The world was introduced to Metallica by way of Metal Blade’s “Metal Massacre” compilation all the way back in June of 1982. The first pressing of the album actually misspelled the band’s moniker as “Mettallica,” and the compilation featured an early version of their classic “Hit The Lights.”
The lineup for the initial version of the song featured vocalist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, bassist Ron McGovney and guitarists Dave Mustaine and Lloyd Grant. A second pressing of the compilation featured a new version of “Hit The Lights” with Mustaine presumably handling all of the guitar work.
Grant played a solo on the original version, but he’s not sure if Metallica considers him an original member of the group. He told Reality Check TV: “I don’t think Metallica wants to say I am an original member because the band weren’t really formed then. It was, like, I was looking for people to play with and we had a magazine, or a weekly that comes out on every Thursday, and Lars put an ad in and I answered the ad. And we started jamming and so forth.”
To Metallica’s credit, however, both Grant and McGovney were invited to jam “Hit The Lights” for the band’s 30th anniversary shows back in 2011 in San Francisco. A clip of that performance can be seen below along with the very first version of the song.
