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of three of the biggest rock festivals that summer: England’s increasingly famous annual Monsters of Rock show at Castle Donington on 17 August; the even more prestigious Day on the Green festival at Oakland Coliseum on 31 August; plus an appearance at the Loreley Metal Hammer festival in Rhein – the West German equivalent of Donington – on 14 September. Worldwide sales for Ride the Lightning were now approaching half a million but the band was still viewed very much as underdogs, curiosities at best, next to more established names like ZZ Top, Marillion and Bon Jovi (all of whom followed Metallica onto the stage at Donington) and Scorpions, Ratt and Y&T, all above Metallica at Bill Graham’s Day on the Green festival a fortnight later. Only the crowds seemed to really know who Metallica were, especially in Europe, where they had sold most records and were now increasingly seen as the next big thing. At the Rhein festival, at which ‘Disposable Heroes’ was given its first public performance, Venom was also on the bill, in the slot above Metallica. Standing backstage, listening to them pounding through ‘Seek and Destroy’, Jeff Dunn was astonished to hear ‘the whole audience singing it. Then James shouting, “What the fuck was that?” and then the whole place going mad. James had that rapport with the audience; they were his that night. It was at that point I can honestly say that Metallica were starting to overtake us – the European gig where they definitely made their mark.’

In the hotel bar the night before the Donington show, Lars had told me they were ‘in the mood to kill’. When later I asked if he thought Metallica had succeeded he nodded his head enthusiastically. Of course they had. ‘When we walked onstage at Donington, I thought we were showing both the other bands and the kids in the audience that we have a different way of presenting ourselves, way, way apart from people’s preconceived ideas of what a band like Metallica is all about. I think a lot of people are slowly starting to understand and appreciate that what we do, and the way we do it, is real. What you see is what you get, no faking. What you see of us like onstage is what we’re like all the time, we don’t start pretending or hamming it up.’

Certainly there was no faking the non-stop rain of objects that were hurled at the stage from the 70,000-strong Donington crowd that day, including plastic bottles full of urine. Not just for Metallica, but throughout the entire event, as if ritualistically. Marillion singer Fish, then at the height of his fame, was brave enough to tell the crowd: ‘Those of you who are throwing bottles, people down the front are getting hurt, so fuck off.’ This did bring a temporary halt to the disgusting deluge. But those bands lower on the bill not popular enough yet to get away with something like that were forced to grin and bear it. James Hetfield, though, had other concerns when Metallica took to the stage in the middle of a swelteringly hot afternoon. Squeezed between Ratt and Bon Jovi, the sort of poodle-haired pop-rockers Metallica professed to despise, James announced to the crowd, ‘If you came here to see spandex, eye make-up, and the words “Oh baby” in every fuckin’ song, this ain’t the fuckin’ band!’ Cue another hail of beer cans and bottles. As usual, Cliff Burton had his own way of dealing with things. Ducking beneath a flying pear, which ended up embedded in his bass bin, he coolly sauntered over to his stack, plucked out the pear, took a couple of ironic bites out of it then slung it back into the crowd, to general all-round cheers. As he later ruefully recalled, ‘Donington was a day of targets and projectiles. [Stuff] was piling high on the stage all throughout the day, and freaks were flipping.’ Then added with a straight face: ‘I think they liked us, though.’

At the Day on the Green festival two weeks later, this time Metallica were bigger creators of mayhem than any of the 90,000 in the crowd. The show itself had been a memorable occasion. Recalls Malcolm Dome, who was there covering the event for Kerrang!, ‘It