“I WAS JUST SITTING THERE WITH MY GUITAR AT THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, AND THEN THIS RIFF CAME OUT. AND I THOUGHT, ‘WHOAH, THAT WORKS!’”
It was one simple riff that set the tone for the biggest album of Metallica’s career, and it came not from James Hetfield, the band’s rhythm guitarist and riff-maker-in-chief, but from lead guitarist
Kirk Hammett. The riff came to him during a tour in 1989, as he sat alone in a hotel room. And as he recalls that moment to TG, all of 32 years later, he acknowledges a debt to one of the bands that defined a new form of heavy rock at the exact same time that Metallica rose to superstar status.
“Back in ’89 I’d just discovered this new musical movement coming out of the Seattle area,” Kirk says. “I was listening to a lot of Soundgarden. I was pretty impressed with the rawness of their sound and how heavy it felt. And one thing we spoke about as a band was how much we all like bouncy riffs. So I was just sitting there with my guitar at three o’clock in the morning, thinking: ‘Soundgarden, bounce, flattened fifths...’ Almost simulating my mind to those sounds. And then this riff came out, and I thought, ‘Whoah, that works!’”
From this riff, a classic was created. Enter Sandman was, in every sense, the pivotal song on Metallica’s fifth album, officially titled Metallica but more commonly known as The Black Album. It was the opening song on the album, the first single, and most important of all, it defined a new direction for the band when they most needed it.
By the end of the 80s, the kings of thrash metal had outgrown the genre they had done so much to create, and it was Enter Sandman that unlocked their future.
As drummer Lars Ulrich explained: “With the first four Metallica albums, it was a journey that sort of got more and more progressive, more and more crazy and kooky and long-winded. With the fourth album [1988’s ...And Justice For All] it’s like we hit a wall. So when we got together to write the next batch of songs, the mission statement was: simplify. And the first song we wrote, on day one, was Enter Sandman.”
Metallica’s choice of producer for The
