Kirk Hammett

Kirk Hammett (2013)

Kirk Hammett in Vienna (2007)

Kirk Lee Hammett (born November 18, 1962 in San Francisco , California ) is an American musician and lead guitarist for the metal band Metallica .

biography

Hammett's father was an Irish merchant seaman and his mother was a Filipina who worked for the federal government. After the family moved to El Sobrante , California , he attended De Anza High School there. As a child and adolescent, he showed great interest in his older brother's extensive record collection, which included albums by Led Zeppelin , Black Sabbath , The Rolling Stones , Jimi Hendrix and UFO . One of Hammett's greatest influences was Jimi Hendrix, whom he said he wanted to "be" himself and whose songs he later incorporated into his guitar solos at concerts. Especially the band UFO, whose albums with Michael Schenker and the Scorpions with their LP Virgin Killer changed his life and took him away from the blues-inspired guitarists to the heavy guitarists. To this day he counts Michael Schenker , Uli Jon Roth and the current guitarist of the Scorpions Matthias Jabs among his role models and sources of inspiration and plays songs by the Scorpions, for example Sails of Charon. He describes Hanover , hometown of the Scorpions, as a large part of his musical identity. He first met Michael Schenker on the show That Metal Show (where musicians jam with their idols) when Kirk asked the host of this talk show Eddie Trunk to invite Michael Schenker to jam. Then on May 3, 2015, Kirk attended a live show by Michael Schenker's Temple Of Rock group in San José, California / USA, and played the UFO song Natrual Thing followed by the Scorpions title Blackout together with the band on the Stage. As a huge fan of Michael Schenker's guitar playing, Kirk was thrilled when he received a request to duel with Michael Schenker in the guitar solos as a guest musician on the 2018 studio record Resurrection from the Michael Schenker Fest in the song Heart and Soul . An offer that he immediately accepted. His contributions to the song were recorded in Hawaii.

Kirk Hammett first learned about the guitar at the age of 15. The equipment at the time consisted of a cheap department store guitar and a small amplifier with a 4-inch speaker. After switching to a Fender Stratocaster in 1978 , he tried to change its sound through various guitar parts. Finally he ended up on a Gibson Flying V from 1974. To be able to afford a Marshall guitar amplifier , he took a. a. hired a temporary job at Burger King .

Hammett got enthusiastic about heavy metal early on . In 1982 he founded the group Exodus with singer Paul Baloff, guitarist Gary Holt and drummer Tom Hunting , one of the most influential groups in the early days of the Bay Area thrash metal movement .

He joined Metallica in 1983 after his predecessor Dave Mustaine was fired from the group for serious drug and alcohol problems. Shortly thereafter, Hammett recorded Metallica's first album, Kill 'Em All . At this point he took additional lessons from the guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani . Although Hammett is mainly the first guitarist, he has also been involved in the writing of the songs since the mid-1980s, and he also contributed to the writing of the lyrics on the St. Anger album . One of his most famous riffs is Enter Sandman's initial riff . At the last concert of the Spastik Children , the "fun band" of James Hetfield among others , he represented the fatally injured bassist Cliff Burton on bass .

Kirk Hammett was voted eleventh in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He is still a role model for many heavy metal guitarists today.

He enrolled in the City College of San Francisco in 1993 after the Black album tour , where he studied film and Asian arts.

Kirk Hammett owns a collection of several hundred guitars, most of which were made by ESP . ESP has also released several signature models in honor of Kirk Hammett over time. On special occasions he also plays guitars from the traditional American brand Gibson , so he owns several original Les Paul models from 1958 and 1959, which today reach prices of around USD 300,000 and more. He played one such. B. at the concert The Big Four Live from Sofia, Bulgaria with the song Fade to Black .

The avid comic and horror film fan lives with his second wife Lani and their two sons Angel and Vincence in Hawaii and San Francisco. On September 20, 2012, he filed for divorce from Lani Guttradauro at the San Francisco Supreme Court. He is a vegetarian and is also interested in Buddhism . Hammett supports the Rock the Vote initiative .

Web links

Commons : Kirk Hammett  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Kirk Hammett at Discogs (English)
• Kirk Hammett in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.kn-online.de/News/Sonntag/Promi-Talk/Hat-Deutschland-Sie-inspiriert-Interview-mit-Kirk-Hammett
2. ↑ 100 greatest guitarists . In: Rolling Stone Magazine 2003
3. ↑ see documentary Some Kind of Monster and the Blu-ray Disc from the Sofia concert