The Most Important Night of My Life: Metallica at The Roseland Ballroom

The panic set in the moment I heard the news. The announcement came on 92.3 KROCK in New York that Metallica was going to play The Roseland Ballroom on November 24, 1998. How on earth were we going to get tickets? We had just seen Metallica earlier that year at a nearly-sold out Giant’s Stadium, but the Roseland only held about 3,000. Surely demand for tickets would far outstrip the supply.

There wasn’t ticketmaster.com at that time. Reliable Internet service wasn’t even a guarantee, if you had a 56k dial up connection to a local ISP, you were ahead of the curve. The ticket buying process at Ticketmaster left you with two options that were mostly a crapshoot, and often left you less than satisfied at the end.

The first option was to get a wristband at a local Ticketmaster outlet. That wristband gave you the right to line up outside the same outlet before tickets went on sale. So, you had to wait on line twice, once for the wristband, and then again to buy tickets. The wristband was no guarantee of actually getting tickets. If the line was slow moving, the show could sell out before you made it to the ticket counter.

There was a Ticketmaster outlet at Take One Video in Hoboken, New Jersey where I was living at the time. Take One had a sizable selection of VHS movie rentals, and a much larger section of VHS porn rentals to go along with the Ticketmaster counter. A business in 1998 that specialized in porn and ticket sales must have been a license to print money. Little did the owners know how fated the entire business model was at the time. Our ticket buying experience at the Take One Video was mixed at best.

As I was finishing up my senior year at Stevens Institute of Technology in 1996, Ozzy Osbourne announced he was returning to the road after having had retired four years earlier. One of the stops on the tour was near us in East Rutherford, New Jersey, at what was then known as the Brendan Byrne Arena.

Take One decided to forgo the wristband option for this on-sale, so we had to wait on line outside for tickets. With no other option available, we decided to stay up all night and got on line at about 1 AM so we could be the first ones on line at 9 AM when the tickets went on sale.

The ticket counter at Take One was run by an angry-looking woman who had little regard for politeness and customer service. Perhaps years of working for a company that constantly frustrated customers with a sub-par buying experience, and having to listen to their negative feedback shaped her nasty attitude.

She asked us where we wanted our seats to be. I said “Well, we’re the first on line so we’d like front row, please.” She sold us tickets for the lower bowl on the opposite side of the stage. Ozzy looked like an ant. So much for being first on line.

A few months later, KISS announced that all four original members were going to reunite and they were going to tour one last time and that they were going to play at Madison Square Garden. This time Take One did give out wristbands. However, even with our wristbands, the show sold out while we were on line. Later that day, we were listening to KROCK, and they announced that five more shows were added, but they had already sold out after we left Take One. Such was how things worked back then, the flow of information and the inefficient in-person buying process often left you skunked.

The second option for buying tickets was to call Ticketmaster’s 1-800 number. This option was very risky and fraught with potential problems. You would have to call the number and wait on hold until the operator picked you up and you could order tickets.

There were two problems with the phone option. The first is that the show could sell out while you were on hold. The second problem, more insidiously, was that if the operator picked up too soon, and tickets hadn’t gone on sale yet, he would hang up on you and you’d have to call back.

There was some common advice on how to deal with the problem of being too early that we practiced. Say that tickets for a Nine Inch Nails show went on sale at 10 AM. You’d call Ticketmaster at 9:45 and hope they picked up at 10 on the nose. If they picked up early, you’d have to keep them talking but not buy anything, while watching the time. As soon as it was 10 AM, you’d immediately change the subject and ask for Nine Inch Nails tickets. For example: “Uh, good morning. How are you today. I’d uh…. like to know if there are any New Jersey Devils tickets for sale in the month of November. Could you please read off all of the home dates? Uh… none of those look good for me… and I changed my mind… uh… I’m a New York Knicks fan, do they have any home games in December? What about January?” As soon as the clock struck 10, you’d quickly say “Check that, I’d like 4 tickets for Nine Inch Nails at Madison Square Garden on December first!”.

Sometimes that method would work, sometimes it wouldn’t. Wait times would vary, the operators at Ticketmaster could be dicks and hang up on you anyway, it was a nerve-wracking experience.

I was just starting in my career as a programmer on Wall Street. I didn’t have a great footing at the office and was still trying to prove myself. The Metallica tickets went on sale at 5 PM on a Friday so I didn’t have the option of taking time off of work to wait on line. The only thing I could do was try method #2 and call in.

On the day tickets went on sale, I was probably as nervous as I had been all year. In my mind, I went over the plan of what to say if they answered too soon. I also agonized over the decision about what time to call, such that I could maximize my odds of getting tickets. If I called too late, they could sell out before they picked up my call.

I decided to call at exactly 4:55 and waited on hold, while shaking like a leaf. The seconds ticked by and seemed like centuries. I could feel my chances of getting tickets shrinking by the minute. I should have called earlier and trusted myself to keep the operator busy until 5:00.

The clock struck 5:00 and within a matter of seconds, the hold music went dead and the operator greeted me! Now I had to talk fast so he could punch in the order before tickets sold out! Skipping the pleasantries, I could barely form the words quickly enough: “IneedtwoticketsforMetallicaatTheRoselandBallroomonNovember24!!!!”. No longer just shaking like a leaf, I was outright trembling in my seat. Were they sold out already? Were we going to miss the show?

Another eon went by before the operator said “Yes, we have two tickets for the show. Can I get your credit card number?” I was too stunned to think straight, I just read out my credit card number and gave him my mailing address and hung up.

It was over! We were going to see Metallica play at the Roseland Ballroom! All the worry and anxiety about buying tickets was for naught! This was the luckiest day of my life!

I got a hold of myself and called Bobby and told him we were going to the show. I don’t think he could believe our luck, either. I called my other friend Ed and asked him how he made out in his own quest for tickets. He lived in central Jersey and went to a local Ticketmaster in person to wait on line. Not only did he get a pair of tickets from waiting on line, but there were so few people at his local TM outlet that he got back on line and got two more. Maybe I wasn’t as lucky as I thought I was, but no matter. We had a crew now, this was going to be sweet.

This was going to be a different kind of Metallica show. They were releasing an album that week named “Garage Inc.” and it was a double-disc compilation of cover songs. The mini-tour to support the album was going to be played exclusively in small venues, and the set list was going to be comprised entirely of cover songs from the new album. There wasn’t going to be a single Metallica-penned song performed during the show.

Too add to the excitement, the show was going to be played in a small theater. The band, which normally played in large arenas or stadiums, wanted to use the small theater as an analogy to “Metallica’s Garage”, celebrating their beginnings as a garage band that played cover songs. This would be an extremely rare opportunity to see Metallica in such a small venue.

The Roseland Ballroom was a special place for rock and roll fans. As the name implies, it was originally a ballroom, and it was converted into a multi-purpose venue. If one of your favorite bands played there, you had to be in attendance. We had already seen a number of great shows there for bands such as Anthrax, The Misfits, Ministry, and a nascent Foo Fighters to name a few. It was a much more intimate venue than a large arena, or a cavernous football stadium. You felt like you could reach out and touch the band.

