Covering up your mistakes is one of the defining qualities of any good muso, but sometimes the music just gets away from you and you’ve just got to restart from the top.
Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammet has had his share of musical gaffes in his career, but fortunately for us, no one has a better sense of humour about screwing up in front of 40,000-plus people than him.
Kirk got lost in the intro of ‘Nothing Else Matters’ at the past weekend’s Boston Calling festival, but rather than forge ahead and try to right the ship, he comically pivoted and created a funny moment with the audience on-hand.
After teasing the melody from Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling,’ Kirk landed on the stark intro of the Black Album classic ‘Nothing Else Matters.’
Less than than 8 bars in, however, he lost track of where he was and playfully fell over in embarrassment, drawing laughs from the crowd.
As bassist Robert Trujillo signalled for Kirk to get up and get on with the set, the guitarist hopped to his feet and stepped up to the microphone to apologise.
“Sorry, guys, you’re so kickass” he said. “I got distracted by how kickass you are. We’ll try that again, okay?”
After a brief reset, Metallica killed it as usual, making way for the final song of their encore, ‘Enter Sandman.’
It’s not the first time Kirk has been able to laugh off a stuff-up.
In the rain during a 2019 concert in Italy, he hilariously slipped on his wah-wah pedal while playing the song ‘Moth Into Flame’ and went down in a heap. Video which Kirk himself later shared to Instagram shows him laughing as he scrambled back to his feet.
“It rained so much I felt like I was playing guitar in the shower,” he wrote at the time.
