Metallica Concerts

Metallica is an American heavy metal band, founded in 1981 in Los Angeles, California. The founding members are drummer Lars Ulrich (born in Denmark), lead singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bassist Cliff Burton (1962-1986).

It was Ulrich who placed an advertisement in a Los Angeles newspaper looking for members to form a metal band, back in 1981. However, that initial attempt at recruitment failed. So, Ulrich asked Hetfield, whom he met through one of the musicians who did answer his ad, to record a song with him, once he secured a spot on the metal compilation album published by Metal Blade Records titled “Metal Massacre”. Shortly after, the two formed the new band Metallica.

They got Hammett and Burton to join them. In 1982, they recorded their first single with the title “Hit the Lights”, which later appeared on the Metal Massacre compilation. Despite having their band’s name misspelled on the album’s early pressings, they did manage to get some word-of-mouth recognition among the heavy metal circles on the West Coast. They soon booked their first live show at Radio City in Anaheim, then they were signed to open for the British metal band Saxon who were on tour in the US.

All this early success led to Metallica’s first album being released a year later, in July 1983. It bore the ominous title “Kill ‘Em All”, and was produced with Megaforce Records. It wasn’t what you could consider a success by industry standards, having only sold 17,000 copies in its first year and never entering the Billboard 200 list. However, it did feature the song “Seek & Destroy”, which later became a classic.

While Kill “Em All was the first album the legendary metal band Metallica did release, it wasn’t the first one they ever made. In 1982, they recorded a tape that is most commonly referred to as “Ron McGovney's '82 Garage Demo”, but it was never made available commercially. Ron McGovney was a bassist for the band who later was replaced by Cliff Burton.

Speaking of Cliff Burton: sadly, he passed away in September 1986, as a result of a bus crash while on tour in Sweden. Jason Newsted was brought in to play bass for the band.

In 1984, Metallica saw their first major commercial success with the release of their new album “Ride the Lightning”. It peaked at the #48 spot on the Billboard 200 list, and ended up accumulating over 4 million copies sold over the years in the US alone. The most successful track on it was “Fade to Black”.

During the long years of the band, they produced 8 more albums, totaling 10. The best selling one among them was the self-titled Metallica from 1991; while the latest one was released in 2016, with the title “Hardwired… to Self-Destruct”.

The biggest hits by Metallica to date are “Nothing Else Matters” (1991), “Enter Sandman” (also 1991), and “One” (1989).

The band currently consists of the original members Ulrich, Hammett, and Hetfield, as well as Robert Trujillo (ex-Suicidal Tendencies) on bass. Metallica is also notable for their controversial legal fight against the file-sharing website Napster in 2000, where the band fought hard to block internet users from accessing pirated versions of their songs.