When you walked into the Roseland, there was a bar on the right and the general admission dance floor area was to the left, separated by a railing that looked like it could have belonged to the ice-skating rink that was once there. Along the dance floor, there was an aisle that traveled to the left side of the stage. Along the aisle, there was a built-in upholstered bench. It was sticky from end to end, and smelled like decades of cigarette smoke, marijuana smoke, and stale Budweiser. The room oozed rock and roll.

The acoustics in the Roseland Ballroom were top notch. The music was contained within the room, unlike an arena which could echo and reverberate. Everything was played at ear-splitting decibel levels, and each note was crystal-clear.

Mobile phones were just becoming commercially viable products, and not all of us had them. There was a very high likelihood of getting separated during a show at Roseland and we wouldn’t be able to communicate. So, every time we went to a show, we had to pick a “spot” to find each other when it was over.

On the night of the show, the anticipation was too much to take. I was working in midtown Manhattan at the time, not too far from the Roseland Ballroom on 52nd street. But I’d have to leave work, go home to Hoboken and change into something more appropriate for the show, meet my friends, and come back into the city.

I needed to get out of work early to make this all happen. The only thing I could think of was a complete lie. It was two days before Thanksgiving so I told my boss that I had to pick up my brother from the airport. True, he was coming back from college in Ohio for the weekend, but I wasn’t going to get him. I had big plans!

To add to the uniqueness of the experience, MTV had announced they were going to live broadcast the concert. We’d get a chance to watch it again when it was over! We asked our friend Chris to please make a VHS recording for us before we left town.

We got to the Roseland, bursting with assignment. We walked in and picked our “spot” to meet after the show. It was right at the railing divider between the dance floor and the bar. We headed down the aisle towards stage left. The crowd was densely packed at that point, and it got tighter the closer you got to the stage. We pushed in as close as we could, maybe 6 or7 people from the rail, and held on for the show. While we were waiting, we caught the end of a performance by “Battery”, a Metallica cover band. In a bit of a humorous twist, the only Metallica songs that were going to be played that night were by a band other than Metallica.

We looked up to the balcony above the aisle on the left. Scott Ian from Anthrax was there, waiting along with the rest of us for Metallica to begin.

A normal Metallica show begins with a recording of “Ecstasy of Gold” as the lights go off. Metallica fans are conditioned to go berserk in anticipation of Metallica hitting the stage when this happens. The song ends, Metallica jumps on the stage, and proceeds to launch into one of their heavy songs, and it is game on. Lights, pyro, video, and heavy music take over the venue.

This night would be much different. The production was minimal and the stage was small. It was just going to be the four of them with some standard stage lighting, and no other visual effects. The lights went off and Metallica walked on to the stage. James started to play something that was somewhat unrecognizable at first, until it became apparent that he was playing a modified version of the bridge from “Creeping Death”. The rest of the band joined in, and started a “Die! Die! Die!” chant that was a staple of their live show since the song’s debut on “Ride the Lightning”.

The crowd joined in with the chant when they abruptly stopped and tore into a version of “Die, Die My Darling” by The Misfits! Bobby and I had just seen this song performed by The Misfits themselves to close out the show at The Irving Plaza just a few months prior to this. And Metallica started their show with the same song!

The crowd went apeshit crazy. We started to mosh and to crash into each other and it became apparent we were going to have to defend ourselves to avoid injury. Someone of my 5′ 6″ stature has enough trouble just seeing over people at a general admission concert, but when people much bigger than you are crashing into and landing on your head all night, it becomes an outright hazard to stand so close to the stage.

James Hetfield struck a heroic pose as he stood center stage, playing his low-slung guitar at blistering speeds with what appeared to be minimal effort. The timbre of his voice was in perfect form, every word he formed was like a punch in the face.

Jason Newstead was closest to us, and was his usual ball of energy. He sang harmony with James while playing bass and bouncing across the stage.

Kirk Hammett was on stage right. He had to have his appendix ripped out a week or so before the show and we weren’t sure he could even perform. Whatever happened between then and the show worked, because Kirk was back on his feet and ready to shred.

Lars Ulrich was even more ebullient than usual. Perhaps the departure from the normal Metallica setlist sparked his mood, but you could read the excitement on his face as he hammered away on the drums.

James welcomed the crowd to “Metallica’s Garage” and the band started playing a cover of the eponymous “Blitzkrieg”. The band was gaining energy, and the crowd raised its intensity to match. It was getting rougher and rougher in the crowd. People were pushing me in every direction, and crowd surfers (a dangerous practice that I never understood) kept landing on my head. I was covered in other people’s sweat and hair and had nowhere to put my arms because of the tight quarters.

The next song was “The Small Hours” which was a slower but heavy song. By the time it was over and “The Prince” started, I was gassed. I was yelling and screaming with the band, but becoming increasingly concerned about my own safety. This had never happened at a concert before, I had always been able to battle my way up front and hang on for the whole show. At some point, the crowd surged to the left, and it was as if I got spit out like a watermelon seed and ended up in the aisle again. I retreated to the back of venue near the railing.

I tried to catch my breath and watch the show from in back. A haze hung over the crowd from all the heat and cigarette smoke. James said a few words about how much of an influence Black Sabbath was before beginning to play “Sabra Cadabra”. I was out of harm’s way, but very far away from the band. I started to doubt myself. Was I too old for this kind of thing? I was a week shy of my 24th birthday, after all!

Metallica moved on to a traditional Irish song, once covered by one of their influences, Thin Lizzy. Then James told the crowd they needed to clear out some elbow room for the next one, and launched into their take on Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy”. I could see the crowd moving in every direction, and not slowing down a bit. I started to get angry at myself. What was I doing here? After being so lucky to get tickets for such a special night, why was I standing so far away? Then I answered my own question “No, I’m not too old for this, I’m only 23! What the hell is wrong with me?”

I had to get back up to the front. I marched up the aisle and pushed my way back through the crowd as close to the stage as I could. I found every gap between people I could and filled it in very quickly. Before I knew it, there were only a few people between me and the stage barrier. I found a second wind and hung on for the rest of the show.

It seems like a blur now, but I finished out the evening with a combination of exuberance and defending myself against injury. When I looked up, I couldn’t believe how close I was to James Hetfield and Jason Newstead. My previous two Metallica concerts were seated, so I had never had this perspective with my favorite band before. These were images that were burned into my mind forever.

Metallica blazed through the rest of the set, playing covers of more of their favorites like The Misfits, Budgie, and Motörhead, finishing with their classic “Overkill”.

It was over and Metallica left the stage. The crowd started to separate and head to the exits, and I could walk and breathe again. The exiting crowd revealed a dance floor covered in crushed plastic cups. Completely spent, I headed to the meetup spot to find Bobby and Ed. We were all amazed at what we had seen.

Nothing in my concert viewing past could compare to this show. The combination of the magnitude of the band, the intimate nature of the venue, and the unique set list made it the most special concert I have ever seen. It was the greatest night of my life.

With a hint of sadness, we headed home. While were elated at the performance, we knew that it was over and we might not have an opportunity like this ever again.

