Metallica's James Hetfield recently partnered with Ernie Ball to launch his very first pair of signature guitar strings, Papa Het's Hardwired Master Core. In a new video demonstrating the strings in action, Hetfield mentioned that two guitarists in particular are responsible for influencing his iconic style, and talked about how each one inspired his genre-defining playing.
"I'm kind of a little bit of a barbarian when I play," Hetfield said. "[I'm] always interested in the riff. It was the foundation of the song. Tony Iommi, he's ruling the song with his riff and everything else joins him. You know, Johnny Ramone, lots of down picking lots of you know, just fast down picking. That helped develop my style. So kind of a combination of punk rock and heavy rock at the time you know, turned into just the down picking style and with melody along with it."
Not the most surprising picks, but two absolute legends that Hetfield synthesized into a fast, heavy, catchy, chunky style of music that changed the sound of rock forever. Check out the video demo above and pick up the strings here.
