Metallica’s Kirk Hammett Got Into Prog Five Years Ago, Is a ‘Full-On’ Jethro Tull Fan Now

Any music fan can attest that changes in personal taste happens over time and, for Metallica's Kirk Hammett, it wasn't until five years ago that he became a prog fan and he now even considers himself to be a "full-on" Jethro Tull fan.

A lot has been said about Metallica and Jethro Tull in the same breath over the last three decades after the thrash icons infamously lost the Hard Rock/Metal Performance Grammy to the folk-prog luminaries in 1989. In the eyes of fans around the world, the two groups have been pitted against one another as some sort of musical enemies, though that really isn't the case.

Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson even stated last year that his band did not deserve to take home the Grammy award over Metallica and that it felt more like a novelty win where they were simply honored for being nice people who hadn't previously won a Grammy.

"I just really got into prog about five years ago," Hammett said in an interview with Goldmine magazine.

"I wasn’t into prog," he continued, "Just accidentally I heard Jethro Tull Stand Up and I went, ‘Wow.’ I never ever had paid much attention to Jethro Tull; I just never did. And it didn’t help losing to them in 1989 for that Grammy."

He did note that the Grammy loss was "really not the reason why I wasn’t into Jethro Tull, believe me" and clarified, "I just never got around to it. Sometimes you just don’t get around to certain things. So, I ended up checking out their entire catalog and now I’m a full-on Jethro Tull fan."

Stand Up, released in 1969, is the second studio album by Jethro Tull and marked the early introduction of folk elements that would later dominate the band's sound. It's even been said that Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder carries a copy of the album with him on tour and listens to it before every show.

Hammett, meanwhile, got a bit progressive on Portals, his first-ever solo effort that came out on April 23 as a Record Store Day release.