The song "Fade To Black" was Metallica's first ballad and was released as a promo LP.

Album:
Ride The Lightning

The Best Solos Ever Reader's Choice:
The solo of "Fade to Black" reached the 24th place in the "100 Best Solos Ever Reader's Choice" in the september 1998 issue of Guitar World.

Fan mail:
Metallica revealed that they have received letters from fans who were dissuaded from committing suicide by the song.

What the song was really written about:
The song was actually written by James just after the band's equipment was stolen in Boston. Among all the stuff which has been stolen was a Marshall amp very special, because they had to search on two continents for a replacement amp with quite the same sound. So the song has to do with loosing all gear to keep on moving. And therefore the song seems to be about a person who decides suicide.

The pyro accident:
James got burned during "Fade To Black" on a gig in Montreal on the 8th August '92 when the pyros to the song set in. It happened because the pyro-tech didn't inform the band that new pyro would be going along with the old pyro which only ignited along the wings of the stage. James assumed that the new pyro canceled out the previous pyro, so he stood on a point where a 12 foot flame from the old pyro ignited.

The subject matter:
It's about loosing the will to carry on

Metallica about "Fade To Black"
Kirk Hammett: I was still using the black Flying V, but on "Fade To Black" I used the neck pickup on my guitar to get that warm sound. I played through a wha-wha pedal all the way in the "up" position. We doubled the first solo, but it was harder to double the secong solo in the middle because it was slow and there was a lot of space in it. Later I realized that I harmonized it in a weird way in minor thirds, major thirds and fifths. For the extended solo at the end, I wasn't sure what to play. We had been in Denmark for five or six months, and I was getting really homesick. We were also having problems with our management. Since it was a somber song, and we were all bummed out anyway, I thought of very depressing things while I did the solo - and it really helped. I played some arpeggios over the G-A-B prgression, but we widn't double track that solo. When that was finished, I went back and did the clean guitar parts behind the verse. James played an arpeggiated figure while I arpeggiated three-notes chords. We ende up getting a very 'Dire Straits'-type sound.

James Hetfield: That song was a pretty big step for us. It was pretty much our first ballad, so it was challenging and we knew it would freak people out. Band like Exodus and Slayer don't do ballads, but they've stuck themselves in that position we never wanted to do; limiting yourself to please your audience is bullshit.

Recording that song, I learned how frustrating acoustic guitar can be. You could hear every squeak, so I had to be careful. I wrote the song at a friend's house in New Jerey. I was pretty depressed at the time because our gear had just been stolen, and we had been thrown out of our manager's house for breaking shit and drinking his liquor cabinet dry. It's a suicide song , and we got a lot of flack for it; kids were killing themselves because of the song. But we also got hundreds and hundreds of letters from kids telling us how they related to the song and that made them feel better.