Metallica’s Kirk Hammett compares ‘St. Anger’ to YES taking ‘a freaking left turn’
‘Sometimes people wanna get challenged by their favorite band…’
Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett has reflected on his 40 years in the band in a wide-ranging interview.
Speaking to producer and YouTuber Rick Beato in a new 103-minute interview, Hammett covered a lot of ground, including the divisive albums ‘Lulu’ and ‘St. Anger’.
Watch: Kirk Hammett interview on his time in Metallica
After saying that ‘Master Of Puppets’ became a sort of “blueprint record” for the band, the guitarist added that they were never afraid to try new things.
“We always took a chance, even if some band members weren’t fully on,” he said.
“There’s been times I haven’t been fully on, and I was just, like, ‘I am gonna take a chance, a leap of faith, lean on my other three bandmembers.’ It’s always been worth it.”
He continued: “Even though sometimes we’ve taken chances and they failed horribly from a commercial standpoint, I think creatively and artistically, I think they’re huge successes.
“And I speak specifically about ‘Lulu’, the album we did with Lou Reed, and also about ‘St. Anger’. Those are really divisive albums, and you have two camps — people who like it and people who don’t.”
Watch: Metallica – ‘St. Anger’
Hammett went on to say that bands needed their challenging moments, comparing it to prog rock group YES .
He said: “I think stuff like that’s important to have in your catalogue. ‘Cause you just don’t want a lot of the same thing. You want peaks and valleys; you want contrast. It’s what makes it interesting.
“And if you have a catalogue that’s just perfect, people get bored of it. There’s a lot of the same thing.
“Sometimes people wanna get challenged by their favorite band. I love YES. The first three or four YES albums are brilliant.
“But then they took a freaking left turn into somewhere else. And I loved it, ’cause it was challenging. And it forced me to listen even harder.”
The guitarist was presumably referring to the change that started with YES’ sixth album ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’, which was inspired by a set of Hindu texts and featured four multipart 'movements' over the course of a double album.
Keyboardist Rick Wakeman would later quit the band over their new musical direction.
Earlier this year, Planet Rock caught up with Hammett and Metallica frontman James Hetfield and the pair spoke, among other things, about the process behind writing '72 Seasons', Hetfield's onstage anxiety and their memories of the late great Cliff Burton.