Which composer’s “America” is interpolated in “Don’t Tread on Me” from Metallica’s The Black Album?

Leonard Bernstein’s “America” is interpolated in “Don’t Tread on Me” from Metallica’s The Black Album.

The melody comes from Bernstein’s music for West Side Story, the 1957 musical created with lyricist Stephen Sondheim. In “Don’t Tread on Me,” Metallica uses the recognizable musical idea in the introduction before moving into its own heavy-metal arrangement.

The reference is easy to miss because it is brief and surrounded by distorted guitars and drums. It is also not a conventional cover of “America”; the album track incorporates the melody into a new composition. Bernstein is therefore the relevant composer, while Sondheim is associated with the lyrics of the musical number.

“Don’t Tread on Me” was included on the original 1991 album and was sent to rock radio, but it was not one of the five commercial singles. That distinction separates it from the album’s better-known single sequence.