Ride the Lightning (song)

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"Ride the Lightning"

Cover of Ride the Lightning
Song by Metallica
from the album Ride the Lightning
Released	November 16, 1984
Recorded	Sweet Silence Studios Copenhagen, Denmark, 1984
Genre	Thrash metal
Length	6:41
Label	Elektra Records
Producer(s)	Metallica, Flemming Rasmussen , Mark Whitaker
Ride the Lightning track listing
"Fight Fire with Fire" "Ride the Lightning" "For Whom the Bell Tolls" "Fade to Black" "Trapped Under Ice" "Escape" "Creeping Death" "The Call of Ktulu"

"Ride the Lightning" is the title track of the 1984 album by heavy metal band Metallica. The original version of the song was found on the Horsemen Of The Apocalypse demo with Dave Mustaine and Ron McGoveny. The version found on Ride The Lightning is slightly different due to input from Cliff Burton so he was credited as well as Hetfield, Ulrich and Mustaine.

The theme of the song is that of a man who has been sentenced to execution in the electric chair. He opens by acknowledging his guilt ("guilty as 'charged'"), but still questions who made the judge "God to say" that he should die. Later on the man starts to feel the fear while the execution is prepared and asks himself what he is doing in the electric chair. By the end of the song he just wants to get it over with.

There is some doubt about the meaning of the last lines: "Wakened by a horrid scream, freed of this frightening dream." It is said the "horrid scream" is the last scream of the man depicted in the song, just before he dies, and that his death sets him free from his "dream", which is actually the execution.

It is most popularly believed, however, that the song is based on a 1961 episode of the Twilight Zone written by Charles Beaumont entitled "Shadow Play". The episode begins in a courtroom, where Adam Grant (Dennis Weaver) is convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to the electric chair. Shouting, "It's happening all over again!", Grant insists that his trial, conviction, and execution are all part of a recurring nightmare, and that when he dies, the world around him and all its occupants will likewise cease to exist. The events in this episode follow the lyrics in the song in totality, and is most likely the original source.

Also, in a live recording from 1983, James Hetfield states that "This one is dedicaited to our friend in Georgia", leading to the possibility that it is about an actual person as opposed to fictional events

In an interview with Guitar World magazine, James Hetfield has stated that the song is not an indictment of the death penalty, in which he is a believer, but simply an exploration of the concept of being in a terrible situation with no control. Musically, the song's main feature is the extensive overdubbing on much of Kirk Hammett's guitar solo.

An amusing moment happened during the Metallica concert recorded for the Some Kind of Monster EP, when James Hetfield could not remember the lyrics to the final verse, changing them to "Death in the Air... strapped in the electric chair... I forgot the fucking words!"

The song is also briefly mentioned on The Aquabats album Charge!!, with the lines "Pull down the lightning (Ride the lightning) /Slash all those who do oppose" in the song Tiger Rider vs. the Time Sprinkler!.