“For the very last solo, I know how I want to start it, but then I am in an area where I can improvise for 16, 18 or 24 bars, and then Lars will hit a certain fill, which means that it’s up and it’s time for the arpeggio part. “I have been playing that song for so long now,” Kirk tells our sister publication Total Guitar. And the signature element he employs for the last solo is arpeggios.

But it is the song’s timeless melodic solo that most vividly signals a stylistic shift in guitarist Kirk Hammett’s playing. That change is evident on “Fade to Black,” which features acoustic guitars and a nonstandard structure more akin to the “Stairway to Heaven” school of songcraft. Recorded at Flemming Rasmussen’s Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen in February and March 1984, Ride the Lightning, Metallica’s sophomore album, was more progressive and stylistically greater in scope than the all-out thrash assault of their debut, Kill ’Em All. Metallica’s first ballad features some of Kirk’s most epic playing.

E flat minor 6 guitar chord