At last month’s NAMM’s Ultimate Jam Night, Lloyd Grant revealed one thing about Metallica’s lineup back in 1982.
While discussing Metallica’s ‘Hit The Lights’ and how his involvement with the band came about, he revealed that frontman James Hetfield was playing bass during their earlier days. “Me and him and James; just the three of us. James was playing bass and I was playing guitar and Lars was playing drums,” he said.
“And we rehearsed that ‘Hit The Lights’ song. But way before that, Lars let me hear that song,” Grant revealed. “We were hanging out watching soccer, and he says, ‘Hey, I met this guy,’ blah blah blah, ‘and he’s exactly what we wanna jam with.’ And he played this one song, and it was great, and that’s how I first was introduced to ‘Hit The Lights’. And after that, I went over and jammed a few times.”
“Then he called me and said they were gonna be on this compilation album [‘Metal Massacre’] and he brought over a tape of ‘Hit The Lights’ recorded on a four-track and asked me to make some solos for that, and they were gonna bring the four-track down and they were just gonna put it out and dump it on the compilation album,” he added.
Even after his contribution to the band, Grant never got an offer to join Metallica.
“No; they didn’t need to, because by then they already had Dave Mustaine. Even when he left, they’d got Kirk Hammet in the wings, so they’ve always had someone great waiting,” the rocker earlier told Metal Hammer.
On later pressings of ‘Hit The Lights’ for ‘Metal Massacre,’ Dave Mustaine replaced Grant.
