During his visit on Let There Be Talk podcast, Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher discussed some of his earliest influences. Talking about Metallica, he remembered some of the first albums he got into.
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“To me it was ‘Ride the Lightning,’ ‘Master…’ I think it was more ‘Master of Puppets.’ Because back in the day none of that shit was on the radio. Nothing. The only thing that was on the radio and it still is up there in Rochester, New York is like Boston, Scorpions, Van Halen…”
U2 and Edge also had a huge influence on Kelliher, as he said:
“My dad came from Ireland, and he had the hi-fi business, and the first record he got me was U2 ‘War.’ And U2 at the time was this weird… This is pre-punk rock for me, I was like ‘Who are these weird guys?’ Because The Edge played very unique. He used a lot of open string techniques and a lot of delays.
“They were doing some weird stuff and I was like ‘Wow, dad, can you buy me a delay pedal? Can you buy me a distortion pedal?’ I started playing a lot of the open string stuff. What I learned has shaped my playing style for like dissonant chords and dissonant notes and notes that didn’t really go together.
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“That kind of kicked it off for me when I just started playing guitar. Just learning ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘New Year’s Day’ and all that stuff.