The next day, we asked Chris if we could have the tape so we could watch it over the weekend. He said he wanted to watch something else (at the time, you could only tune your cable box to one show at a time, so you couldn’t record something it wasn’t tuned to) so he didn’t record it. Thanks for nothing, dick!

We were somewhat bummed that we wouldn’t get to watch the show on replay and look for ourselves in the crowd. And I would have loved to see Metallica play their set from the comfort of my couch, not being beaten by mosh-pitters from all sides. Ordinary people didn’t carry recording devices with them at the time, and video streaming really didn’t exist on most websites. There didn’t appear to be any way for us to get a hold of the footage.

Looking back on the last two decades, what we didn’t realize at the time was how much the technology curve in the world was going to explode as devices became more connected and mobile, and how Metallica would grow and change along with it. And how the ticket buying process was going to evolve as well, but not to the point that it was would become a stress-free operation!

I don’t recall the exact time that Ticketmaster.com came into existence and started selling tickets on-line, thus obsoleting the awful in-person or over-the-phone methods of buying tickets. On October 31, 1999, I joined the MetClub so I could be eligible for pre-sales for Metallica tickets. I renewed my membership each year until they stopped collecting money to be in the club, and this proved to be one of the more fortuitous decisions I have ever made. We were now able to buy tickets from a computer, and buy them earlier than the general public, so this became a game-changer.

In 1999, Metallica was set to release an album called “S&M” which was double-entendre that stood for “Symphony and Metallica”. It was recorded live with the backing of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. It contained a selection of songs from their back catalog, along with two new ones.

They announced a mini-tour to accompany this new album, only consisting of two shows. One was in Berlin, Germany, and the other was on November 23, 1999 at Madison Square Garden, almost a year to the day from the Roseland Ballroom show.

I don’t have a specific recollection of buying tickets for this show. That leads me to believe that it was a successful Ticketmaster.com purchase with my fan club credentials. For a short while, it became easier to buy tickets for shows. We ended up in the upper level at Madison Square Garden on the left side of the stage. It would be yet another unique Metallica show as they had an entire orchestra back them up!

Unfortunately, the acoustics for this show were all out of whack due to the orchestra having to be heard in the mix. They turned the core four Metallica members down in the mix, and it was hard to hear them. The loudest sound in the building was the crowd singing along with every word! At one point, we started a “Turn it up!” chant, but that didn’t help much.

After intermission (an intermission at a Metallica show?), the sound seemed to improve, someone must have made some adjustments to the mix and the show finished out strongly. This wasn’t the same as Roseland, but it was another memorable Metallica night. KROCK had broadcast the show live and replayed it several times over the next week. We were able to listen back to parts of it several times.

Ticketmaster online ticket purchases started to pick up steam. We saw a reunited Iron Maiden in 2000 on their Brave New World tour, and had heard that their show at Madison Square Garden set a record for the highest percentage of tickets sold online in ticketmaster.com history. Just two years after having to sweat out the Roseland ticket buying process, the old paradigm was effectively dead. You could easily buy tickets from home as long as you had a PC and an Internet connection.

The ticket buying process wasn’t the only thing that was rapidly changing around us. FM radio and physically copies of recorded media had competition from digital music. Digital music became very easy to steal over peer-to-peer networks that allowed you to pay to download copies of songs from other users on the network.

Metallica was horrified at this practice. They weren’t upset at the fact that people were listening to their music without paying for it. They were angered by the fact that some companies took away their control of how their music was being distributed and sold, and that they were profiting from it with no redistribution of funds to the recording artists.

Their complaints were misunderstood by the fans following the actions they took against the most visible of the peer-to-peer companies, Napster. Lars Ulrich testified against file sharing companies to the United States Senate. Metallica sued Napster, providing them a list of every single user who ever downloaded a Metallica song and demanding that they be banned from the service.

Other artists would eventually follow suit and also take action against file sharing firms. But Metallica was vilified by many because they “sued their own fans”. These allegations would dog the band for years, especially after Napster shut down under legal pressure.

This was the beginning of a tumultuous time for the band, but they were still road warriors, traveling the world and putting on the best show in heavy metal. We used our MetClub privileges to easily purchase tickets to see them on the Tattoo the Earth tour at Giants Stadium on July 20, 2000. Unlike the Giants Stadium show in 1998, this one had general admission on the field level. We were able to fight our way to the front of the stage. It didn’t have the intimate feel of the Roseland Ballroom, but we were close enough when the band members wandered towards where we were standing. In a nod to the success of “Garage Inc.”, four of the final five songs on the set list were covers. The final one was “Die, Die My Darling”!

What we didn’t know at the time, was this was the last time we were going to see Jason Newstead perform with Metallica. On January 17, 2001, they released a statement on metallica.com that he was leaving the band for personal reasons. I first heard about it listening to KROCK and rushed to a computer to read the statement on their website.

I couldn’t believe it at the time. What kind of idiot quits the best band ever? What, was he going to find a better gig somewhere else? His entry into the band was born out of tragedy, following the untimely death of 24-year-old Cliff Burton. But he and the band had made the most out of the situation and had achieved an amazing amount of recording and touring success together. How could they let this happen?

Shortly thereafter, Playboy published an article based on four separate interviews done with the band members. The article revealed a fractured band, who’s members took shots at each other and seemed to want to be apart from each other. It was also revealed that the reason Jason left because he had become fed up with James and just wanted to get away. James wasn’t going to budge, it was his band and he wanted to be in charge. So, after fourteen years with Metallica, Jason was gone and the band was left without a bass player.

Things got worse from there. On July 19, 2001, James Hetfield left the band to enter rehab. He stayed away from the band and his family until December that year. All Metallica operations ground to a halt, and they didn’t know if they were even going to continue.

Fortunately for everybody involved, James returned to the band and they began to record a new album in 2002. We would find out later what had really happened. But in the meantime, with long time producer Bob Rock on bass, Metallica recorded “St. Anger” and got ready to get back on the road.

St. Anger was a huge departure for Metallica, it didn’t sound anything like any of their previous albums. Most notably, there were no guitar solos in any of the songs. It wasn’t received well by critics and most fans believe it does not age well. I might be in the minority, but I enjoyed it. I gave them credit for trying something different. I always felt that if people didn’t compare it to Metallica’s earlier works and looked at it in isolation, they’d think it was an interesting record.

Either way, the band needed a bass player so it could resume touring. They held tryouts for experienced bass players. They chose former Ozzy Osbourne sold band member, Robert Trujillo to join the band, the best living bass player in the world. Metallica was whole again and ready to go.

Metallica announced a Summer Sanitarium tour, and once again, there was a stop at Giants Stadium. I was still dutifully paying my MetClub dues and we got tickets for the July 8, 2003 show. It would be our first Metallica concert in three years and our first with Robert on the bass.

After their long hiatus from the road, and all the internal and external strife, we weren’t sure what to expect from this new lineup. As usual, we fought our way to the front of the stage and waited for the band to hit. By the time they tore into “Battery”, we knew they were back and ready to kick ass again. They played only two songs from St. Anger and stuck mainly to their back catalog for the 16-song set they played that night. It was a hot and sticky New Jersey summer night in the mosh pit for an unforgettable Metallica show.

