Kirk Hammett quotes:

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.'

Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole.

The same sensations that you get in heavy metal are in horror movies. Heavy metal sounds evil and horror movies are evil, ha ha!

The movie 'Black Cat,' from 1934, is one of my favorite movies.

For me, one of the most perfect times to watch a horror movie is when it's cold and raining outside and there's pretty much no outdoor activity to be done. It kind of sets the mood.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that young players - I mean 10- and 12-year-olds - really like my guitar style. There's something in my guitar style that they totally can latch onto and learn quickly, and then go from there to your Yngwie Malmsteens or your Steve Vais or whatever.

Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it - 'St. Anger' being the fire and 'Death Magnetic' being the phoenix.

One of my favorite horror films of the Nineties was 'Event Horizon.'

Metallica is a very complicated, fragile thing. On the outside, it's all metal, but on the inside it's very delicate.

I would have to say I'm bored with the standard rock, guitar solos, but I've done it for five albums now, and this time I wanted to go in a completely different direction. I wasn't interested in showing off any more.

If I had unlimited funds, wall space and storage, I would collect a lot more things, like 'Planet of the Apes,' 'Star Wars,' science fiction stuff, autographs, and prop guns and weapons. I have to draw the line somewhere.

It's definitely true that Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my all-time favorite guitarists.

A lot of the main characters in horror movies are outsiders as well, so that outsider syndrome reverberates within horror fans and geeky collectors. It's kind of a rallying call that brings fans and collectors together who are a little socially retarded, maybe.

I love 'True Blood.' I love 'The Walking Dead.' Those are fantastic series.

Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it - St. Anger being the fire and Death Magnetic being the phoenix.

I love this pedal to death. The only way you could keep me from playing one is by chopping off my legs!

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.

It really shocked me just to hear of the fans' response to 'St. Anger' not having guitar solos.

Because of things like iTunes and streaming and social networking, it's destroyed music. It's destroyed the motivation to go out there and really make the best record possible. It's a shame.

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.

We wanted to offer something new to our audience. I hate it when bands stop taking chances.

Technology has given us convenience, but at the same time it's making musicians work harder in that if you really want to make money making music and selling albums, you have to go out there and perform. And hope you sell stuff like merch, and get on YouTube, and all the other ancillary sort of things that go along with that.

I was really, really wild in my early twenties and a bit self-destructive.

I'm death obsessed. You know, I have death all over my house. I have a stuffed two headed sheep!

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.

I feel really fortunate that, in playing guitar and surfing, I've found two things that mean so much to me, and which really complement each other. There's definitely a spiritual thing to both of them; they totally connect you to a higher realm.

I feel like I've matured more musically than I have personally. But I totally embrace what becoming older has to offer. I find the wisdom that comes with each passing year is a trip.

I've always been attracted to the darker things in life. I was never one to go for light, airy stuff, even as a child. My whole aesthetic has always been one of the darker side. That rings true also in my tastes in music. It's just always something I've gravitated to naturally.

I love horror movies in space. I love it when the genre switches over and what was sci-fi becomes horror.

The concept of clearing one's mind before performing a task so that it is consumed by nothing but that task, yet is open at the same time to anything that might happen - that concept can be applied to playing guitar, and it's enormously helpful for improvising.

A life lived unexplored is a life not worth living.

I fix things all the time. Every time I do a solo, I re-check it and correct things that don't hit the mark.

The main riff for 'SandMan' was just something I wrote one night.

Just because you know umpteen billion scales, it doesn't mean you have to use them all in a solo.

My guitars are my umbilical cord. They're directly wired into my head.

Everyone has a side to them that's kind of unexplained and feels misunderstood.

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.

The word 'retirement' doesn't really sit well with me. There comes a time when you reach a position in society or culture where people will not let you retire. You can say, 'Alright, I'm going to hang up my guitar,' but people will still not let you retire.

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.

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.

I've learned that there's a signature Metallica sound, and if we stray too far from that, our fans get impatient, or they just don't understand, or they miss the point. And I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing; it's just something we have to contend with.

Jeff Beck is one of my heroes and has been since I first picked up a guitar.

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.

For 'Death Magnetic,' I used what I always use, which is my standard touring rack, which is filled with some Boogie stuff and a Marshall that I've had forever.

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.

The only problem I've had with my Vox wah is its tendency to move around on the floor. So now it sits on a rubber mat that says in big letters, 'Kirk's Wah-Wah Rug.'

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

On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.

I think it's morally wrong to keep someone away from what keeps him happy.

Guitar players in the nineties seem to be reacting against the technique oriented eighties.

I went through a whole blues period in the Nineties, and that had some influence on 'Load' and 'ReLoad.'

When you're first starting out, there's always the temptation to hide behind distortion because it lets you get away with murder. But, when it comes to rhythm work, you've gotta back off that gain control a bit, especially if you're playing with another guitarist.

A good horror movie should have peaks and valleys, a good horror movie should move you emotionally; a good horror movie should be exciting to watch and energizing in a weird kind of way.

There's something about a wah pedal that really gets my gut going! People will probably say, 'He's just hiding behind the wah.' But that isn't the case. It's just that those frequencies really bring out a lot of aggression in my approach.

Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.

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.

Getting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, 'Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies' has probably played out in a lot of people's discovery of horror.

My musical tastes change every week.

Although I'm a lead guitarist, I'd say that a good 95 percent of my time onstage is spent playing rhythm.

I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.

I think it goes without saying that a lot of big horror fans are just nerds and geeks.

I think the whole concept behind lyrics is you better mean what you say, or you should like, become a storyteller. I mean, there's a lot of bands who are just storytellers, and then there are bands who actually have something valid to say. And the bands who have valid points are few and far between.

I'm not into that whole Satanic thing. It's just something to fall back on if you don't have much imagination. Singing you fiftieth song about having lunch with Satan--I'm not into it. It's silly.

I'm very fortunate to be doing the thing I do best, which is play guitar. There aren't many other things I could do.

I've been into horror movies ever since I was five years old.

We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.