Kirk Hammett said during a recent interview that he doesn't like playing the guitar solo from Metallica live.
“What I’m about to say, people will probably hate, but I get mad having to play that damn solo in ‘Master of Puppets’ every time,” Hammett told Total Guitar . “People love that guitar solo and they come to watch it. And that’s fine. It’s part of our career, all those solos are programmed. I don’t see them as solos anymore, they’re parts. I get bored with them, but people get excited to hear them.”
The guitarist explained that the problem isn't the solo he created in the studio, but rather "the tedium of playing it all the time." He continued: "It's like the song 'Fade to Black.' I play the first eight bars and then go off on a tangent for 20, 24 bars and come back for the last four and play the parts everyone knows. It's one of my favorite parts of playing that song live because I don't know what the hell I'm going to play."
According to him, this experience helped him create something new for the album 72 Seasons , which will be released on April 14th. “With this album, I went in with the intention of improvising and I improvised 20, 30 solos and gave them to Lars [ Ulrich ] and [producer] Greg [ Fidelman ] and said, 'You can edit them!' I know I'm going to play something different live!”
However, Kirk acknowledges that there are risks in improvising solos live. “Normally I surprise myself, but sometimes I mess up. It’s awful to mess up in front of 50,000 people, but it only lasts a moment and it’s over. Then I can go down other paths and make up for what I did.”