I went on to see them twice more on this touring cycle. In 2004 they played a few shows in the area as part of the Madly in Anger With The World Tour. I brought my brother to see them play at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY on April 20, 2004. I was working at Banco Sandander in midtown Manhattan and had him drive into the city to pick me up after work and drive us to the show. After sitting in over two hours of traffic to get there, I vowed to never go to a show at Nassau Coliseum again.

But it was no matter when we got there. It was my first time seeing Metallica in an arena show with a center-stage setup. The center stage experience felt more immersive and intimate than an end stage. There were more ways to get to the front (of course, again using my MetClub privileges to get general admission tickets) and to get close to the band.

I remember specifically my brother being fascinated with Kirk’s guitar solo, which he played right in front of us. My brother is a guitar player and it was his first Metallica show. It was pretty cool for us to watch the second-best guitar player of all time go to work, just a dozen or so feet away from us.

On this tour, Metallica offered a new innovation to their fans. They started selling digital downloads of their concerts on their website. You could now own a permanent copy of the show you attended for a nominal fee. From this show on, I purchased the recording of every Metallica show I’ve been to.

On October 22, 2004, a number of us saw Metallica play at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, NJ. This was the first concert I attended with a digital camera. It was still a novelty to have a portable digital camera in your pocket (the smartphone with a good camera was still a few years away), but it was another way to make some permanent memories of the show.

The popularity of Metallica was still increasing, and with several of my friends getting tickets through the fan club, we were able to bring a sizeable crew together for this one. This was the stuff memories were made of, getting to see Metallica play with your friends.

This show was fourteen years ago, and just the other day, we were telling stories of what it was like to try to grab guitar picks that the band showered the crowd with after the show. Ned was particularly adept at diving for them as they landed on the ground. I also joked with Ed (a Philadelphia Eagles fan) about how that was the day he showed off his new Terrell Owens tattoo, which didn’t go over very well in Giants country.

Also, in 2004, we finally got a glimpse into what really happened to the band when Jason quit and James entered rehab. The band had been followed by a film crew during that time, and they filmed a feature release movie “Some Kind of Monster”. The producers originally thought they were going to capture a band during the creative process of writing and recording an album. Instead, they had a gripping perspective of a fractured band that was on the brink of demise.

The documentary gave us all of the details following the infamous Playboy interview of what the band was doing during its recording and touring hiatus. Things were so bad that when James came back from rehab, their management company hired a therapist to help repair their relationships with each other. Ultimately, they were able to finish the album, hire Robert Trujillo, and get back on the road. It was an inspirational tale of triumph in the face of adversity. It would ultimately go on to be the second greatest movie ever made.

The business of popular music and the recording and touring industry were undergoing a rapid metamorphosis in the 2000’s. Despite Napster’s demise, there were plenty of other options to illegally download music. People were generally no longer buying recorded music, preferring to steal it. At the same time, the technology that made it possible to buy tickets online was now being exploited by ticket resellers using automated bots to snap up tickets. Ticket prices began to soar in the aftermarket. Concert promoters and sports team owners started to see how much people were willing to pay in the aftermarket for live events and started to raise the price of tickets in the primary market. It was getting more expensive to go to shows, and harder to get tickets to them.

I kept paying my MetClub dues each year so I wouldn’t get shut out of good seats for their next tour. Unfortunately, Metallica didn’t tour anywhere near us for five years following the October 2004 show. Year after year would go by while they would just do a summer tour in Europe and nothing, or very little, in the US. My consolation prize was the cool t-shirt the MetClub sent me every year. I still have all of them.

The wait for any new music, or a tour announcement was becoming agonizing. We still went to see all of our other favorite bands play when they toured, and were regulars at Ozzfest every year when it came to New Jersey, but the best of the best was nowhere nearby.

Finally, in 2009, word came down that they Metallica was going to release a new album, produced by Rick Rubin. Information was vague and spotty, but Rubin made it be known that he wanted to bring the band back to its roots as a thrash metal band. This was a much different direction than Bob Rock had taken them during his tenure as Metallica’s producer.

We rented a house near the beach in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, during the summer, and spent our weekends and days off of work there. The best way to listen to music at the beach at the time was to bring a boom box that played CDs full of MP3 files, or to tune it to FM radio. The local rock station, WRAT, announced they were going to debut a new Metallica song!

We waited patiently at the beach for it to come on, not knowing what to expect. Was it going to be another let down like the songs from “Load” and “Reload” from the mid 90’s? The band hadn’t turned out much original music since then, and what they had didn’t sound much like their classics.

When “The Day That Never Comes” hit the airwaves, we were able to breathe a huge sigh of relief. It was their best original song since the eponymous “Metallica” was released in 1991. It sounded exactly what a Metallica song should sound like. A foreboding intro, layered guitars and bass, punishing drums, time changes, and angry lyrics. And of course, it finished off with a blistering guitar solo. James Hetfield’s voice was at its prime. The greatest singer of all time never sounded better.

This would turn out to be the last time for me that FM radio was the first place I heard a new Metallica song. From then on streaming services would take over.

Now that the release date for the “Death Magnetic” album was set, we knew that a tour announcement was imminent. All those years of paying those MetClub dues would finally pay off and we’d be set for tickets. Unfortunately, this was where technology completely boned me.

I heard on the radio that Metallica had announced two dates as part of the World Magnetic Tour at the Prudential Center in Newark and that tickets were about to go on sale to the general public. Why hadn’t I gotten an e-mail from the MetClub with the pre-sale information? I went to metallica.com and saw that the fan club presale had already started! What the hell?

I went to my junk e-mail folder, and there it was. In an effort to combat spam, Yahoo mail implemented an AI filter to separate out all the messages it thought I didn’t want to see into a folder I never monitored. It decided that the e-mail that I had waited FOUR YEARS for should be classified as spam and filed it away for me. Dagnabit! I never had these problems when I had to wait on line outside the old Take One Video!

We had to scramble. There was still some time left to buy tickets before the general public could buy theirs. Luckily, the MetClub didn’t come close to selling out the Prudential Center. We bought tickets to two shows on January 31 and February 1, 2009. We decided on general admission for the first show, and seats for the second one, in the 19th row in the center of the stage.

But prior to these shows, after it was already sold out, some of the guys wanted to hit the show at the Wahcovia Center in Philadelphia on January 17. Had I gotten my MetClub e-mail on time, I could have gotten choice tickets, but we were left to fend for ourselves in the aftermarket. Miraculously, I managed to pick up a pair of seats in the lower bowl for cheap, apparently some girl just wanted to unload them, but she wasn’t a savvy ticket scalper. But there was a catch, they were will call and in her boyfriend’s name. I had to pay her and then hope it wasn’t a scam! The night of the show, I had no idea if I was actually going to have tickets or not until I got there. But it worked out, my tickets were waiting for me at the window and I was in! The rest of the crew was scattered around the arena, and I sat with a friend of mine from college I hadn’t seen in quite some time who lived in the area.

My nearly five year wait to see Metallica was over. I thought my head was going to explode. I was every bit as anxious and excited as I was waiting for the show to begin at the Roseland Ballroom 10 years prior. Ecstasy of Gold finished and the band took over. They began their set with “That Was Just Your Life” and it was on! Five years is a long time to wait to see Metallica, and I let a lot of energy out early with all the yelling and screaming!

