Songfacts®:

• The earliest Metallica song, "Hit The Lights" teems with their youthful energy and fury - the band members were between 19 and 21 when they recorded it. The song is about the thrill of playing rock music and how they love to see their fans go wild. The band though, had yet to play a show or release any music when they wrote it, so it was purely aspirational.
• "Hit The Lights" was the first song Metallica wrote, and also the first song they recorded, the first song they released, and the first song they ever performed live.
  
  The band wasn't fully formed when they wrote and recorded the song - it was just Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield, and they had only done a few jam sessions together. They were forced into action when Brian Slagel, who ran a fanzine called The New Heavy Metal Review, decided to put a compilation album together called Metal Massacre. He and Ulrich had met at a Michael Schenker concert and bonded over heavy metal, so Slagel told him that if he could get a song together for the compilation, he'd include it. This was October 1981.
  
  Ulrich got together with Hetfield and they came up with "Hit The Lights," recording it using a borrowed 4-track recorder. They rushed it to the mastering session for the album, but unfortunately delivered it on cassette - they didn't know studios required reel-to-reel. Slagel's partner on the project ponied up the $50 to transfer it from cassette, and they tacked it on as the last track.
  
  Ulrich and Hetfield went about forming a band, enlisting their friend Ron McGovney on bass and recruiting Dave Mustaine with an ad in the "Musicians Wanted" section of the LA paper The Recycler. They wrote more songs, learned some covers, and played their first gig on March 14, 1982. On June 14, 1982, Metal Massacre hit the streets, marking the first time a Metallica song was released to the public. On the compilation, their name was spelled Mettallica.
• The title and theme were likely nicked from a 1980 track by the British metal band Diamond Head called "Shoot Out The Lights."
• On the original version, James Hetfield sang and played both guitar and bass, with Ulrich on drums. For lead guitar, they enlisted a Jamaican guitarist they knew named Lloyd Grant, recording his part at his house.
• A few weeks after it appeared on the Metal Massacre compilation, Metallica included "Hit The Lights" on a demo they made called No Life 'Til Leather, this time with Ron McGovney on bass and Dave Mustaine on lead guitar. When they recorded the song for their first album, Kill 'Em All, McGovney had left the band and Cliff Burton was in on bass. But before the album was released, Mustaine was axed and his replacement, Kirk Hammett, re-recorded his parts.