For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Metallica
- 112
- BPM
- E minor
- Key
- 9A
- Camelot
- 52
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Cliff Burton wrote the bass introduction to "For Whom the Bell Tolls" before he ever joined Metallica. He first played it in 1979, during a 12-minute jam at a battle of the bands with his second band, Agents of Misfortune. On the recording he used heavy distortion and a wah pedal, and laid down three bass tracks: a distorted lead, a clean one, and harmonics over the lead.
The bell at the start was not quite a bell. Lars Ulrich struck an anvil with a metal hammer, and the sound was combined with a bell from a sound effects reel.
Metallica took the subject from Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel of the same name, about death in modern warfare and the Spanish Civil War. It alludes to the scene in Chapter 27, where five soldiers are obliterated by an airstrike after taking a defensive position on a hill. The song first appeared on Ride the Lightning in 1984. Elektra Records released it as a promotional single in both edited and full-length versions. By March 2018 it ranked fifth on the band's live performance count.
For Whom the Bell Tolls runs at 112 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.14 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 536 ms. It is in E minor, Camelot 9A, which shares its notes with G major and mixes cleanly with A minor and B minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.