The third song of the set was “Creeping Death”, one of my all-time favorite songs. I lost my mind and ran down the aisle towards the stage. Thinking better of it right away, I turned around and headed back up to my seat, only to realize that security was chasing me! Guess it was good that I smartened up and went back to where I belonged before they gave me any trouble.

The rest of the show was a great mix of new and old songs, culminating in “Seek and Destroy” from their first album “Kill ‘Em All”. This song would go on to be the final song of the night for many concerts to follow. It became bitter-sweet for me to hear it play from then on. It was an awesome song, but it meant the end of the show!

The big New Jersey shows were next. Once again, we put a big crew together for them. For the Saturday night show, we found a good spot near the front of the stage and hunkered in for the rest of the evening. The Philly show was fun, but my preference was always to be in general admission. The setlist was twelve songs we had seen in Philly two weeks prior, but with six different ones mixed in. Metallica was very good about mixing up their set lists day-over-day on their arena tours to keep each one special.

Oddly enough, the Sunday show was scheduled at the same time as Super Bowl XLIII was being played in Tampa. I could only assume that this was a major screw up on the part of the promoter. Fortunately, I’m a Jets fan and there was no chance of having to choose between watching them in a Super Bowl or watching Metallica. We had seats for this show, so there was no rush to get there to get a good spot. We went to Ned’s annual Super Bowl party, and left in the second quarter to head to the show. While the rest of New Jersey was glued to their TV to see Bruce Springsteen and The East Street band perform at halftime, we were getting ready to see Metallica for the second night in a row!

Having seats for Metallica always feels a little strange. But we were close enough to feel like we were part of the show anyway. And they played “Die, Die My Darling” as part of the encore!

This was the last show of this leg of the tour. Before the stage, Lars told us that they were going to announce a second leg in the fall starting in Memphis, and it would include a stop at Madison Square Garden! YES!

The on-sale e-mail came from Metallica to my inbox this time (thanks Yahoo for improving your filter to let me have this message), and we got planned to buy tickets for the show, aiming for general admission. We had our MetClub pre-sale codes ready to go, logged in to ticketmaster.com and started to have trouble right away. Those of us buying tickets for the show were on a conference call to track progress and we were reporting all kinds of issues to each other. Most of us were being told that the show was sold out. Others were slowly getting through, but getting tickets that were very far away from the stage in the seated section. What was going on? This was the second time our high-tech ticket buying tools had boned us on this tour!

We had to settle, and each of us got a pair of tickets, scattered throughout the arena. I was completely dejected and deflated and went to complain on the message forum on the MetClub website. Miraculously, I saw a response from a fan who had the same problem, but had contact information for the promoter. I e-mailed the promoter and he responded that there was a problem with the Ticketmaster website and that they would exchange our tickets for general admission tickets. I e-mailed everyone else and told them to send the same e-mail to the promoter. We didn’t hear back from him for a while but he said he’d take care of it.

Several days went by and I didn’t hear back from the guy. I looked up his office and found the address was in Manhattan. I had a day off of work so I got on the bus and planned to just show up and ask for him at reception. While I was on the way in, I got an e-mail from him saying that he’d take care of me and my friends by upgrading us to general admission, but he was now out of tickets so please stop asking him for help! It was a miracle! Screw you, Ticketmaster!

The added a second show for the following night. We decided on seats for this one and had little trouble this time around. We got 4th row in the lower section.

The weekend of November 14, 2009 was another double-Metallica weekend! We had it down to a science at this point, getting there early enough to get a spot at the front of the stage. I still carried my digital camera because of the superior picture quality, but we all had smartphones are were now on social media. We checked in together on Facebook from the floor and started posting pics in real-time from the show. This is common place today, but was the first time that I really got to brag about being at Metallica while the concert was still happening.

Seeing Metallica multiple times on the same tour really gives you a chance to notice the nuance and detail of their performances. The center stage show is amazing. With no back drop, and the band centrally located, it feels a bit like a family gathering. The band attacks each song with both ferocity and joy, you can tell they really are enjoying themselves playing with each other and for their fans. And the production value is incredible, featuring lights, explosions, and fire!

We settled into our seats on Sunday night for our final show on the World Magnetic tour. I was bummed knowing that this would be the last time seeing them for a while, but was blown away by the show as always. They snuck in “The Judas Kiss” off of the new album, and the older “Trapped Under Ice” and “Dyers Eve” on to the set list, all three of which were live rarities. In fact, that was the only time I’ve ever seen them play “Dyers Eve” live, making it a memorable show.

The World Magnetic tour was also special to me because early in 2009, Metallica had been selected for induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The HOF had previously shunned most heavy metal acts, only begrudgingly inducting Black Sabbath a few years prior. But Metallica, the band who started from very humble roots, that couldn’t get played on the radio, but exploded into the main stream in the early 1990’s, and became the best band in the world, finally got the respect they deserved from the Rock and Roll establishment. We weren’t just seeing any ordinary band, we were seeing veritable Hall of Famers!

We settled into another Metallica slow period. There were no shows planned for the area, and no new music was forthcoming. But this time it wouldn’t be another five year wait in between shows.

Metallica surprised many by announcing a European tour featuring “The Big 4” of American thrash metal. They would headline and be supported by Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer on the tour. It would culminate with a show in Sofia, Bulgaria on June 22, 2010 that would be recorded and played in movie theaters all around the world just a few days later.

In a shock to the world, during this show, Metallica was joined on stage by members of all four bands to play a cover of “Am I Evil?”. The lineup included Dave Mustaine, the original lead guitar player for Metallica who was famously fired before they recorded their first album and had gone on to found Megadeth. Hard rock and heavy metal fans assumed that hell had frozen over. All was forgiven and they were on stage together again.

I bought the live album and DVD of the show and loved it. It was all well and good, but kind of annoying that they only toured in Europe with this lineup.

A few of us took a road trip to Richmond to watch NASCAR. On April 29, 2011, as I was watching Denny Hamlin cruse to victory in the Nationwide Series Bubba Burger 250, my phone lit up like a Christmas tree with text messages from Lefty. “Dude, The Big 4 is playing Yankee Stadium in September!” Metallica had decided to bring the show to America for two stops, one of which was right near home. Most of the race was a blur from that point on, my attention suddenly diverted to texting everyone I could think of that we were going to get to see The Big 4!

The ticket buying process this time was a breeze. In fact, we bought so many tickets that I had to scramble to sell the last two. We were going to get to stand in center field of the most storied stadium in all of sports, to watch the greatest concert lineup ever assembled!

You probably guessed the running theme of this story, but as usual, I was teeming with excitement in the run up to the concert. We put a huge group together, and most everyone took a half or a full day off of work to be at the show in time for Anthrax who went on at 4 PM. The Bronx borough president declared September 14, 2011 to be “Anthrax Day” in the Bronx in honor of their native band.

