Kirk Hammett reveals Kurt Cobain’s favourite Metallica album
Kurt Cobain and the genre of metal feel like they should be on two separate sides of the musical spectrum. Although the sound of Nirvana may have shared a certain aggression with metal music, Cobain was rallying against the phoniness of what metal had become, with most of the hard rock scene being watered down to a commercialised glam-rock aesthetic. Though Cobain wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of acts like Mötley Crüe, he did have a soft spot for the underground side of metal.
Although many acts were cultivating in Seattle in the late 1980s, Cobain began working on songs inspired by some of the titans of hard rock like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. Throughout the local scene, people like Mark Arm from Mudhoney were talking about how much they appreciated the stone age of metal, telling Metal Evolution: “There are a lot of early hard rock bands that are near and dear to my heart like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. But there’s a certain connotation that comes with metal that I don’t necessarily like”.
Nirvana tended to focus on the punk side of heaviness; however, Cobain was an outspoken Metallica fan when he first hit it big. During an interview held years later, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett mentioned how much Cobain loved the band, recalling, “he used to tell me that his favourite album was Ride the Lightning and that his favourite Metallica song was ‘Whiplash’”.
Whereas most other metal musicians were playing up the alpha male side of the genre, Ride the Lightning remains one of the purest metal albums ever made. There are more than a few songs that tackle heavy subjects, and Cobain’s pick for his favourite Metallica release contains songs that are a lot more in tune with grunge lyrics, like the internal angst that comes from adolescence on ‘Fade to Black’.
While Cobain was never afraid of showing his heavy tendencies, one main influence that no other Seattle band had was an enduring love for The Beatles. During the recording of Nirvana’s classic Nevermind, producer Butch Vig even remembered having to tell Cobain to double track every one of his vocal parts because that was John Lennon’s preferred recording method.
Combining those huge riffs and pop smarts, Nirvana became one of the biggest bands in the world off the back of Cobain’s inspirations, with legions of fans throwing on flannel shirts and begging to be entertained by something other than manufactured pop. The adulation that came with the album became too much for Cobain to handle, though, lashing out on the follow-up In Utero until being found in his home in April 1994, having passed away from a self-inflicted shotgun wound.
Even with all the nasty things that Cobain had to say about metal, Hammett remembered Cobain as this shy kid with a heart of gold, continuing: “We played a show in Washington, and Kurt came down, and he was down in our snakepit. He kept waving his arms at me, and when I finally went over to hear what he had to say, he just said, ‘Are you guys gonna play ‘Whiplash’ tonight?’. And we played it, and he was just loving it”.
Despite all of the posthumous accolades bestowed on Cobain, he was always a fan of rock music underneath it all.
