The intro to Metallica's “Don't Tread on Me” borrows a melody from which musical?

The intro to Metallica's “Don't Tread on Me” borrows a melody from the musical West Side Story.

The album track opens with an interpolation of “America,” a melody composed by Leonard Bernstein for West Side Story. Metallica used the recognizable figure as a brief introduction before moving into the song's own guitar-driven arrangement.

This connection can be surprising because West Side Story is a stage musical and film associated with orchestral writing, dance and vocal numbers, while “Don't Tread on Me” is a compact heavy-metal song. The borrowed melody is an arrangement detail rather than a cover of the entire musical or song.

The title “Don't Tread on Me” also relates to the album artwork: the cover's snake is derived from the Gadsden flag, whose motto uses the same phrase. That combination of musical quotation, historical imagery and original metal songwriting makes the track one of the album's more distinctive pieces.