael Schenker comes up with hooky, melodic, aggressive, bombastic solos, and I love that approach. I’ve been trying to do that pretty much my entire career.
Jeff Beck — Wired (1976)
I heard this album when I was 14 years old, and it was before I really learned how to play guitar, and I thought everything that I was hearing was guitar. Of course, nowadays I know that Jan Hammer plays a lot of the stuff that I thought was guitar, but just the mere fact that I had thought that Jan Hammer’s [synthesizer] was guitar, along with Jeff Beck’s stuff, really added to Jeff Beck’s legend for me. When I bought that album, I was trying to learn both Jeff Beck’s stuff and Jan Hammer’s stuff ’cause I just didn’t know better.
The playing on that album is really great, particularly the interplay between Hammer and Beck. And Beck was really going out on a limb on that album. Blow by Blow, the album that preceded Wired, is kind of universally recognized as the Jeff Beck album where he just rewrote the fusion book. But there’s something about the material on Wired that I just love more. It’s more energy. It’s more unique than Blow by Blow, but Blow by Blow is equally as good for sure.
Al Di Meola — Elegant Gypsy (1977)
Again, I heard this album when I was 14 or 15, and I couldn’t comprehend it, because the musicality and the musicianship was just so far ahead of where I was at as a musician. It seems like every five or six months I go back to this album ’cause it’s such an amazingly great fusion album. It has that Latin kind of feel that reminded me of some of the stuff that Carlos Santana was doing.
Being from San Francisco, I came from the Mission District and so did Carlos. And Carlos went to the same high school as my brother and my father. I always looked at Santana like a neighborhood band, and I was so familiar with the music, so at the young age when I heard Al Di Meola, I heard elements of Carlos, but it was friggin’ on steroids. And I took to it immediately ’cause it was really fast, too. And I love fast playing, obviously. And Al Di Meola had a great guitar tone. His lead sound to this day I think is so great.
Led Zeppelin — Physical Graffiti (1975)
I’ve always loved this album because it seems like it’s a culmination in songwriting in Led Zeppelin. A lot of the songs I learned later were written at different times of their career. Like the song “Houses of the Holy” that’s on Physical Graffiti was written around the time of the album Houses of the Holy, but didn’t make it onto the album. And then there’s songs on Physical Graffiti that are probably some of my most favorite Zeppelin songs of all time. My favorite Zeppelin song of all time is “Kashmir.” The hugeness of it, I mean it really sounds like an epic story in my brain. It’s huge. And then the other song that means so much to me is “In the Light.” I love that song so much. And “In My Time of Dying,” which is like my third favorite Zeppelin song. Those three songs for me really encapsulate the more unique aspects of of Zeppelin that I just love.
Van Halen — Van Halen (1978)
Everyone in the world should own Van Halen I. Eddie Van Halen never really went into harmonic minor or anything like that, or augmented scales or diminished stuff. Black Sabbath does it, we do it, tons of bands do it. Eddie’s riffs were kind of just like major sounding riffs. Sometimes he had minor sounding stuff, too, but that says a lot in terms of how Van Halen’s music sounded. A lot of Van Halen sounds like good-time party music because that’s just the way that Eddie Van Halen wrote the guitar riffs. And it’s a beautiful thing in itself because he was able to write all sorts of songs that had all sorts of emotions and feelings.
The playing on Van Halen I is so unbridled and so out there and so pioneering and so different and original and unique. There are people doing a right hand technique on the neck, but not like Eddie. Eddie blew it open and hands down was the best guy in doing all that stuff. Absolutely the best guy in creating those amazing tapping licks and harmonic licks and crazy sort of note patterns. He was the king of all that stuff. No one did it better. For someone to do it better than him, they’re gonna have to reinvent the guitar all over again ’cause Eddie reinvented the guitar. There wasn’t anyone who did that since Jimi Hendrix. And then Eddie did it.
Journey — Next (1977)
I always [reference] this album ’cause it’s amazingly great and amazingly progressive and the playing and songwriting on it is really just wonderful. Before they got Steve Perry, Journey were a prog band that had fusion aspects to it. And this album Next is filled with prog playing and fusion playing and wild drumming and crazy guitar solos and riffs and I love it. And you’re going, “What, Journey? ‘Don’t Stop Believin’?’” Yes, that same Journey, but without Steve Perry. I love a lot of the stuff they did with Steve Perry afterwards, but it took me a long time to to come around to it, because I love the pre-Steve Perry Journey so much, as well. And again, a San Francisco band that I really just felt they were just local guys and I felt like a kinship with them because they were a San Francisco band.
