Quotes by Kirk Hammett

Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it - 'St. Anger' being the fire and 'Death Magnetic' being the phoenix.

Ampeg made incredible guitar heads in the early Nineties and then stopped. And I don’t know why. The one we used had a nice clean, warm sound, and it blended well with the other amps that were in the studio.

My guitars are my umbilical cord. They’re directly wired into my head.

The main riff for ‘SandMan’ was just something I wrote one night.

Getting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, ‘Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies’ has probably played out in a lot of people’s discovery of horror.

I went through a whole blues period in the Nineties, and that had some influence on ‘Load’ and ‘ReLoad.’

I would have to say I’m bored with the standard rock, guitar solos, but I’ve done it for five albums now, and this time I wanted to go in a completely different direction. I wasn’t interested in showing off any more.

It’s definitely true that Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my all-time favorite guitarists.

One of my favorite horror films of the Nineties was ‘Event Horizon.’

When you’re first starting out, there’s always the temptation to hide behind distortion because it lets you get away with murder. But, when it comes to rhythm work, you’ve gotta back off that gain control a bit, especially if you’re playing with another guitarist.