Kirk Hammett: the April Fools’ call that wasn’t a joke | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

KIRK HAMMETT plays lead guitar on Metallica’s self-titled record, the one everybody calls the Black Album. On 28 May 2025 the RIAA certified it at 2x Diamond. That’s 20 million units in the United States. Loudwire reported it as the first metal album to get there.

He has played lead guitar on everything Metallica has released since 1983.

Before that he was a teenager in a Bay Area thrash band, taking guitar lessons at a small music store in Berkeley. His teacher was Joe Satriani, Who’s Who number 29.

Early life and training

Kirk Lee Hammett was born in San Francisco on 18 November 1962. He hasn’t dressed up his childhood. In a 2025 interview with The Telegraph he said he came from a broken home, and he described his father as someone who “liked to drink and liked to scrap”.

In 1979 he co-founded Exodus, a thrash band from the Bay Area. Around 1981 he started lessons with Satriani, Who’s Who number 29 in Berkeley. By then, Satriani, Who’s Who number 29 says, Hammett was already the lead guitarist in Exodus.

He started the band with drummer Tom Hunting. Gary Holt joined on guitar in 1981, and Holt says Hammett was the one who showed him his first chords. Hammett left for Metallica before Exodus made their first album, Bonded by Blood.

How long the lessons went on depends on who you ask. Hammett remembers “about a year or so”. Satriani, Who’s Who number 29 says the last one was in early January 1988, years after Hammett had joined Metallica, and he has called Hammett his final pupil. Steve Vai, Who’s Who number 30, is on Satriani’s, Who’s Who number 29 list of students too.

Career chapters

1. 1979Co-founded Exodus in the Bay Area
2. c.1981Started lessons with Joe Satriani, Who’s Who number 29 in Berkeley
3. 1983Joined Metallica in April, replacing Dave Mustaine
4. 1983Kill ’Em All
5. 1986Master of Puppets
6. 1991Metallica (the Black Album)
7. 2009Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Metallica
8. 2014Bought the Les Paul known as Greeny
9. 2022Solo EP Portals
10. 2026Metallica’s Life Burns Faster residency opened at the Sphere, Las Vegas

The April Fools’ call 1983

On 1 April 1983, Exodus manager Mark Whitaker rang Hammett. Metallica’s manager, Jonny Z, had asked him to make the call, because the band needed a new lead guitarist. Given the date, Hammett took it for an April Fools’ joke.

It wasn’t. About a week later he flew from San Francisco to Newark, New Jersey, to audition, and he got the job in place of Dave Mustaine.

He’s the lead guitarist on Metallica’s debut, Kill ’Em All, released in 1983. The RIAA now has it at four times platinum.

The second album, Ride the Lightning, followed on 27 July 1984.

Master of Puppets 1986

Master of Puppets came out in 1986 and has since gone eight times platinum in the US.

That line-up didn’t get to enjoy it for long. On 27 September 1986 the band’s bus crashed in Sweden, and bassist Cliff Burton was killed. By Hammett’s account, the two of them had drawn cards earlier for the choice of bunks, and Burton won. Hammett remembered telling him, “I’ll sleep up front; it’s probably better anyway.”

Jason Newsted, from the Arizona band Flotsam and Jetsam, took over on bass. His first full album with them was ...And Justice for All in 1988.

The Black Album 1991

Metallica released their self-titled album in August 1991. By 31 October it was already triple platinum, and it kept selling for more than 30 years until the Diamond upgrade in 2025. Loudwire says Enter Sandman, the lead single, is certified nine times platinum on its own.

The Grammys came along through those years too. The band’s first Best Metal Performance win was for One, around 1990. Later wins in that category came for St. Anger in 2004, My Apocalypse in 2009 and 72 Seasons in 2024. Grammy.com credits Metallica with nine wins from 22 nominations.

Later records and Portals 1997 to 2022

Reload came out in 1997 and is four times platinum. Hardwired...to Self-Destruct followed in 2016 and went platinum in April 2017.

In February 2022 Hammett announced his first solo release, a four-track instrumental EP called Portals. It came out on Record Store Day, 23 April 2022. The people who helped make it included Edwin Outwater, Jon Theodore, Abraham Laboriel, Greg Fidelman, Blake Neely and Bob Rock.

