Thursday, August 1, 2024

Couldn't be much more from the heart

The A page of Animalia shows this A minor arpeggio:


Pick that out a few times on a piano or whatever instrument you have handy. Does it remind you of anything? It took a second for the vague sense of familiarity to snap into focus, but then I got it: the intro to the Metallica song "Nothing Else Matters." It's a different key, but it's the same sequence of evenly spaced notes: root, minor third, fifth, octave, fifth, minor third

The beginning of the A minor arpeggio spells out ACE, and in "I've been A minor for a heart of gold," I linked this to the Ace of Hearts that also appears on the A page. The lyrics of the Metallica song fit this interpretation:


This banjo-driven version brings back memories:


The band name is Metallic A -- Metallic Ace -- which fits with the idea that the red Ace of Hearts also represents a metallic heart, namely a "heart of gold."

2 comments:

William Wright (WW) said...

Confirmed - though as you noted a different key in the original (E minor). Definitely works and sounds like it in A, though.

I looked it up and James Hetfield said he wrote it while out on tour when he was "bumming out about being away from home."

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

According to Wikipedia, “Hetfield has a number of tattoos, including one which shows flames encasing four playing cards – ace (1), 9, 6, and 3 – representing the year of his birth.”

An image search shows it’s the Ace of Spades, not Hearts, but still. Every square inch of the dude’s body is tattooed, but the first one Wikipedia mentions is an ace.

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