Anthrax took the stage and started what would be a seven-hour barrage of the senses by the four best heavy metal bands in American music history. Anthrax was clearly enthusiastic about being featured in their home stadium. Megadeth played with a bit of chip on their shoulder as Dave Mustaine was playing the show against doctor’s advice due to concerns over a neck injury. He told the crowd that wasn’t going to stop them and they blazed through their set. As the sun started to set, Slayer figuratively smacked all of Yankee Stadium in the face with their brutally heavy music. We were completely spent before Metallica even came on.

One of the most interesting things about a Metallica concert is the people you see there. I often wonder where these people congregate when they aren’t at a concert, because I’d like to go there. We saw this one guy in a Jets jersey numbered 00 with “Hardcore” on the nameplate. He appeared to be with his son who we guessed was about 10. Hardcore put a pair of goggles on, told his kid to wait there, and jumped into the mosh pit during Anthrax while randomly kicking his feet up in the air. It was pretty cool!

Finally, it was time for the main event. Metallica took over center field at Yankee Stadium and launched right into “Creeping Death” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” to start the night! It was going to be that kind of Metallica concert.

Metallica called the members of the other bands on stage to play a song, but this time Mustaine didn’t join them, likely due to the neck injury. We gave a hearty “We want Dave!” chant, but it went unanswered. No matter, the rest of the guys on stage covered the Motörhead classic “Overkill”. It was a live Metallica moment –in what was becoming a lifetime of memorable Metallica moments– like none I had ever seen.

I use a lot of hyperbole when speaking and writing about Metallica. It’s impossible for me not to, I’m completely obsessed with the band and can’t get enough of them. But it is not a stretch to say that The Big 4 at Yankee Stadium was the best concert in the history of New York City. As far as I’m concerned, it was The Best Concert Ever!

We got lucky with this one-off Metallica show that wasn’t part of a big tour. We got even luckier the following year when Metallica announced The Orion Festival would take place at Bader Field in Atlantic City, New Jersey on the weekend of June 23, 2012. The Orion Festival would have four stages with various acts culled by Metallica, as well as other features such as a skateboarding ramp, a Metallica exhibition, and a classic car and motorcycle display. It was to be a celebration of all things Metallica and some of their favorite things, music, cars, and skateboarding. But most importantly, it would be headlined by a Metallica show on both Saturday and Sunday. They were going to play “Ride the Lightning” in its entirety on Saturday and “Metallica” in its entirety on Sunday.

Once again, I died and went to heaven. My friends and I were Atlantic City regulars at the time, making several trips there per year. Lefty and I rented a Vodka Locker at The Red Square in the Tropicana Casino. Our favorite band was going to play two shows in the summertime in our home away from home.

At this point, I decided that joining the MetClub was pretty much the best decision I had ever made in my life. Without a hint of trouble this time, we scored all the two-day VIP passes we needed for the weekend. We had carte blanche to roam the field for both days, and had access to the VIP general admission section right in front of the stage. We booked some rooms at the old Trump Plaza and planned a big weekend in AC!

The Orion festival was a very unique setup for a Metallica show, we had never seen them host their own festival before. We wandered around most of the day Saturday and Sunday, checking out the various shows and exhibits. Lefty briefly met Robert Trujillo and shook his hand. Bobby did the same with Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies.

The band lineup was somewhat unusual for a Metallica show, it was a very eclectic mix of genres. We watched Sepultura and Suicidal Tendencies play. The latter featured Robert Trujillo joining his former band on stage for a song. We saw our friend Hardcore from the Big 4 running around the mosh pit. Some guy attached a suction cup-mounted Go Pro to his bald head, put his son on his shoulders who couldn’t have been more than four years old, and jumped into the mosh pit. Someone just beat out Hardcore as Father of The Year!

Saturday night was time for Metallica and we went to the VIP section to get close to the main stage. The Ham and Eggers who were too cheap to cash up for VIP passes were fenced off behind us. A few of them started a “VIP sucks” chant which was both hilarious and pathetic at the same time! In a few minutes, we wouldn’t be able to hear them over the band anyway.

I was very excited to see Metallica play “Ride the Lightning” in its entirety. They played the album in reverse order, starting with the instrumental “The Call of Ktulu” and working their way backwards to “Fight Fire With Fire”. Along the way, they played “Escape” for the first and only time in their career! Apparently, James Hetfield wasn’t too proud of the song so it was never included in a live set. I never understood what the problem was, I always thought “Ride the Lighting” was the perfect front-to-back heavy metal album.

After the show, we partied at the Tropicana casino and crashed hard! We had to get back to Bader Field the next day for more Metallica!

On Sunday, Metallica was going to play “Metallica” in reverse order and I couldn’t wait. This was the first album that cemented me as a Metallica fan. I had some friends as a kid who were into them after “Master of Puppets” and “…And Justice For All”, but I really started to get into the band when this album was released. I bought it the day it was released on cassette tape and blasted it in my mother’s Ford Taurus, blowing out the front speakers in the process. She listened mainly to classical music, I don’t think she noticed.

Metallica played an unusually long set list that night, totaling 20 songs. During “My Friend of Misery”, James got both halves of the crowd to sing different “whoa oh whoa” harmonies with each other and with the band. During “Enter Sandman”, James led the crowd in a sing-along about the Orion Festival and the Metallica Family, his affectionate term for Metallica fans.

If I thought I was too old for this kind of excitement in 1998, that sentiment went double in 2012! I was shot after two days of this. At breakfast the next day, I had no voice at all. We drove back north to our shore house in Spring Lake so we could spend a relaxing day on the beach and unwind. I didn’t make it off the couch!

The exhaustion was a small price to pay. Two unique Metallica concerts in Atlantic City wrapped around a Metallica themed festival was an incredible experience. If The Big 4 was the best concert ever, this was The Best Weekend Ever.

Unfortunately, this was going to be the start of yet another long hiatus from Metallica. We were lucky to have these one-offs in 2011 and 2012, but there were no more US tours for quite some time.

The best thing we had in the interim was the release of “Metallica: Through the Never” as a feature length film in 2013. It was filmed at a series of live concerts in Vancouver, and had a running storyline throughout about one of their roadies who was on an important mission for the band. It was essentially an extended music video with some excellent live concert footage. It was like a look back at the last eight Metallica concerts we had seen since 2009. I loved every minute of it and consider it to be The Best Movie Ever Made.

And that was all we saw from Metallica here for quite some time. No New York or New Jersey concerts that were open to the public (don’t get me started on the shows they did in New York City that were just for the employees of The Howard Stern Show), and no new music for years. Our crew kept busy, going to see a number of other concerts together when we could.

It was during this time that Metallica announced they were going to obsolete the paid membership tier of the MetClub and make it free for anybody to join. Great, all these years paying for my membership so I could jump to the head of the line to buy tickets, and now I would be at the mercy of Ticketmaster, fighting against bots and scalpers to try to get decent tickets. For the first time in a very long time, I was genuinely pissed at Metallica!

It was eight full years since “Death Magnetic” was released, it was certainly time for them to head back to the studio. The tease started in 2016 that Metallica would release a new album late in the year.

