Hammett on Marshall amps

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I can remember when I was 17 years old and acquiring a Marshall head and hooking it up and plugging my guitar into it and thinking, ‘Ah, I’m finally here, I finally got that sound that I’ve been hearing on all my favorite albums for the last four, five, eight years.’… At that point in time, I was influenced by ’60s guitar players. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix. And a lot of the ’70s guys, particularly Ronnie Montrose, Pat Travers, the guys in Thin Lizzy, Michael Schenker from UFO—they all used Marshall amps. And I would stare at the album covers, or publicity pictures in magazines, and I would stare as much at the equipment as at the musicians themselves. One thing that got me is how cool it looked to see Marshall cabinets stacked on top of each other. After a while the term having a wall of Marshalls was just equated to having a massive tsunami of sound, and it became a symbol of aggressive music. Having a Marshall stack and a Les Paul was at one point the ultimate combination.” —From Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett’s tribute to the late Jim Marshall in the N.Y. Times. (4/11a)