One (Metallica song)



"One" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released as the third and final single from their fourth studio album, ...And Justice for All (1988). Written by band members James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, "One" is an anti-war song that portrays a World War I soldier who is severely wounded—blind and unable to speak or move—returned home as a supposed vegetable case to wait helplessly for death. His only hope is to devise a way to communicate with the hospital staff. Production of the song was done by the band alongside Flemming Rasmussen. The song was the band's first top 40 hit single in the U.S., reaching number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was also a number-one hit in Finland.

A video for the song was introduced in January 1989 on MTV. Shot in black and white by director Michael Salomon, the video's story is intercut with scenes taken from the 1971 anti-war film Johnny Got His Gun. Due to routinely being required to pay royalty fees to continue showing the music video, Metallica bought the rights to the film. The video was ranked at number one on MTV soon after its introduction.

Metallica performed "One" for the 31st Annual Grammy Awards show broadcast from Los Angeles in 1989. The next year, the song won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance, the first ever win in that category. The band also performed the song alongside pianist Lang Lang at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in 2014. The song is one of the band's most popular pieces and has remained a live staple since the release of the album, making this the most played song from ...And Justice for All.

Recording and composition
"One" was written in November 1987 by Metallica's principal composers James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. The song was released in 1989 as the third and final single from the album. For the first 17 seconds of the song there are a series of sound effects with a battle theme, an artillery barrage and helicopter are heard and continues slightly over a clean tone guitar intro by Hetfield before Kirk Hammett comes in over the top with a clean-toned solo. Ulrich's drums come in and continues until each chorus, when the guitars become heavy and distorted before returning to clean. There is a second solo by Hammett halfway through the song, before lyrics cut out and the song gradually gets more heavy and distorted until the "machine gun" guitar build up (played alongside double bass drums) before the next, often highly praised, guitar solo by Hammett, and a final dual solo by Hammett and Hetfield. The song begins in 4/4 time, and later 3/4 as well as 2/4.

In 1991, James Hetfield told Guitar World that he wrote the song's opening B-G chord change (he miscalls it a 'modulation') based on an idea prompted by the Venom song "Buried Alive" from their second studio album, Black Metal.

I had been fiddling around with that B-G modulation for a long time. The idea for the opening came from a Venom song called "Buried Alive". The kick drum machine-gun part near the end wasn't written with the war lyrics in mind, it just came out that way. We started that album with Mike Clink as producer. He didn't work out so well, so we got Flemming to come over and save our asses.

The song starts off in a soft melodic setting, but it develops through multiple sections into heavier and faster speed metal sounds, leading up to a technically complex tapping solo by Kirk Hammett, and a dual guitar section by Hammett and James Hetfield.

Concept
The song is based on the idea of a soldier losing all of his limbs and being unable to hear, speak, or see, set to a World War I backdrop. In an interview in New Zealand in 1989, Ulrich describes the movie Johnny Got His Gun as having a similar theme, and this was the reason it was incorporated into the video.

Music video
"One" was the first Metallica song for which a music video was created. The music video, directed by Bill Pope and Michael Salomon, debuted on MTV on January 20, 1989. The video, shot in Long Beach, California, is almost entirely in black and white, and features the band performing the song in a warehouse. It features dialogue and several scenes from the 1971 film adaptation of Johnny Got His Gun. Timothy Bottoms can be seen starring as Joe Bonham, the main character in the novel (written by Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939; the basis for the 1971 film).

Three versions of the "One" music video were made; the first (the longest, album version) contained scenes of both the band and scenes from the movie. The second was simply a shortened version of the first and the third, often known as the "jammin' version", lacked scenes from the movie (the song and video fades at the last bridge in the third version).

Like many other music videos from Metallica, "One" puts great emphasis on the performances of the band members as musicians, with many shots of Hetfield, Newsted and Hammett's hands picking and fretting. The video features the band members in a typical early Metallica fashion: playing (as if in rehearsal) in some sort of warehouse, in tight formation around Ulrich's drum kit, and dressed in casual street clothes and with long untamed hair.

