If Hetfield and Ulrich were the mouth and heart of Metallica, Dave Mustaine was its sneer. And then, yeah, we took those ideas and glued them together, added little things like picking technique, heavied it up and made it fast, put some energy and some youthful punkish enthusiasm behind it, and out came this Metallica thing.” James had some ideas, I had some ideas, eventually Mustaine came in with some ideas.

No, I’d definitely go more on the latter. Lars: “Ha ha, I think we should leave Lennon and McCartney out of it. What was a typical Metallica writing session like back then? Did you sit down together and work out songs like Lennon and McCartney? Or did people bring i different parts that you glued together until they worked? I kind of realised I must be in the band because nobody told me otherwise.” We played two or three shows a week, so I was ready to go. I arrived on a Monday and played the first show that Friday. I flew in the second week of April, under the auspices of auditioning for the band.

I’d only been in the band for three weeks. Kirk: “It was the first Metallica song I played on. After three verses and three choruses, it goes into this whole other universe, with a new riff and a fucking half-hour-long jam out.”

Hetfield brought in the verses and the chorus, which came from something he had done in a band called Leather Charm, and I brought in the whole back half of it, which was from something I had done before. The version on Kill ’Em All was basically a marriage of two songs. The first track on one of the landmark debut albums in the history of metal starts off with a wall of noise that quickly erupts into a 100mph statement of intent, complete with one of the great opening lines in history: ‘No life ’til leather, we’re gonna kick some ass tonight.’ If one song represents the birth of Metallica, this is it.

New immortal technique songs