Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett was bullied at school

After a brief passage through Exodus — group which he co-founded in 1979 —, Kirk Hammett became guitarist for Metallica shortly before recording Kill ‘Em Allthe group’s first album. From there, he never left: he participated in all activities since then.

Before all this, however, the American musician faced an unfortunately very common problem: he was a victim of bullying in his youth. The guitarist commented on the situation during an interview given in 2017 to a radio station in San Francisco — the musician’s hometown and also where the Metallica was established — and transcribed by the Blabbermouth.

First, Hammett revealed that he was a constant target of troublemakers in the neighborhood where he lived. And he didn’t miss the chance to give his tormentors a poke.

(They were) neighborhood troublemakers, they chose anyone who was an easy target for them and looked different from them. They were people with very low IQs who had nothing better to do with their time than pick on and bully other people.”

If that wasn’t enough, the guitarist remembered that he also had to worry about local gangs at the same time. He said:

They used to terrify us! Then, we would go to the other side of the city and there were Mexican gangs that we needed to worry about too. We just tried not to get close to those guys.”

Kirk Hammett and Comfort in Music

In a way, the complicated situation helped Kirk Hammett to get closer to art. The guitarist declared that he found in music a way to get around problems and even escape a bad path in his life.

(Playing the guitar) was one of the few things that I discovered that was able to calm me down when I was a kid and it gave me a kind of… I was able to use it to ground myself and enjoy the moment. If I hadn’t had music in my life, I would have… who knows? I was on a really bad path when I discovered music and music stopped me from going down that path.”

Other musicians victims of bullying

Kirk Hammett is far from the only famous musician in the heavy music scene to suffer from bullying when he was young. Other professional colleagues also went through the situation and spoke about it publicly. Some examples include David Draiman (Disturbed), Henry Rollins (Black Flag, State of Alert), Corey Taylor (Slipknot, Stone Soursoil), M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan (Slipknot, To My Surprise, Dirty Little Rabbits), Rob Zombie (White Zombiesoil) and Lzzy Hale (Halestorm).

Collaborated: Augusto Ikeda.