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If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.

Kirk Hammett

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Kirk Hammett
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: November 18
Guitarist
Songwriter
San Francisco County
California
Kirk Lee Hammett
Battle
Easy
Makes
Back
Play
Like
Laid
Guitar

More quotes by Kirk Hammett

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After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.'
Kirk Hammett
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Much of my playing is rhythmic and choppy I use a lot of double stops. The wah just accents all those stops and chops and brings out the rhythmic aspect that much more.
Kirk Hammett
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Musically, there's a movement called the flatted fifth that's really evil-sounding. It was outlawed by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. That movement is what gives you a real evil sound that conjures up dark, fantastic images. It's like an audio horror movie. It personifies what a horror movie is about.
Kirk Hammett
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When I got my first Marshall amp, it was so empowering. No one ever forgets their first Marshall amp if you're a guitar player pursuing a big powerful sound. I mean, no one ever forgets their first Marshall amp.
Kirk Hammett
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For a while I was collecting Satan and devil stuff - you know, anything that had to do with old Beelzebub or Lucifer. But I had to put the brakes on it, because there's a lot of stuff out there, and the collection was just growing too quickly.
Kirk Hammett
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I don't think success has changed us as people at all. We are the same lunatics that we were when this band first got going. We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.
Kirk Hammett
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Jeff Beck is one of my heroes and has been since I first picked up a guitar.
Kirk Hammett
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I've been into horror movies ever since I was five years old.
Kirk Hammett
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My guitars are my umbilical cord. They're directly wired into my head.
Kirk Hammett
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We wanted to offer something new to our audience. I hate it when bands stop taking chances.
Kirk Hammett
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For the 'Load' album, I was experimenting so much with tone that I had to keep journals on what equipment I was using. For 'Hero of the Day', I know I used a 1958 Les Paul Standard with a Matchless Chieftain, some Boogie amps and a Vox amp - again, they're all blended.
Kirk Hammett
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Metallica is a very complicated, fragile thing. On the outside, it's all metal, but on the inside it's very delicate.
Kirk Hammett
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One of my favorite horror films of the Nineties was 'Event Horizon.'
Kirk Hammett
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Basically I just had to say, 'Screw everyone around me - from now on I'm just gonna play what I think is important to me and our music.' So I gave the big finger to all the current trends in technical wizardry, and just went off and did what I felt was best for the songs.
Kirk Hammett
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Horror movies started to wane around the onset of World War II, and after World War II, when all the troops came home, people weren't really interested in seeing horror movies, because they had the real horror right on their front doorsteps.
Kirk Hammett
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I was really, really wild in my early twenties and a bit self-destructive.
Kirk Hammett
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We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.
Kirk Hammett
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It really shocked me just to hear of the fans' response to 'St. Anger' not having guitar solos.
Kirk Hammett
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Although I'm a lead guitarist, I'd say that a good 95 percent of my time onstage is spent playing rhythm.
Kirk Hammett
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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.
Kirk Hammett