Metallica - "Enter sandman"

"Enter Sandman" is the first song on the self titled "Metallica" album and it is "a one-riff song", according to Lars Ulrich (drums) : "The whole intro, the verse, the bridge, the chorus, all that stuff is the same riff.'' "Enter Sandman" was also the first song written for the album. Ulrich : "That's why it's the leadoff track. To me, it was 'Here's the new vibe gone right to the extreme'".

Apparently, the riff was created one night when Kirk Hammett (guitars) was drunk and picked up his guitar and started recording stuff on a tape recorder. Once the tape stopped, he went to sleep. James Hetfield (vocals and guitars) picked this up in the morning and heard the riff and got Hammett to play it again.

Concerning the guitar solo, Kirk Hammett (guitars) : "I started thinking, 'If Brian Robertson from Thin Lizzy played on this song, what would he play ?' With that mind-set, I started playing what I thought Brian Robertson would play on a song like that, and the entire guitar solo wrote itself ! You know how the guitar solo goes : it plays out, and then there's a lead guitar break that leads into a breakdown ? Here's where I actually got that lick : it's from "Magic Man" by Heart, but I didn't get it from Heart's version ; I got it from a cut off Ice-T's "Power" album, where he used it as a sample. I was listening to "Power" a lot while we were recording "Metallica", so I kept on hearing that lick. I thought, I have to sneak this ! I did change it around a bit, though !"

"Strangely" enough, after the US invaded Iraq in 2003, this was one of the songs they played over and over in sessions designed to break the will of Saddam Hussein's supporters.

Available on the album "Metallica"