He explained it simply: “I’m creating sounds and pieces of music for the movies playing in my head.”

Craft, sound and style

Ask a guitar collector about Hammett and the talk turns to Greeny, the Les Paul he bought in 2014. Before him it belonged to Gary Moore, Who’s Who number 16. His Metallica bandmate James Hetfield, Who’s Who number 33, was offered it first and passed.

Greeny is a 1959 Les Paul Standard, and it’s named after Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac. Green sold it to Gary Moore, Who’s Who number 16 around 1970 for roughly £100, by Moore’s, Who’s Who number 16 own account. Moore, Who’s Who number 16 sold it in 2006, and Hammett bought it from a dealer in 2014.

By his own account Hammett paid “less than half a million dollars” for it. He’s been clearer about what happened when he first played it. He was “never gonna give it back”.

Portals tells you how he hears his own playing. He thinks in scenes. The pieces on it are soundtracks to films that only exist in his head.

From a Strat to the Ouija

His first decent guitar was a Fender Stratocaster, which he fitted with a humbucker at the bridge. Then came a Gibson Flying V, which he still has, and a Kramer as a backup when Floyd Rose tremolos had just come in. Around 1990 he asked ESP for a guitar with Ouija board graphics. ESP laid out the artwork with a photocopier and scissors and faxed it to its Custom Shop in Japan, and the first one was made just for him. ESP got the right to sell it to the public in 2010.

Greeny’s backwards pickup

One of Greeny’s humbuckers is mounted backwards, which is where its out of phase sound in the middle position comes from. In March 2023 Gibson’s Custom Shop released a Kirk Hammett Greeny Les Paul at US$19,999, and Gibson’s Cesar Gueikian said Hammett has built that sound into everything he does.

Wah, Schenker and a heavy hand

He first heard a wah on Brian Robertson’s playing on Thin Lizzy’s Warrior, and it jolted him. Michael Schenker’s Mother Mary with UFO changed how he wanted his leads to phrase and stick in your head. Uli Jon Roth’s Sails of Charon was one of the first neo-classical solos he heard, and Hendrix’s Machine Gun showed him an otherworldly sound. Hendrix came first, from about 13 or 14. He calls his picking “heavy handed”, so he needs strings that stay in tune and still sound bright. He uses Ernie Ball Super Slinkys in a hybrid set, the top three from a 10 gauge set and the bottom three heavier. He moved to them at 18 when the Floyd Rose kept breaking strings, and says 11s tire his hand over a tour.

Lessons with Satriani

He was already Exodus’s lead guitarist when Joe Satriani, Who’s Who number 29 started teaching him. After he joined Metallica he took two lessons a week, and the last one was in early January 1988. He also plays jazz, bossa nova, blues and gypsy jazz, which he says few people know. Before all that he taught Gary Holt his first chords when Exodus was starting out, and Holt still holds the pick the way Hammett does.

Stories people still tell

1. The prank that wasn’t.

   An offer to join Metallica, phoned through on April Fools’ Day 1983, to a 20-year-old who assumed it was a wind-up.

2. The draw of the cards.

   On the 1986 tour, Hammett has said, he and Cliff Burton drew cards for the bunks. Burton won and took Hammett’s bunk.

3. Slip & Destroy.

   On 19 June 2026 at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, during Seek & Destroy, Hammett stepped off the edge of the stage. He got up and kept playing, then posted the clip himself as “Slip & Destroy”. No injury was reported.

Legacy

Metallica went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, with Flea inducting them. The plaque names Burton, Hammett, Hetfield, Who’s Who number 33, Newsted, Trujillo and Ulrich, Who’s Who number 13 in · Highway to Hell (story coming soon). That night the band played Train Kept a-Rollin’ with Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32, Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15, Joe Perry, Who’s Who number 17, Ronnie Wood, Who’s Who number 19 and Flea.

Hammett isn’t going anywhere. In March 2025 he said leaving the band was “not an option”, and called Metallica “the one constant in our lives”.

On 1 October 2026 Metallica opened their Life Burns Faster residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Radio X lists 24 shows, running into March 2027.