Instead of hearing any of the songs debut on the radio (which I didn’t listen to anymore at that point) I was introduced to new Metallica music in a different way. In August, 2016, I was commuting home to Hoboken from my job on Wall Street in Manhattan and had some time to kill at the World Trade Center PATH station while I was waiting for my train. I did what everybody else always does, I started scrolling through my phone when I came to a Facebook post by Metallica with a link to a video for a new song titled “Hardwired”. This was a pretty spectacular surprise during my ordinarily mundane evening commute!

I cranked the volume on my phone as high as it could go as I watched the video for “Hardwired” and was blown away by its simple ferocity. I was rocking out right there on the platform, without a care of who was watching me or what they thought of the weird guy headbanging to himself.

We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of a very slick marketing campaign for their new album, “Hardwired… To Self Destruct”. Some weeks later, they released the video for “Moth Into Flame” in the same surprise manner. The day of the album release approached (which was a Friday) and I invited all of my friends over to a Metallica listening party. I figured I could just download or stream the album and be ready for when my guests arrived.

What I didn’t know was that Metallica had produced videos for the rest of the songs on the album, and released them one-by-one on music news websites throughout the twenty-four hour lead up to the album release. The band that was once chastised by the music community for fighting back against peer-to-peer file sharing networks who were giving away their music, just gave away their entire new album on YouTube.

This was a pretty cool development as instead of it being a listening party, it became a watching party! This album was an instant hit with us, we enjoyed every song. It sounded like classic Metallica, just hard and heavy and pissed! My favorite song on the album is “Halo on Fire”. It reminded me of “Fade to Black” with a slow build, a heavy chorus, time changes, James singing “goodbye” over the outro, and a killer guitar solo to cap it off. The video was really neat, too, featuring a fictitious fight league.

I read an article that interviewed Lars and he said that the band was planning a “proper” United States tour in 2017. Another five-year gap in Metallica concerts was about to come to an end! Now, how to get tickets?

They announced the tour, and there were three shows that we could drive to from Hoboken, two stadium shows at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia and MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, and an arena show at NYCB Live (the old Nassau Coliseum) in Uniondale, NY. Better yet, they announced that legacy fan club members (those that had paid for the old MetClub at least twice) were eligible for the first pre-sale. All that anger for naught, Metallica took care of us!

Better yet, Metallica used a different website than ticketmaster.com, switching to a site called ticketsnow.com instead. Between the new provider and the legacy fan club pre-sale, we were able to snap up large chunks of tickets for the stadium shows, and Noah and I got tickets for the arena show. All of them were general admission. I was going to see Metallica three times in six days in May of 2017!

First up was the Philly show. We left work early and headed down south and, of course, the traffic was a nightmare. We stopped to get a cheesesteak at the NBC Sports Arena next door to the stadium and went in to the show. There were thousands of people ahead of us, crammed up front of the catwalks that jutted out from the front of the stage. We waited for the lights to go off, I yelled “Go!” and Noah plowed forward like a fullback and we followed his lead. We got right in front of the cat walk, maybe two or three people from the rail. Metallica hit the stage with “Hardwired” and another five year wait to see Metallica was over!

Two days later, we went to MetLife stadium to see them again. This time it was Mother’s Day. I had to explain to mom that we needed to do brunch instead of our traditional dinner because I had Metallica tickets and she understood. This was a home game for us north-Jersey folk and we put together a large number of us for the show. It was the first time Metallica had played the Meadowlands Sports Complex in 13 years, and we couldn’t be happier to have them home again.

On Wednesday night, I broke the vow I made in 2004 to never drive to Uniondale, NY again to see Metallica for the third time in six days. I had Noah pick me up after work in midtown Manhattan. Once we crossed into Queens, I immediately remembered why I never wanted to deal with this traffic again. We got to the show maybe 30 minutes before it started, but for some reason, one of the four corners of the stage had virtually nobody in front of it so we stood there and had the perfect view of the indoor stage. Out of the three shows I had seen this week, this was the golden ticket.

I thought that was it for this leg of the tour. Until one day in July when Pooch sent me a text message. He had entered the contest to win Snakepit passes (the enclosed area between the v-shaped catwalks in front of the stage) for the upcoming show at Parc Jean-Drapeau in Montreal and asked if anybody wanted to go with him. Technically, you were supposed to have tickets to the show to be eligible for the contest, but he tried his Philly ticket code and that worked. I guess the system had a bug that totally worked in our favor!

My first thought was “Man, I have to work that Wednesday, I can’t do it.”. My second thought was “What is wrong with me? I have plenty of vacation days saved up and I’ve always wanted to do a Metallica road trip!”. Unlike 1998 where I had to lie my way out of the office to see Metallica play the Roseland Ballroom, I had come far enough in my career to say to my boss that I wanted two days off to go see Metallica. Approved!

This wasn’t going to be any ordinary road trip, we were going to a foreign country! Off we went to Montreal on the day of the show. Pooch had gotten the cheapest tickets he could find for the show, and we went to a tent to show them our Snakepit passes. They gave us wristbands and a paper with a set of rules on it. One of the rules was to “not grab the band”.

We walked to the front of the guard rail, flashed our wristbands, and they let us in to the Snakepit. We were going to be completely surrounded by Metallica! There was no guard rail inside the Snakepit to separate us from the stage. This was as close as I had ever been to the Metallica.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Here I was, middle aged at this point, and still just as thrilled as I was in 1998 to be up close and personal with my favorite band.

Late in the show, Metallica would play “Seek and Destroy” from the front of the Snakepit, even using a secondary drum kit so Lars could play there, too. We knew it was coming so right before they moved up, Pooch grabbed me and we pushed our way to the back of the Snakepit.

As the band approached us, I noticed Lars was drinking something out of a cup. I flashed back to Metallica’s old “Cunning Stunts” DVD from the late ’90s that I had watched a million times. Lars started off the show by squirting whatever he was drinking on the fans against the guard rail. I screamed “Lars, spit on me!” With a nod and a smile, he spit out whatever was in the cup on us! LARS ULRICH JUST SPIT ON ME!!!!!!

In my euphoric state, I stood right behind the band as they played their song. I was right behind the best drummer in the world as he went to work.

The next day, on the long drive back from Montreal, we got stuck in some nasty traffic on I-87. There were two accidents along the way, making the trip agonizingly long. Without much else to do, Pooch was reading through the news on his phone when exclaimed that Chester Bennington from Linkin Park had died. Turns out, he had committed suicide. It was an immediate reminder of how fragile these bands could be, and I was thankful that Metallica was still on the road and still touring.

We had tickets for Iron Maiden at the Barcalys Center the next day. I fought my way up to the front and was enjoying their set. I exclaimed to everyone nearby that could hear me “This is the second-best concert I’ve been to this week!”

Early in 2018, Metallica announced another US leg of the tour, this time inside of arenas. They were offering a “Black Pass” to legacy fan club members which was essentially a season pass to any of the shows on the tour. They weren’t playing anywhere near home so I passed it up, but Bobby picked one up and is going to see them seven or eight times on this leg of the tour. Did I mention that Bobby is my hero?

We settled on the State College, PA show since it was on a Saturday and was within driving distance of Hoboken. Once again, the we used the legacy fan club pre-sale and got four general admission tickets. After that, they announced they were adding a Philadelphia show on a Thursday night so we grabbed tickets for that one, too. I was going to get to see Metallica twice more on the WorldWired tour!

