“Don’t Tread on Me” is the Metallica song whose intro interpolates Leonard Bernstein’s melody “America” from West Side Story.
The song appears as the sixth track on Metallica’s 1991 album, commonly called The Black Album. Its title references the “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan associated with the Gadsden flag and American historical imagery.
The opening musical idea is not a direct cover of the West Side Story number. Instead, Metallica incorporates and reshapes part of Bernstein’s melody at the beginning of the track. That detail is easy to miss because the song quickly moves into its own heavy arrangement.
“Don’t Tread on Me” was issued to rock radio after the album’s release, but it was not released as a commercial single. That distinguishes it from the album’s five officially released commercial singles.