Leonard Bernstein wrote the melody interpolated in the opening of Metallica's The Black Album song Don't Tread on Me.
The introduction to Don't Tread on Me uses a melody associated with America from the musical West Side Story. Bernstein composed the music for West Side Story, while Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics, which is why the composer and lyricist are sometimes confused in questions about the passage.
The interpolation is a brief but distinctive detail in the album's track list. It links Metallica's heavy-metal arrangement to a famous piece of twentieth-century musical theater without turning the song into a cover of America.
Don't Tread on Me appears as the sixth track on Metallica. Although it was played on rock radio after the album's release, it was not one of the five commercially released singles that promoted the record.