GARY HOLT: KIRK HAMMETT Taught Me How To Play Guitar, I Owe It All To Him

In an interview with Ultimate-Guitar‘s Jusin Beckner, EXODUS and SLAYER guitarist said that METALLICA guitarist taught him to play the guitar back in the day.

He says:  “Oh it was awesome [playing with Kirk back in the day] – he taught me how to play.

“He showed me my first chords, my first licks, and six months later he asked me to join the band.

“I owe it all to him.

“Obviously, I worked on it on my own to make it happen, but we hit it off as friends right away.

“We became really close and he wanted me in the band enough to take his own time to teach me how to play guitar. I just took it from there.

“Those were good times. We were just kids playing the kind of metal we wanted to hear.”

In 1979, Hammett formed the EXODUS at the age of sixteen, along with vocalist Paul Baloff, guitarist Gary Holt, bassist Geoff Andrews, and drummer Tom Hunting. Hammett named EXODUS after the Leon Uris novel of the same name, and played on the band’s 1982 Demo.