The band was still making memories and reaching new highs. Their show at the Bryce Jordan center in State College set an attendance record for the venue. And in Philadelphia, they played “Phantom Lord” for the first time live in over five years. It was one of my favorite songs that I’ve never seen them play live, and my wish to see it came true.

 

I have a great life. I have a great family and a great bunch of friends and we enjoy doing things together. I got to thinking about the 20-year anniversary of the Roseland show and needed to write something about it. But it needed to be more than just constant gushing about how much I love Metallica. I wanted it to be about how much things have changed, and how much I enjoyed seeing Metallica with my friends over all of these years.

Bands no longer make money from selling recorded music, they make their living by touring. The ticket buying process has changed drastically since 1998, but not necessarily for the better. The mediums for which we consume music have changed, I never buy CDs anymore and I don’t listen to the radio. I have a bunch of MP3 files, and I now have an unlimited streaming account on Amazon. There is a virtually unlimited amount of content on YouTube that you can watch from any Internet connected device from anywhere in the world.

It took many years, but someone posted the MTV footage of the Roseland show on YouTube. We finally got to watch it back. All is forgiven, Chris!

The old Take One Video store in Hoboken is long gone. All of its revenue streams collapsed at once. People stopped renting VHS and DVD and started to stream their movies and porn online. And most certainly, nobody waits on line at Ticketmaster to buy tickets anymore!

I’m very lucky to have had so many friends that have come seen Metallica with me over the years. A lot of things have changed in the past two decades since Roseland. Guys have gotten married and had kids. Or they got married. Or they had kids. Or they got divorced or were widowed. People moved away, then came back. But we still spend as much time together as possible, and we congregate at concerts all the time.

When Metallica performs these days, James makes a point of saying that they are happy to be alive and with us. He really means it! They tragically lost Cliff Burton, and James often says that he struggled with addiction so much that he thought he wasn’t going to make it without his music.

But looking past Metallica, we’ve lost a lot of our favorite rock stars and bands for one reason or another. Ronnie James Dio, Lemmy Kilmister, Scott Weiland, Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, Vinnie Paul, Dimebag Darrell, and John Entwhistle (just to name a few) have all died in the past two decades. They were all irreplaceable. Bruce Dickinson and Tony Iommi both barely survived cancer scares.

Bands like Mötley Crüe, Mötorhead, Black Sabbath, KISS, and Slayer have all either called it quits, or are about to retire. These bands themselves are also irreplaceable. Putting it in this context, we are so lucky that we still get to see Metallica in the year 2018. Hopefully they keep it together and stay on the road for many years to come.

My friends from church, Jerome and Matt brought me to my first Metallica concert when I was seventeen at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford in April, 1992. The memories of that first show are burned into my brain.

But nothing will ever compare to my third show. I had a pretty good idea at the time that I’d never have a Metallica experience like that ever again. Twenty years have gone by, and that proved to be the case. I’ve gone on to see Metallica nineteen more times since then, and have been blown away by them every time. But nothing was the same as seeing Metallica perform seventeen cover songs at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan. It was the most important night of my life.

The story ends there, but I have a little appendix below. In researching this story, I went through all 22 Metallica shows I’ve been to, and aggregated the set lists. I’ve included the totals below. I’ve seen a total of 92 different songs and medleys played live.

Shows

Date	Venue	City
4/8/1992	Brendan Byrne Arena	East Rutherford, NJ
7/17/1998	Giants Stadium	East Rutherford, NJ
11/24/1998	Roseland Ballroom	New York, NY
11/23/1999	Madison Square Garden	New York, NY
7/20/2000	Giants Stadium	East Rutherford, NJ
7/8/2003	Giants Stadium	East Rutherford, NJ
4/20/2004	Nassau Coliseum	Uniondale, NY
10/22/2004	Continental Airlines Arena	East Rutherford, NJ
1/17/2009	Wachovia Center	Philadelphia, PA
1/31/2009	Prudential Center	Newark, NJ
2/1/2009	Prudential Center	Newark, NJ
11/14/2009	Madison Square Garden	New York, NY
11/15/2009	Madison Square Garden	New York, NY
9/14/2011	Yankee Stadium	New York, NY
6/23/2012	Bader Field	Atlantic City, NJ
6/24/2012	Bader Field	Atlantic City, NJ
5/12/2017	Lincoln Financial Field	Philadelphia, PA
5/14/2017	MetLife Stadium	East Rutherford, NJ
5/17/2017	The New Colesium Presented by NYCB	Uniondale, NY
7/19/2017	Parc Jean-Drapeau	Montreal, QC
10/20/2018	Bryce Jordan Center	State College, PA
10/25/2018	Wells Fargo Center	Philadelphia, PA

Songs/Medleys

Song	Times I’ve seen it
Enter Sandman	21
Nothing Else Matters	21
One	21
Sad But True	21
Master of Puppets	20
Seek and Destroy	18
For Whom the Bell Tolls	15
Creeping Death	13
Fade to Black	12
Fuel	11
Blackened	9
Battery	8
The Unforgiven	8
Wherever I May Roam	8
Atlas, Rise!	6
Fight Fire With Fire	6
Hardwired	6
Moth Into Flame	6
Now That We’re Dead	6
The Day That Never Comes	6
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)	6
All Nightmare Long	5
Broken, Beat And Scarred	5
Cyanide	5
Harvester of Sorrow	5
Ride The Lightning	5
That Was Just Your Life	5
The End Of The Line	5
The Four Horsemen	5
Whiplash	5
Breadfan	4
Halo On Fire	4
Hit The Lights	4
Holier Than Thou	4
Last Caress	4
Of Wolf and Man	4
The Memory Remains	4
King Nothing	3
No Leaf Clover	3
St. Anger	3
Turn The Page	3
Am I Evil?	2
Bleeding Me	2
Blitzkrieg	2
Die, Die My Darling	2
Frantic	2
I Disappear	2
Last Caress/Green Hell	2
Motorbreath	2
Overkill	2
The Call of Ktulu	2
The God That Failed	2
The Shortest Straw	2
The Thing That Should Not Be	2
Through the Never	2
Trapped Under Ice	2
Until It Sleeps	2
– Human	1
…And Justice For All	1
Damage Inc.	1
Devil’s Dance	1
Disposable Heroes	1
Don’t Tread On Me	1
Dyers Eve	1
Escape	1
Hell And Back	1
Helpless	1
Hero of the Day	1
Jump In The Fire	1
Justice Medley	1
Killing Time	1
Last Caress/So What/Die, Die My Darling	1
Low Man’s Lyric	1
Mastertarium	1
Mercyful Fate	1
Metal Militia	1
My Apocalypse	1
My Friend Of Misery	1
No Remorse	1
Orion	1
Phantom Lord	1
Sabbra Cadabra	1
Small Hours	1
So What	1
Spit Out The Bone	1
Stone Cold Crazy	1
The Judas Kiss	1
The Outlaw Torn	1
The Prince	1
The Struggle Within	1
The Wait	1
Whiskey In The Jar	1