Jazz Drummer Larnell Lewis Hears Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” for the Very First Time, Then Plays It Near-Perfectly

Even if you don’t think you know “Enter Sand­man,” you know “Enter Sand­man.” For more than thir­ty years it’s been the sig­na­ture song of Metal­li­ca, the best-known heavy met­al band in the world, and as such prac­ti­cal­ly unavoid­able — unavoid­able, that is, unless you’re jazz drum­mer Lar­nell Lewis. Pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his demon­stra­tion of the thir­teen lev­els of drum­ming dif­fi­cul­ty, Lewis is most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the fusion band Snarky Pup­py, and has, fair to say, spent his pro­fes­sion­al life out­side the realm of met­al. Hence the intrigue of the chal­lenge he takes on in the video above: can he play through “Enter Sand­man” after hear­ing it just once?

Metal­li­ca die-hards know how for­mi­da­ble a task this is. Record­ing the song in the first place took the band’s drum­mer Lars Ulrich more than one take — in fact, it took him near­ly fifty takes, in each of which he played just one sec­tion of the song, nev­er the whole thing straight through.

The final mix edits togeth­er all of the most pre­cise and intense pieces of his per­for­mance into one seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble-to-repli­cate whole. But for Lewis, learn­ing a song by ear and then play­ing it per­fect­ly is all in a day’s work, a process he demon­strates in the ear­li­er video just below, talk­ing his lis­ten­ers through his men­tal process of active lis­ten­ing to a per­cus­sion-free song, then com­ing up with all the drum parts on the fly.

Watch­ing Lewis active­ly lis­ten to “Enter Sand­man” has the appeal of those viral videos in which Youtu­bers hear hit songs for the first time — but even more so, since Lewis knows his craft back­wards and for­wards, and does­n’t hes­i­tate to express his own reac­tions and per­cep­tions. He notes a few tricky shifts into half time, and even one espe­cial­ly dra­mat­ic shot that he fore­sees miss­ing when he tries his own hand at the song. Apart from that, how­ev­er, he then plays the song him­self with an accu­ra­cy that aston­ish­es even the Metal­li­ca fans in the com­ments. As one says, it’s hard to say which is more unbe­liev­able: Lewis’ extra­or­di­nary tal­ent or the fact that he’d nev­er heard ‘Enter Sand­man’ before. The man must nev­er have set foot in a gym — but then, he prob­a­bly gets more than enough of a work­out at the drum kit.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch 13 Lev­els of Drum­ming, from Easy to Com­plex, Explained by Snarky Pup­py Drum­mer Lar­nell Lewis

Watch Metal­li­ca Play “Enter Sand­man” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Mil­lion in Moscow, Dur­ing the Final Days of the Sovi­et Union (1991)

Metallica’s “Enter Sand­man” Sung in the Style of David Bowie

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Metal­li­ca Play­ing “Enter Sand­man” on Class­room Toy Instru­ments

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.