📍El Sobrante, CA, USA
1970 – 1983“Kirk Lee Hammett was born in San Francisco in November 1962, to a father of Irish descent who was a merchant marine and a Filipino mother, and he grew up in El Sobrante, a working-class suburb in the hills of the East Bay. He was a shy, imaginative boy who was bullied at school, and he found escape in horror films and monster magazines, spending his milk money on them and collecting his older brother Rick's Frankenstein figures. His brother Rick's record collection, full of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, UFO and Jimi Hendrix, opened his ears to rock, and at about fifteen he traded a Kiss album and ten dollars for Rick's old guitar, a cheap Montgomery Ward catalogue model with a shoebox amplifier. He sold his horror magazines to buy records, and he practised constantly. He worked at Burger King to save for a Marshall amplifier. At De Anza High School in Richmond, he met Les Claypool, later of Primus, and they became lifelong friends. As a teenager he co-founded the thrash band Exodus, playing in the Bay Area clubs. In 1983 Metallica invited him to replace Dave Mustaine, and he flew to New York to join them. He studied with the guitarist Joe Satriani, and his solos on Master of Puppets and Enter Sandman made him one of the most famous lead guitarists in metal. He has never lost his love of horror, building one of the world's great collections of horror memorabilia, shown in museums. The Bay Area remains his home.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today