The opening of Metallica’s “Don’t Tread on Me” interpolates music from “America,” a song from the musical West Side Story.
The Metallica track uses an eight-bar phrase from “America” as its instrumental introduction. “America” was composed by Leonard Bernstein, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, for West Side Story. Metallica’s use of the melody is a brief but distinctive contrast with the song’s heavy guitar-driven body.
“Don’t Tread on Me” also connects musically and visually to the album’s cover. Its title echoes the motto on the Gadsden flag, whose coiled snake inspired the album artwork. The song was issued to rock radio after the album’s release but was not released as a commercial single. This detail is easy to confuse with the album’s five official singles, which included “Enter Sandman” and “Sad but True.”