Scorpions – Taken by Force (1977)
Ulrich Roth was an amazing guitar player, like Michael Schenker, German, classically oriented, playing just a whole bunch of scales and using a European kind of approach — just insane riffs and solos based on Phrygian dominant, harmonic minor, diminished scales, augmented scales, a lot of different stuff that was not really popularized yet in heavy metal. Only a certain number of people were doing stuff like this. Ritchie Blackmore was doing it, maybe Steve Howe was just kind of hinting at it. Ulrich Roth in the Scorpions was full-on doing that kind of playing. Taken by Force has one of the most consequential Scorpions songs. I say consequential ’cause the guitar playing is so inspiring on this one track alone, and the name of the track is called “The Sails of Charon.” You’ve gotta listen to it, man.
AC/DC — Back in Black (1980)
I’ve never really spoken enough about how great of a guitar player Angus Young is. Let me just get the obvious out of the way: Angus and Malcolm are amazing rhythm guitar players. Malcolm was even better than Angus in terms of playing rhythm, but they’re both right up there as rhythm players. And then Angus has a bluesy, boogie-boogie kind of rock feel that I just love. It’s filled with feeling and emotion and ballsiness. It’s hard to take him seriously when you first see Angus. He’s dressed up in the schoolboy outfit and they’re singing songs about big balls, but man, his guitar playing, it really means something every time he goes into a solo. There’s so much emotion. It’s so heartfelt, and he’s playing the right thing for the song. He plays with so much swing, too. He’s just one of the best feel-type players out there.
Black Sabbath — Sabotage (1975)
The first three Black Sabbath albums are like gospel. Everyone kind of universally agrees. They created the genre in those first three albums, and then there was Vol. 4, which was just like another shift in their sound. And then Sabotage came out, which is another shift in their sound. They got a little bit more progressive, the playing got a little bit more advanced. The arrangements got a little bit more sophisticated.
And they wrote the riff that I think encapsulates the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and thrash metal as as we know it, and that riff is “Symptom of the Universe.” That song literally breathes new life into heavy metal. Just that song in terms of the attitude, the choice of notes, how it was played, and the fact that it was just the main part of the song and the hooks of it. Once you hear that riff, you’ll always hear it again and again. It’s just an amazing riff. That riff in itself shifted heavy metal and I have to give that album and that particular song a lot of credence.
Jimi Hendrix — Band of Gypsys (1970)
Jimi Hendrix’s live album Band of Gypsys, the song “Machine Gun” is basically a guitar solo with vocals and just a heavy atmospheric vibe. That’s how I see it. Every single note of that solo is relevant. Just like it would be if it was part of the composition. Some of his soloing is just so atmospheric, it doesn’t even feel like you’re in a song. You’re kind of like just in some weird, dark musical place.And it’s amazing because the whole concert, Jimi’s guitar is pitched down, and I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but it’s somewhere between E flat and D and it used to drive me crazy ’cause when I was younger I’d sit down at regular E flat pitch and I couldn’t figure out anything. None of the notes sounded correct. I had to tune to the album and that weird sort of pitch that they tuned at, and then I could figure out the album. All of a sudden, the sound was there. But man, Jimi’s playing is so great because he knows when to go for the throat. He knows when to lean back. He knows what to play to create a mood. And he does this often during the course of that concert.
The Tony Williams Lifetime — Lifetime: The Collection (1992)
Tony Williams is a fusion drummer. He first came around playing with John McLaughlin. He also started playing with Miles Davis when he was like 16. And then he started putting out a series of albums in the 1970s that totally sound like friggin’ heavy metal jazz fusion. There’s a compilation album called Lifetime: The Collection [which compiles the first two Tony Williams Lifetime albums Believe It (1975) and Million Dollar Legs (1976)]. Man, the playing is amazing. The songs are amazing.
‘He has Allan Holdsworth playing on a bunch of tracks. And man, anything that Allan Holdsworth even fucking touches and plays on, including all his solo stuff, the stuff with Tony Williams, it’s all amazing. And Allan Holdsworth has notes in his guitar that the rest of us don’t. And what I mean by that is he had such big hands that he could stretch, like freaking eight, 10 frets. I can’t do that. And you wonder where Eddie Van Halen got a lot of his stuff, he got a lot of from Allan Holdsworth — trying to get those wide intervals, Eddie would stretch seven or eight frets. Allan Holdsworth, because his fingers and his hands had such a large stretch, it was natural. It’s not natural for someone like me. I don’t have a stretch like that. It’s crazy.
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