The song was inspired by Dalton Trumbo’s haunting book, Johnny Got His Gun and the music video features clips from the film of the same name. It is about a young American WWI soldier named Joe Bonham who has his arms, legs, and face blown off. He is lying in a hospital and is fully conscious, but he cannot communicate with the outside world. The song is filled with references to the sounds of war and it fully expresses the angst of being trapped inside one’s own body. It features a searing Hammett guitar solo, often listed among the best rock solos of all time, that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I cannot disconnect the solo from the visceral emotions of reading that book and watching the film. At one point during my presentation, I paused and in order to hammer the point of my emotional connection to the music, I started banging out the drum beat from the song on the conference room table and sang out the lyrics:

Darkness
Imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell

Landmine
Has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing
Taken my arms
Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with life in hell.

A few months before the interview with Kirk, I found myself in my office watching this video and many horror film clips over and over again in preparation for It’s Alive. I have since learned that Hammett’s collection of horror movie posters serves as the inspiration to much of his music and creative output. He sits in his living room full of posters noodling on his guitar and channels the energy from the artwork and his memory of the films. You can feel it in his music, you can see it in Metallica videos … the angst, the tension, the pure shock and horror are all there. It is palpable.

So on May 18, almost 24 years to the day, I found myself in the surreal situation of being alone with Hammett, walking toward a green room that we set up for him. I said something like “Kirk, I am sure you hear a lot of stories about how your music has inspired people and how you have touched their lives in some way, but I am going to guess that you have never heard this one before.” I went on to very briefly explain the seminar I described above and my emotional connection to the music. He paused for a second and turned toward me and with excitement and a huge grin on his face said “Dude, Metallica, art history, that is so #*@-ing high brow!” As I said, I have done some pretty cool things in my museum career, but it is going to be pretty hard to top that.