Kirk Hammett

Born November 18, 1962 in San Francisco. His father was an Irish sailor and his mother was from the Philippines. Kirk graduated from grade 11 at De Anza School in Richmond, California. He has an older brother, Rick, and a younger sister, Tony.
As a child, Kirk took a great interest in his brother's music collection, which greatly influenced his decision to pursue guitar. At the age of 15, he bought his first electric guitar with money from Burger King. Hammett grew up under the influence of such bands as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Status Quo, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, UFO. Jimi Hendrix had the greatest influence on his work.
In 1980, Hammett formed Exodus with Tom Hunting, Tim Agnello and Carlton Nelson and was one of the first to play thrash metal.
In 1983, the then young group Metallica drew attention to Kirk Hammett, offering him to take the place of lead guitarist, replacing Dave Mustaine (now the leader of Megadeth). Thus, since 1983, Kirk has been the lead guitarist of Metallica and the author of many riffs.

Hammett has been married twice. The first marriage to Rebecca lasted three years and ended in 1990, while the Black Album was being written. Kirk currently resides in San Francisco with his wife Lani (since January 31, 1998) and two sons, Angel and Enzo.
Hammett is passionate about surfing, cooking, archeology, piercings, cars, and collecting horror films. He is also known to be a vegetarian. Kirk loves to listen to UFO, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Joe Satriani, Warren Haynes, Adrian Belew, Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Kiss, Santana.
Kirk suffers from attention deficit disorder (not hyperactive). Also suffers from OCD. It is also known that he used drugs, but not for a very long time.