During an appearance on Let There Be Talk, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett looked back on the initial days with the band after replacing Dave Mustaine.
He said:
“I was weird with them. We all got along right off the bat; we hit it off so amazingly right off the f*cking bat. The very first night that I played with them, this ‘audition,’ Lars kept on looking at James, and James kept looking at Lars, they kept on smiling.
“I was, like, ‘What’s up with these guys, are they in love with each other or something? What’s going on?’ I later found out that they were so happy that the other person playing guitar was not their old guitar player [Mustaine].
“And they were so happy that he is out of the picture and I was in the picture with a lot of potential and a lot of possibilities. They saw all of that stuff even before I saw it.
“They never really told me that I was in the band; I mean, I figured it out when Lars said, ‘Okay, in about three weeks we’re gonna go to Upstate New York and we’re gonna record our first album.’
“I was, like, ‘Okay’, and then I realized, ‘I must be in the band because we’re doing the album.’