The time Cliff Burton broke up a massive brawl at a Metallica show with a hammer: “It was f**king legendary”
Moshing is a staple part of most heavy metal shows. But for the most part, they remain a relatively peaceful affair. But that’s not to say they don’t sometimes descend into madness.
Back in 1984, a fledgling Metallica – James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Cliff Burton and Lars Ulrich, all in their early 20s at the time – made their first foray to Finland, and arrived in style with a raucous show at the Tarvashovi rock club near Lieto in the southwest. 150 punters had turned out to attend, unaware many of them would later take part in a massive brawl.
The fray was sparked by an altercation between the band’s lighting technician, Tony Zed and a Finnish schoolgirl, who was startled by Zed whooping loudly upon his entrance, and stood up and punched him in the face [via Metal Hammer]. Zed returned a blow, and chaos, understandably, erupted.
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Local metalheads, upon hearing of the altercation, set out to find Zed and dish out vengeance, and a massive brawl ultimately took place between them and the band and crew.
“The whole fucking place was just this big scrap going on, and everybody was in the audience, all the band and crew. It was madness,” recalls the band’s sound engineer “Big” Mick Hughes.
And how do you bring a heap of brawling men under control. As Cliff Burton discovered, with the threat of escalation…
As the story goes, while on tour, the late bass player – who passed away in a tragic tour bus crash in 1986 – carried with him a hammer. “You never know when you might need it,” he once told a French customs officer who quizzed him on his need to carry the item upon entry into the country.
“When you might need it” turned out to be during a brawl in southwest Finland in ‘84, and Burton called upon James Hetfield’s guitar tech Andy Battye to fetch his weapon. Armed and ready, Burton entered the fray with the hammer above his head, warning all around to back off and calm down.
“The sight of Cliff slowly and surely wading into the insane mass of scrapping people with a hammer was fucking legendary,” Mick Hughes recalled.
Miraculously, it worked, and the fracas dissipated, allowing Metallica to play their set and end a fraught debut Finland show on a high.
Metallica have come a long way since those early days, and recently commence their highly anticipated residency at the Las Vegas Sphere. Check out a clip from some of their first shows at the mega-venue below:
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
