For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica song)
July 27, 1984 ( album ), 1985 ( Single)
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica. It is the third song on the album Ride the Lightning from the year 1984. The song was written by James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Cliff Burton and based on the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. The chromatic intro, which is often mistaken for a guitar riff, was in truth by bassist Cliff Burton played by using distortion and wah Waheffekten. He wrote it before he joined Metallica and presented it at a Battle of the Bands with his first band, Agent of Misfortune, which also guitarist Jim Martin of Faith No More was a member. In 1996, the band for this song for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance was nominated, but this went to Nine Inch Nails.
Background
For Whom the Bell Tolls belongs to the genre Thrash Metal and fits into the overall picture of Ride the Lightning. He is long in the German studio version five minutes and eleven seconds. Recorded For Whom the Bell Tolls exactly like all the other songs on the album in the Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, with the support of the label Elektra Records. As a composer Cliff Burton, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich are to be mentioned, as a producer Flemming Rasmussen, Mark Whitaker and Kirk Hammett Metallica itself outro guitar solo has been mixed in this piece comparatively strong in the background and is therefore difficult to hear.
Content
Content focuses on the text of For Whom the Bell Tolls an episode from the book For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which the Guerrillaführer El Sordo is surrounded on a hill and perish together with five companions in an air raid.
Trivia
For the film Zombieland in 2009 the song was used for the intro.
Other (cover ) versions
- Remake of Metallica with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Michael Kamen, released on the live album S & M
- Trivium coverte the song during their time of
- Sum 41 combined some Metallica songs together and played the result to the 20 -year anniversary of Metallica from MTV. They also played it, among many other Metallica - pieces, as part of a Metallica cover show at Hoodwink near London in 2009 with their new lead guitarist Tom Thacker.
- Apocalyptica playing For Whom the Bell Tolls as many other Metallica songs with four cellos. This version was released on the album Inquisition Symphony (1998).
- Moonsorrow played the song on their EP Tulimyrsky (2008). There is a 7:43 minute long version to find.
- Artillery coverte the song, but it was never released.
- The Excrementory Grindfuckers parodied the song on their album Get ready, scene cleaning! (2004) under the title For Whom the Shit Rolls. In this instrumental version recorders were used instead of guitars.
- In the song the band Mope The Bloodhound Gang in 2000, the chorus is heard the intro of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
- Blue Öyster Cult played with Megadeth a cover as a tribute to Metallica.
- Sunn O)) ) wrote a cover version of the song in their own Drone Doom style they called FWTBT (I Dream of Lars Ulrich Being Thrown Through the Bus Window Instead of My Mystikal Master Kliff Burton), the song is on their album Flight of the Behemoth.
Live
The live versions of For Whom the Bell Tolls are characterized by ever -varying and highly distinctive bass solos that are played before the intro. Usually the bass intro is also decorated by tapping and bending. Furthermore, following the outro usually a direct transition in the following piece, introduced by a solo by Kirk Hammett.
Chart positioning
The song For Whom the Bell Tolls was a 1985 single release, but reached a chart position in any country, just like all the other singles from Metallica to Harvester of Sorrow ( number 20 on the British charts ).