As August of 2019, "Ride the Lightning" has been played live 365 times.Metallica stopped playing "Ride the Lightning" live in 1987, but later started playing it live during 2003 and has been a concert staple since."Ride the Lightning" was played live for the first time on November 07, 1983, in San Francisco, CA.It also features some of James Hetfield's highest note-singing (although they are screamed) and a lengthy guitar solo by Kirk Hammett, with lots of tapping at the beginning. The song is the third longest song off the album, clocking in at 6:37 (just one second longer than " Creeping Death"), after " Fade to Black" (6:57) and " The Call of Ktulu" (8:54). In many interviews Hetfield stated that the song is not critical against the capital punishment, but that he wrote the lyrics trying to express the point of view of a person who deals with the electric chair. The protagonist of the story depicted within the song is a man who is convicted for an unknown crime and is executed via electrocution. And between 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' 'Creeping Death,' 'Fade to Black' and 'Ride the Lightning,' that's not a bad batting average.Keeping in the political themes of the first three tracks, the song deals with capital punishment and the flaws that come with it. A good portion of these songs are still staples of our live set. There's kind of a youthful energy that runs through the record. Still, a chuckling Ulrich concluded, "obviously it holds up very well. The fact that we followed down that path surely couldn't have surprised anybody." "That was kind of funny," Ulrich added, "because every great Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate record, that was part of their arsenal, too. Some people were a little bit bewildered by the fact that there was a song that had acoustic guitars. "People started calling us sellouts and all that type of stuff. It did surprise us a little bit, I guess," Ulrich admitted. "There was an odd reaction to 'Fade to Black' and to the variety of the record. Of course, the record's expanded musical palette wasn't without its detractors. 100 on the Billboard chart, That ultimately attracted the interest of Elektra Records, who signed Metallica to a new deal and reissued the album later in the year. Ride the Lightning was a sales success for the previously underground outfit, peaking at No.
"Thrash metal to me is just open E riffing for five minutes as fast as you can go." This evolution was wholeheartedly deliberate, as evidenced by Ulrich's remarks in a 1984 interview with Kerrang! in which he shared his reasons for shying away from thrash: "It implies lack of arrangement, lack of ability, lack of songwriting, lack of any form of intelligence," he argued back then. They just came from a different school, especially Cliff, who came from a much more melodic approach." " Ride the Lightning," Ulrich added, "was the first time that both Cliff and Kirk got a chance to add what they were doing. But we were realizing you had to be careful that it didn't become too limiting or one-dimensional. "Listening to songs like 'Fight Fire' and 'Trapped Under Ice,' we were obviously still into the thrash type of stuff. I don't think it was a conscious effort to break away from anything musically," Ulrich told Rolling Stone. "It was the first time that the four of us wrote together and we got a chance to broaden our horizons. Listen to Metallica Perform 'Fade to Black' Drummer Lars Ulrich said that gave Metallica an opportunity to bring in new creative voices. The creative changes found on Ride the Lightning were also integral to moving forward after founding member Dave Mustaine was fired. My mentor was really into jazz, and he pulled me aside one day and said, 'What's going on with these guys? They can't play." And I'm like, 'Who cares? Listen to the energy.'" The studio I worked at, Sweet Silence, was renowned in Denmark. Rasmussen admitted in the Rolling Stone interview that he'd "never heard" of Metallica, "but I really liked them as people. We were experiencing culture shock a little bit."Īdding that they "didn't really have anything else to do besides work on music and drink Carlsberg beer," Hammett admitted, "we totally destroyed our friend's house where we were staying. It was easy for the Danish guy to fit in, but it wasn't so easy for the three American guys to fit in. "It was three American guys and a Danish guy. "It was great when we started there, but we were homesick after three or four weeks," guitarist Kirk Hammett later told Rolling Stone, with a laugh. The four dirt-poor metalheads descended upon Ride the Lightning producer Flemming Rasmussen's studio in Copenhagen in the winter of 1984 with plenty of momentum.
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