"Fight Fire With Fire"'s riff B

So check this out. Metallica's "Fight Fire With Fire," the opening track from the album Ride the Lightning.



I love this album so much I link to it above, in the little quote just under the blog title there. To me, this album is the epitome of metal. There was a time in my life–a long, long span of time–where I would never dream I would be fast or talented enough to play this song on guitar.

But now I can–the rhythm parts at least. I'm working on the solos. And fucking shit they're hard. I'm learning it because my band Freeze SOUNDCLOUD LINKE UPDATE SONGS is working on a cover version, which we're really excited about. This, we feel, is the height of Metallica–the best song from the best album.

We want to stay as close to the original as possible, but also be able to play it live--acoustic intro included. Andrew does a facsimile of Hammett's three parts, and I play Hetfield's more minimal thing, which rings out after the fourth bar. Rising guitar, cymbals and bass creep in and then BAM! At exactly 0:42, silence except for Hetfield's brutal rhythm riff (Riff A) that defines the song. Then the whole band joins in and the madness begins.

Then, they do something which is seriously perplexing Andrew and I. At 1:01, they launch into this short, fill-ish riff (Riff B).

We can't figure out what they're doing there! We've been listening to the album version over and over again, and it's so fast and distorted and analogue we can't make out the specific notes.

We've also been exploring tabulature versions, all of which don't sound correct. Andrew's convinced it goes one way, and I'm convinced it goes another. So this whole blog entry is sorta designed to elicit some help, from anyone who's sure they can play it exactly like the boys did for this specific recording of the song–the album version.

Here, check out this Songsterr tab for FFWF, paying attention particularly to Riff B. It gets pretty close to the point, but I'm still not sure if it's right on.

Anyone got any ideas here?

One thing that might help is a YouTube video of the band playing it live, where the camera is steadily and directly pointed at one of those guitarists' left hands, fretting the thing so I can mimic them.