In the music video, it can be clearly seen that both Hetfield and Hammett are playing ESP guitars; Jason Newsted is on a 5-string Wal bass. It is also clear that Newsted is playing bass with his fingers at the start of the song, but later switches to a pick.

Two of the three versions of the "One" music video appear on 2 of One, a VHS released on July 1, 1990 and both would again be featured on the band's 2006 music video compilation DVD.

The music video was ranked at number 38 on Rock on the Net: MTV: 100 Greatest Music Videos and number one on Fuse's No. 1 Countdown: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Special Edition.

Live performance
"One" is a favorite of many Metallica fans, and therefore is a fixture of the band's live performances. When played live, the song is usually played with guitars tuned down by one semitone (a permanent fixture of their studio and live work since the post Metallica era, save for Death Magnetic in the case of the former) and is preceded by pyrotechnics and the same sounds of war such as machine guns, and bombs exploding as heard on the recorded version. The song also features heavy strobe lighting during the heavier half of the song, namely before the Hammett solo.

The song was also featured on S&M, Metallica's album of live performances in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Kamen. Another mentionable performance was at the Grammy Awards 2014, having pianist Lang Lang accompanying the band on an acoustic grand piano.

Personnel

 * James Hetfield – vocals, rhythm guitar
 * Kirk Hammett – lead guitar
 * Jason Newsted – bass
 * Lars Ulrich – drums

Covers

 * "One" was covered by Crematory for the A Tribute to the Four Horsemen CD and was also on their Revolution album.
 * "One" was covered by the band Korn as part of the MTV Icon Metallica tribute TV show. This cover version is featured as a hidden track on their 2003 album Take a Look in the Mirror and their album Live and Rare. However, Korn's version was shortened to a little more than four minutes, like most performances at MTV Icons, and lacks much of the second half of the song, including the final guitar solo. The bridge is also played often at live shows as an outro to their song "Shoots and Ladders"; however, as of 2009, "Fake" usually ends with the "One" outro.
 * Apocalyptica has covered the song. It is the last track on the album Inquisition Symphony.
 * Japanese rock band Beat Crusaders covered the song for the 2008 Metallica tribute album Metal-ikka.
 * Acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela covered "One" on Live in Japan.
 * "One" was covered by German thrash metal band Dispatched.
 * "One" was covered by German industrial rock and EBM band Die Krupps.
 * "One" was covered by bluegrass band Iron Horse.
 * "One" was covered by progressive metal and djent band Periphery for the Homefront soundtrack.
 * "One" was covered by American 'avant-garde' metal and ska band Nuclear Rabbit on their 1991 demo, Bowling for Midgets.

Other appearances

 * "One" is featured in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, where it is mostly remembered as one of the most difficult songs to appear in the series, mostly due to the fast-paced solos that comprise the second half of the song. The song appeared once again in Guitar Hero: Metallica, with its difficulty toned down.
 * In 2008, Shout! Factory released a film adaptation of the stage play Johnny Got His Gun; the DVD release included the music video for "One" and the original film.
 * "One" is sampled in the songs "Like This" on Feed the Animals, the 2008 album by artist Girl Talk and Eminem on the song "Same Song and Dance" from the album Relapse.
 * "One" was featured in an episode of Beavis and Butt-head.
 * "One" was the walkup music for Oakland Athletics closer Grant Balfour until he left the team following the 2013 season. When Balfour entered the game to this song, raucous Oakland fans would wildly punch the air and headbang; this was known as "Balfour Rage".

Honors

 * "One" was voted as the seventh of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos" of all time by readers of Guitar World, placed between "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses (sixth) and "Hotel California" by the Eagles (eighth).
 * In 2009, 2011 and 2012, "One" was voted by listeners of the New Zealand radio station The Rock as the greatest rock song of all time.
 * "One" was nominated for and won the first ever Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1990.