Metallica’s Kirk Hammett Picks Favorite Neil Young Song That Has a “Two Seconds Late” Guitar Feature Halfway Through the Song

The connection between grunge music and Neil Young doesn’t always seem obvious when listening to songs like “Heart of Gold” or “Harvest Moon”. But dive into his discography, and it becomes clearer why the Canadian singer-songwriter earned the moniker the “Godfather of Grunge.” Even heavier rockers like Kirk Hammett from Metallica found great inspiration in the way Young would add grit and grime to his guitar tone. For Hammett, no song encapsulated Young’s ingenuity with grunge quite like his 1969 track, “Cinnamon Girl”.

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Speaking to Mojo in January 2026, Hammett described how it was love at first listen. “I can’t really remember the first time I heard ‘Cinnamon Girl’,” Hammett began. “But I imagine I was in my teens, riding in the back of a friend’s truck, drinking Mickey’s Big Mouths. The second you hear it, you’re drawn into the heavy rhythmic push and lean of the riff. Kinda like hard rock but much more swampy and greasy.”

“Cinnamon Girl” opens Young’s second solo studio album, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. The track features Danny Whitten and Ralph Molina on additional vocals, which seemed to coincide with the lush harmonies Young was finding with Crosby, Stills, & Nash around that time. But it wasn’t just the pitch-perfect moments that caused Hammett and so many other musicians to fall in love with Young. In fact, it was the opposite.

Kirk Hammett Uses “Cinnamon Girl” to Highlight Neil Young’s Unique Musical Approach

Some musicians will toil for countless hours in the studio in hopes of achieving perfection. In an age before digital intervention, this was even more of a laborious feat. But for every pitch-perfect track musicians made in the late 1960s, there was a growing camp of players who purposefully made things sound wonky, off-kilter, and a bit out of tune. Neil Young was certainly one of the figureheads of the latter camp. His willingness—and insistence—on giving his folk-rock music a bit of an extra bite helped pave the way for future subgenres, like grunge.

And for Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, “Cinnamon Girl” is a perfect representation of Young’s sound, not just for the good parts but for the bad parts, too. “When they go back into the main riff at 1:32, you can hear Neil turn his distortion pedal on—two seconds late—to make the riff sound heavier. I love stuff like that.”

“What’s cool about Neil is that he never hesitates to try whatever it takes to get his point across musically,” Hammett continued. “Whether it’s just him on acoustic guitar, him solo on the piano, or with Crazy Horse, it seems that he will find the best way to play the song, whether it’s grungy or doo-wop. He always finds the best way to serve his music.”

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