Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was a teenage metalhead, and in a new interview with The Guardian the 58-year-old musician has singled out a Metallica classic as a song that saved his life.
"Fade to Black by Metallica showed me the power of music when I was going through some hard times as a teen," Corgan states, "When you’re really down, a song really can save your life."
James Hetfield wrote Fade To Black, Metallica's first ballad, following the theft of his beloved Marshall amp in Boston in the early hours of January 14, 1984. Recorded for the San Francisco band's second album, Ride The Lightning, and credited to all four members, the song is, to quote James Hetfield "a suicide song".
"I'm sure I wasn't really thinking of killing myself," Hetfield clarified in one interview around the time of the album's release. "But It was my favourite Marshall amp, man!"
