About two weeks ago, Angel Vivaldi criticized Kirk Hammett on Facebook for saying that guitar solos in rock/metal songs didn’t stick in non-musicians’ minds. More recently, he detailed this, sharing a screenshot of his earlier comment and writing:
“If not for Kirk, I wouldn’t be here, so utmost respect to him. However, the second someone succumbs to this type of thinking, ala’ ‘there’s no good or memorable music these days,’ you’re just screaming, ‘I’m close-minded and don’t seek new music in order to actually judge it’ to the world. You can’t say that unless you’ve heard every new song uploaded to Spotify daily, and few at that age actually seek out the new music they’re writing off.”
‘Hammett Is Responsible For The Death Of Solos’
In his post, Vivaldi also suggested that Hammett was directly responsible for the decrease in the popularity of guitar solos in music:
“Kirk himself held a torch of responsibility when it came to flipping non-musicians into guitar shredders, myself included. He himself is a reason why guitar solos are dying! He arguably has the largest platform to inspire even more guitarists, but because he ‘opted for a raw, improvisational approach’ (which he does not have the skill set to execute, IMHO) on ’72 Seasons’ and lord knows how many before that, his torch now burns very dimly if at all.”
Mentioning the Metallica guitarist’s fight to keep his guitar solos in ‘St. Anger’ despite his bandmates’ wish, he added:
“There was a time during the ‘Some Kind Of Monster’ era where he fought for how important solos were. It’s possible that because none of his solos landed the way they did in the past that, it helped to further extinguish his opinion on how important they are. I can only speculate.”
The Metallica Member’s Controversial Views
During the interviews for the ‘Some Kind Of Monster’ documentary film, Kirk Hammett mentioned that he was upset with his bandmates for wanting to take out his guitar solos from the records and insisted on keeping them. Still, his comment about rock solos during a chat with Guitar World read:
“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.”
Reacting to the interview shared by Metal Injection on Facebook, Vivaldi wrote:
“Couldn’t be further from the truth. If the solo is written by a songwriter and not a lazy guitarist relying on muscle memory, your solo will stay with people forever.”
Angel Vivaldi Was Not The Only One To Disagree
The guitarist’s criticism followed another post from Tracii Guns in early December. Disagreeing with Hammett’s point, Guns posted on X:
“That’s a really weird thing to say, Kirk Hammett. Solos are string poems. If the solos aren’t memorable, then they are crap.”
Then, he shared a guitar solo from Neal Schon and added:
“Somebody said non-musicians don’t remember guitar solos. I say Fooey. I’m sure arenas full of people can sing this total Neal Schon guitar solo.”
You can read Angel Vivaldi’s full comment here.
