Song That Says Shots Over and Over Again

Songfacts®:

• This song is about a soldier fighting in a war and a mortar blows off in his face. He tin can't hear, see, smell, taste and he doesn't take arms or legs. He comes out of a coma in a hospital. During the time he is in the hospital he reflects on his life and things his father told him. Eventually the doctors get worried because he's having spasms all the time, but he doesn't seem to be dying. They call in the general and he tin can't figure it out either but the soldier with the full general recognizes it. "It'due south Morse code," he says. The full general asks what he is saying and the soldier looks for a minute and then says, "He is proverb K-I-L-L- Grand-E over and over once more." >>

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  Paul - Anacortes, WA

• The lyrics are based on the 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, which is nearly World War I. A specific passage that inspired the song is: "How could a homo lose as much of himself as I take and however live? When a human buys a lottery ticket you never expect him to win because it'due south a million to one shot. But if he does win, you'll believe it considering one in a million all the same leaves i. If I'd read nigh a guy like me in the paper I wouldn't believe it, cos it's a meg to 1. But a million to I ever leaves 1. I'd never wait it to happen to me because the odds of it happening are a million to one. But a million to ane always leaves one. One."

  James Hetfield was introduced to the book by his older half brother, David Hale, who was too in a band.

• In 1971, Johnny Got His Gun was made into a moving picture that was directed by Trumbo starring Timothy Bottoms and Jason Robards. The video for the song uses images and monologues from that movie.

• This was the first single released by the band to characteristic bassist Jason Newsted, who continued playing with Metallica until 2001. You lot have to listen very carefully to hear his playing, even so, since the bass was buried in the mix.

  In our 2013 interview with Jason Newsted, we asked him if he would like to run across the album re-released with a more prominent low end. He replied: "There's been so much hubbub over this matter and people brand so much out of it, merely whatever it is that they make out of the alloy of the whole matter, to me the album is perfect. Kill 'Em All isn't perfect, but it's perfect. And Van Halen I isn't perfect, but it's perfect. ...And Justice For All isn't perfect, but it's perfect. Because it captured that time for those people. Going back and re-recording albums that were already classics, I'm just not sure nearly all that stuff."

• Metallica performed this at the Grammy awards in 1989. This was the first twelvemonth a Grammy was awarded for Hard Rock/Metal Operation, and it went to Jethro Tull. This was a bit of a joke, since few people consider Jethro Tull to be Hard Rock or Heavy Metallic. The adjacent year, this won the accolade for Best Metal Performance and the year after, Metallica won again for "Stone Common cold Crazy."

  In 2014, Metallica once once more performed "One" at the Grammy Awards, this time joined past the Chinese pianoforte player Lang Lang.

• Metallica guitarist James Hetfield wrote this with drummer Lars Ulrich. It is a fixture at their alive shows.

• Metallica made a major concession by cutting the vocal down for single release, taking it from seven:27 to four:58. The band did very well with their first three albums, selling millions of each and filling arenas on tour, only to expand their audience, they had to get more radio play, and editing down a single was the way to practise it. The ploy worked, giving them their outset placing on the Hot 100 and bringing metal to the masses. Some fans accused them of selling out, to which Lars Ulrich replied, "Yep, we sell out everywhere we play."

• This was the offset video Metallica made. As role of their us-against-the-world ethos, they distanced themselves from MTV, which ignored metallic until 1987 when the network gave information technology 90 minutes every week on Headbangers Ball. Directed by Bill Pope and Michael Salomon, the "One" video looked nothing like what was in hot rotation on MTV. Morbid and sepia-toned, it runs seven:44 with agonizing images from the film Johnny Got His Gun. Metallica did give in by making a video, only they did it on their terms. The MTV presence helped them reach an audience far larger than any metal ring had earlier.

  Lars Ulrich was particularly skeptical afterwards Salomon showed him an early version of the video. "More than half of that first version was the film, and dialogue," the director remembered to Metal Hammer, "and Lars said, 'this is our first video, and you're roofing upwardly all our music!' He was freaked out. Nosotros went back and forth for a calendar month earlier we agreed on the right residual."

• The proper name of the statue with the scales on the album cover is "Doris." >>

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  Ali Sadeghi - Scottsdale, AZ

• Hetfield has said he lifted the intro from Venom's "Buried Alive," a song about being trapped in a casket while beingness cached alive, similar to the predicament of the graphic symbol in this song. >>

  Proffer credit:
  Michael - N Adams, MA

• Because information technology is used in the video, Metallica had to pay royalties to use the moving picture Johnny Got His Gun, which ended upwards being substantial. Instead of pulling the video or continuing to pay, when it came time to re-negotiate the license they just bought the rights to information technology. When the film was released on DVD, it was their doing.

• Hammett told Kerrang! September 13, 2008 that this track has i of his favorite Metallica guitar solos. He explained: "Specifically, this is the middle solo of the song. Much like 'Enter Sandman' it's a solo that everybody can pretty much sing forth to, and it definitely gives me a really good feeling every fourth dimension I play it."

• ...And Justice for All was the terminal Metallica anthology engineered and co-produced by Flemming Rasmussen, who as well worked on Ride The Lightning (1984) and Master Of Puppets (1986). Co-ordinate to Rasmussen, Ulrich blasted out the double-bass motorcar gun section in one take. "He just flew direct through that," he told Songfacts.

• When Metallica appeared on The Howard Stern Bear witness in September 2013, James Hetfield explained that this was not so much an anti-war song every bit an observation. "State of war is a office of man," he explained. "Nosotros're simply writing virtually it. It's not good or bad, it's just a thing."

  Hetfield also revealed that he could chronicle to the grapheme in the song considering of his difficult childhood. He said that he often felt like a "prisoner in his own body," with no means to escape. His begetter left when he was 13, and his mother died a few years afterward.

• This was included on the 1999 live anthology South&Yard, which they recorded with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

• KoRn performed this on MTV Icon in 2003. >>

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  Nick - Paramus, NJ, for above three

• This vocal is featured in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Stone and is considered the second hardest vocal on the game. >>

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  matt - Langhorne, PA

• At that place is a anachronism in the video: It'due south set up during Earth War I, but we hear the sound of helicopters in the vocal. Those hadn't been invented yet.

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Source: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/metallica/one

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