When Ennio Morricone died in July 2020 at the age of 91, the world of classical music lost a giant. The Italian was one of the most important composers of the 20th Century. His music featured in countless movies, from Sergio Leone’s fabled 60s spaghetti westerns A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More The Good and The Bad And The Ugly to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. But he also had an unlikely connection to the world of rock metal world: he was the man who inadvertently wrote the greatest intro music in history.
That piece of music is The Ecstasy Of Gold, a song that has opened countless Metallica shows since 1983. Other bands have their own iconic intros to generate anticipation ahead of gigs. Iron Maiden have long used UFO’s Doctor Doctor, while Ozzy Osbourne kicked off his shows with Carl Orff’s dramatic Carmina Burana (as have several other artists). Nor are Metallica only band to harness the power of The Ecstasy Of Gold - punk legends the Ramones used it for years as outro music at the end of their shows, while it was sampled by hip hop superstar Jay-Z on his song Blueprint².
But it’s the connection to Metallica that has given The Ecstasy Of Gold such huge cultural weight beyond its cinematic origins. For fans, it will forever signal the imminent arrival of one of the world’s biggest bands. That's how deeply embedded it is in both Metallica folklore and the mythology of metal as a whole.
Ennio Morricone – known to those who work with him as ‘Maestro’ – rose to prominence in the 1960s with his thunderous, evocative score for Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars Trilogy’, kicking off with 1964’s Fistful Of Dollars and starring Clint Eastwood as enigmatic lead character Joe, better known as The Man With No Name.
The Ecstasy Of Gold appeared in the final film of the trilogy, 1966’s The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, where it’s soundtracked outlaw Eli Wallach’s frantic search for lost gold in a vast cemetery (footage of the scene accompanies the music when it’s played at Metallica shows). The song’s escalating drama and haunting, wordless vocals from Italian singer Edda Dell’Orso perfectly matched the tension of the scene.
The Good The Bad And The Ugly cemented Clint Eastwood’s stardom and made Morricone one of the most in-demand modern composers around. As for The Ecstasy Of Gold, it would take on an unlikely life of its 17 years later, when Metallica began using it as the intro tape to their live show on their Kill ’Em All tour.
“Originally we had a really dreadful tape as our intro,” Metallica frontman James Hetfield later said. “Just the sound of a heart with the beat getting faster. Rubbish. Then our manager at the time came up with the idea of replacing it with The Ecstasy Of Gold.”
The manager in question was Jon Zazula, aka Jonny Z, who had given Metallica their big break when he released Kill ’Em All on his newly-founded label Megaforce.
“I’ve always been a huge Morricone fan, and I was looking for an intro song to be played prior to Metallica’s performance onstage,” Zazula told Loudwire in 2019. It wasn’t the only Morricone song he was considering: “I was tossing around The Trio [also from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly score] because of the fiery coronets at the finale of the song but The Ecstasy Of Gold won.”
Setlist.fm records the first appearance of The Ecstasy Of Gold in a Metallica set as a show at The Rising Sun in Yonkers, NY, on July 29, 1983, the third date on Metallica’s co-headlining tour with British metallers Raven, though there’s every chance it appeared during the tour’s first two dates, at The Royal North, New Brunswick NJ on July 27 and Utopia, Bridgeport, CT on July 28. Either way, the song’s power was obvious from the start.
I’m very pleased about it, actually,. It means that my music is simple and precious at the same time.
Ennio Morricone
“From the first time we used it, something happened,” said Hetfield. “It just set us up for the night, and got the fans excited.”
The Ecstasy Of Gold rapidly became embedded as Metallica’s intro music and as their stature grew, so did the piece’s popularity. It was dropped on the Pour Touring Me tour in support of 1996’s Load album, but soon returned to its rightful place at the start of the, where it’s stayed – give or take the odd show – ever since.
The power of Morricone’s work has even fed into Metallica’s own music – The Unforgiven, from 1991’s ‘Black’ album, and its subsequent sequels possess a distinct whiff of the Spaghetti Westerns with which the composer is associated with. The Ecstasy Of Gold was performed live by the San Francisco Symphony as part of Metallica 1999’s S&M shows and their 2019 sequel S&M2. The band themselves even recorded their own version of the track for 2007 tribute album We All Love Ennio Morricone, even playing a heavied-up version in Copenhagen in 2009.
And what did Morricone himself think of a metal band adopting his music? “I’m very pleased about it, actually,” he told The Quietus in 2010. “It means that my music is simple and precious at the same time.”
In 2018, two years before he died, Morricone appeared at the O2 Arena in London to perform his most famous works with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in front a packed venue. When The Ecstasy Of Gold was played during the main set it received a massive reaction. But when the great man reprised it for the encore, it got an even more rapturous response, with people even standing up to headbang.
“It’s hair-raising for us as a band,” said James Hetfield in 2011 of The Ecstasy Of Gold. “We do our little circle and just talk. But as soon as the first note… when that starts, the show has started. Every sense is heightened. The heart is going. My body knows what’s coming. Here comes life, intense life: ‘Yeah, this is happening.’ Hearing the crowd sing along to the intro tape, all the nerves go away. Everyone is here for the same idea, for the same feeling, for the same result. When the crowd is singing that, I know it’s gonna be great.”
Following Morricone’s death in 2020, Metallica paid tribute to the man who inadvertently helped shape their live shows.
“The day we first played The Ecstasy Of Gold as our new intro in 1983 it was magic,” wrote Hetfield on Instagram. “It has become a part of our blood flow, deep breathing, fist bumping, prayers and band huddle pre-show ritual ever since. I have sang that melody thousands of times to warm up my throat before hitting the stage. Thank you Ennio for pumping us up, being a big part of our inspiration, and a bonding between band, crew, and fan. I will forever think of you as part of the Metallica family.”
