The classic Metallica song that ripped off Lynyrd Skynyrd
At the turn of the 1980s, metal was starting to undergo a massive change. After the new wave of British heavy metal began to assault both sides of the Atlantic, the Bay Area scene was slowly starting to build a retort to the likes of Diamond Head and Saxon, with Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield forming the basis of Metallica. Although the band may have started off creating letter-perfect thrash metal, one of their first classics came from the world of southern rock.
Then again, Metallica were never snobs when talking about their favourite genres of music. When talking about his favourite songs, Hetfield would be interested in classic rock just as much as he was in heavy metal, putting acts like Van Halen and Aerosmith on the same level as Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.
Of all the members of Metallica, bassist Cliff Burton was responsible for expanding their horizons the most. As opposed to the standard heavy metal that was expected at the time, Burton gravitated towards any complex material that he could listen to, whether it was Kate Bush, The Police, King Crimson, or anything else in between.
Before the band even had a stable lineup, though, their habit of weaving different riffs together started to gel on the song ‘The Four Horsemen’. Based on a bluesy shuffle rhythm that original guitar Dave Mustaine had been toying with entitled ‘The Mechanix’, Hetfield helped put together the song’s structure, using lyrics about the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
During one of the band’s rehearsals, Mustaine thought it would be funny to incorporate a bit of southern rock into the mix by playing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd in between takes. Since Ulrich had never heard the song before, he thought that Mustaine’s metallic version of the riff would work perfectly in the song.
As Mustaine recalls, the Skynyrd riff initially started as a joke, telling Sirius XM, “We get to rehearsal, and Lars says, ‘We have to slow this song down, man’. So I played the ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ riff, and he said, ‘Fuck, man, that’s brilliant’. So that’s the difference between ‘The Four Horsemen’ and ‘The Mechanix’. The bastardised version of Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
Even though Ulrich hadn’t heard the song, the Southern rock icons were already a major part of Hetfield’s DNA. Having grown up listening to country music, the frontman and Burton had a deep love of the band’s music, especially on tracks like ‘Freebird’ and ‘Tuesday’s Gone’, the latter of which would be covered on their album Garage Inc. By the time that Mustaine parted ways with the band, though, the song had undergone a significant conversion.
After asking his ex-bandmates not to use his material, Metallica recycled Mustaine’s riffs anyway, with ‘The Four Horsemen’ becoming the landmark track on their debut album Kill Em All. Even though Mustaine would cut his version of the song with his new band Megadeth as ‘The Mechanix’, the song is missing something without the trademark ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ riff.
Bringing down the song to a medium tempo, the break in the tension provides a calming interlude between parts of the song, allowing Kirk Hammett to showcase his bluesy guitar flourishes. While there has yet to be any legal action taken on Skynyrd’s part, that breakdown would become a preview for more episodic songs to follow, like ‘Master of Puppets’ and ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’.
