Ever wondered what the story behind Metallica‘s ‘The Four Horseman’ song is? Me neither, but Megadeth will release a new album soon, so expect a lot of Metallica/James/Lars name-dropping from Dave until the album is out. It always happens.
So, here is Dave’s novel story about the name ‘The Four Horsemen’:
“I had always called us, as a group, the ‘Four Horsemen.’ Before I was in Metallica, I really loved this band called Montrose, and their guitarist was Ronnie Montrose. He went on to form a band called Gamma. One of their records had a shark fin cutting through the grass, which I thought was so awesome. Anyway, he had a song on there called ‘Four Horsemen’ that I did with my band Panic, which I was with before Metallica. So when I joined Metallica, I had the song ‘Mechanix’, which I wrote, and ‘Four Horsemen’ was a suggestion of mine to do ’cause we were doing cover songs. So that had planted the seed with James. And one day when we were coming to rehearsal, Lars had just said something about slowing down my song, ‘Mechanix’. I had just gotten to the studio with Cliff, and we had been listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I was being a jerk, so I played ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ instead of ‘Mechanix’, and that’s basically the middle part of what would become Metallica’s ‘The Four Horsemen’.“
Full article here.
Hey, we didn’t need your whole biography, Dave. A simple “We wanted to cover another song called ‘The Four Horsemen,’ but my own song ‘Mechanix’ got slowed down, renamed and had a Lynyrd Skynyrd-like interlude because I was messing around with ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in rehearsal.” would have sufficed.
I hope no one asks him where the name ‘Mechanix’ comes from, cause we’ll get another book out of it.
Anyway, all of this is from the “Big Four” issue of Revolver. Check it out here.
