The Monsters of Rock Tour covers a good part of the heavy-metal spectrum, from pop with loud guitars to brute-force scenarios of terror and from innovative to laughable. It revels in unabashed excess, blasting away adolescent uncertainties with taboo-busting lyrics, cocksure voices and raucous guitars; its concerts are flashy, audience-participation rituals. Meanwhile, just about every band has had to reckon with Led Zeppelin, which anticipated most heavy-metal gambits a decade ago.
Every so often, Van Halen slows down for a ballad with dreamy sentiments about love, while the uptempo songs strike typical party-animal attitudes — but the music, reveling in its muscle and noise, says more than the words. Along with Van Halen, Metallica galvanized the audience most with its hourlong set. Launched in May , the Monsters of Rock tour brought together some of the greatest hard rock and heavy metal bands of that era for a day-long rock 'n' roll celebration.
But why that name, exactly? Back in England, the Donington Monsters of Rock festival had become a highly anticipated annual fixture of the international rock circuit since first being staged in , typically comprising a one-day event featuring seven, eight or even more major bands.
But in the U. Van Halen were, at the time, near the peak of their career's second act with frontman Sammy Hagar , following the release of the hit-filled OU album. The Scorpions, too, had enjoyed a steady, decade-long climb up the U. Organizers estimated that the festival actually drew an audience of more than , people.
To oversee the event, there were 11, soldiers, police officers, hired security guards, and riot police. Toward the end of their set, fights broke out at the edges of the floor.
The police tried to disperse the crowd and drive attendees away from the barricades. They were given clubs and they decided that they had to use them. It was a nightmare! To avoid injuries and deaths, producers from Time Warner were prepared to take extreme measures and even stop the show.
If you want to see the other groups perform, calm down! I saw police cruelly beating up kids, with or without a reason. I saw a rain of empty glass bottles thrown at police lines from the audience.
I saw soldiers kicking a guy, lying on the ground, with their monstrous boots. The Black Crowes, an American blues-rock group, initially defused the tense situation and then the Moscow-based anarcho-metal group Electro Shock Therapy sang the first Russian songs of the evening. By the time Metallica took the stage, the clashes had mostly petered out: No one wanted to miss the main act, not the punks or the police who, it turns out , were also big fans.
According to Moscow City Police records, 51 individuals were hospitalized during the festival, 49 were detained for disturbing the peace, and about were sent to the drunk tank. Exact figures on the total number of injuries at the concert are not available. They played songs from their recently released self-titled album Metallica that would later become their best-selling record. They played a stellar two-hour set complete with fireworks, gigantic half-naked blow-up dolls, and their legendary Hells Bell.
Musicians from both bands have told stories about how they later got phone calls from Boris Yeltsin inviting them back to Moscow. Because on the ground nothing was set up: no checks, no barriers, no metal detectors although before the terrorist attacks, there were never any metal detectors. You just arrived at the venue, walked across the airfield, and got as close to the stage as you could. There were actually a couple of barriers up by the stage.
In general, people were showing up in a good mood, a little amped up. By the time the concert started, there were a lot of people.
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