Metallica’s Kirk Hammet sat down with Guitar World for their latest issue and shared his belief that a certain group of people will forget guitar solos anyway.
According to Hammett, the majority of the general music audience, especially those who don’t play the guitar, may not share the enthusiasm of those who play guitar. During the interview, the guitarist suggested that the average non-guitar-playing listener isn’t particularly interested in guitar solos and is likely to forget them when the song ends:
“I hate to say it for all your readers out there, but non-musicians, who are the majority of the fucking listening world, they are not going to remember guitar solos.”
Still, even though he believes it is more likely that guitar players will remember the solo, he continued with the bright side of the non-musicians listening to their songs:
“They are gonna helluva remember a great melody, and they’re really gonna remember a great song – especially a song that’s gonna bring them to a different place from where they were five minutes previously.”
Hammett Learned Soloing at 15
Hammett, who has created numerous solos during his journey with Metallica, is in the mindset that a solo should complement the song, and he figured this all out at a ripe age:
“I figured it out when I was 15 years old.”
Hammett’s former guitar tech John Marshall helped him build solos. He went on to share one of the first stories of himself with the guitar tech:
“John Marshall and myself had literally been playing guitar for six months when I said to him, ‘We need to start writing tunes. Look at Kiss, they write all their own songs… and Aerosmith, Van Halen. So John and I started writing music. And it was a lot of crap, but it was something!”
The rocker keeps on including solos in Metallica’s tracks, and he did so in the newest album, ’72 Seasons,’ too.
