Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [235]
Onstage, Anthrax did exactly the same show they played when they reunited in 2005 – mostly Among the Living-era material (‘Anti-Social’, ‘Got the Time’) and a smidge of Black Sabbath’s ‘Heaven and Hell’ in passing tribute to the recently departed vocalist Ronnie James Dio. Megadeth were on fire. The recent return of bassist David Ellefson to the fold after a five-year exile seemed to have revitalised them. The set was a run-through of Rust in Peace – in preparation for a twentieth-anniversary version of the album about to be released – and some greatest hits. Lots of ‘we love you’s from Mustaine. Slayer did their 2010 show, which is to say no headbanging from Araya as his neck was still out of whack following an injury, but still a powerful set. As Joel McIver, who was also there, says, ‘Metallica really did reign supreme, with a much longer set – the others had between forty minutes and an hour – plus pyro, a bigger production and of course the fact that it was night-time helped.’
But then, Big Four or not, this was only ever going to be about one band. As Ellefson says now, ‘Every time a new Metallica record would come out, [Megadeth guitarist] Marty Friedman would go, “Well, one more time, that’s why they are the kings.” You know, they talk about the Big Four. Quite honestly, there was a Big One, and that was Metallica. They were miles and miles ahead of all of us – they’re the U2 of heavy metal. They kind of transcended everything. They are true royalty. As far as the rest of us, there’s a Big One and then quite a ways behind them there’s the other three of us.’
The question is: where do Metallica go from here? Well, that depends, as ever for a band with antennae as long and sensitive as this, on the zeitgeist. No longer the musical adventurers they first became famous as, they have spent the vast majority of their career successfully co-opting whatever the prevailing musical trends are into their own unique story, their real genius not for having invented the last great truly influential musical genre in rock, but for having so stealthily and successfully ridden the waves that have ebbed and flowed like a torrent these past near-thirty years. The Big Four festival tour has been another shrewd move and a resounding sales success, with the tour now set to resume across the USA in the summer of 2011, and permutations thereof slated to follow in subsequent years, modelled along the lines of Ozzfest or Lollapalooza. Peter Mensch also let slip in a 2010 interview that the band would be undertaking, as he told Classic Rock, ‘a Metallica tour that will blow your mind. They will only play in ten cities but it will be a huge undertaking.’ He likened it to ‘Metallica’s equivalent’ of Pink Floyd’s famously theatrical early Eighties live show for The Wall. Furious at his slip, the Q Prime manager has refused to say any more but it’s believed the show will feature huge back projections and that, musically, it will look back on the band’s entire career with special guest appearances from some likely – and not so likely – guests, and that the cities will include London, New York, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo.
What is more certain is that right now, with the record industry on its knees and new ways of delivering music constantly being investigated, there