With the Lane Stadium sod cleared and the field level prepped on Friday, Metallica’s crew went about laying the floor for next week’s much-anticipated concert.
It’s the beginning of a several-day stage-construction process that involves hundreds of people, 77 tractor trailers hauling in materials and countless hours of prep and negotiations to even get to this point.
The commotion on campus hammers home a point that's still hard to believe: It’s really happening. Metallica is coming to Blacksburg, a special moment in time for the town and Virginia Tech.
“It’s the history,” Hokies executive associate athletic director Brad Wurthman said Friday, calling it a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience. “It’s not that it’s not amazing. They’re a top-10 touring band all-time. They are in the top 10 of bands selling tickets all-time.
“To have them here, it’s not by happenstance. It’s not by accident, it’s not by a fault. It is very intentional. And so it’s because of the history that this is one of those [special] moments.”
Friday marked five days until Metallica takes the stage to perform in a stadium that has embraced the band’s hit “Enter Sandman” for nearly a quarter century as its football entrance music.
This portion of the band’s M72 Tour is dotted with major cities like Toronto, Nashville, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston and Denver before the group goes on an international swing.
Blacksburg, population 44,826, is truly an outlier, though the response has been exceptional. It was the fastest-selling show on tour.
“When you look at where they’ve played internationally, and if you go down their line that we’ve played at these X number of cities across the globe, and now Blacksburg gets to show up on that list — that’s a pretty unique experience for everybody here,” Wurthman said.
A total of 70,000 tickets have been sold — more than a sellout for a Hokies football game. Roughly 8,000 concertgoers will be on the field level, including in the famed “Snake Pit” in the middle of the circular stage. Lane Stadium has a site-specific setup, too. A student section of “6,000 strong,” Wurthman said, will fill the North end zone, the first time the band’s had that for one of its shows.
To get Lane Stadium ready is a process. After the field was prepped and sprinkler heads removed, crews began installing the concert floor Friday, with the first rounds of steel for the stage slated to be put in Saturday. By Monday, it should be a fully operational stage, minus some production elements.
“I think when people have the chance on Wednesday night to actually get in and see what this looks like, it looks like a completely different venue once the lights are on in there,” Wurthman said.
https://twitter.com/VT_groundscrew/status/1918345533673951414
Putting things back in place after the concert will happen almost as quickly. By next Friday, “it will look as if we didn’t have a show,” Wurthman said. Re-sodding will start Saturday or Sunday, with about a 48-hour turnaround time before the stadium is ready for Virginia Tech’s commencement ceremonies in the stadium on May 15-16.
“Facilities are the unsung heroes of every place of every department nationally, and no more than right now,” Wurthman said. “Their work will be around the clock, nonstop.”
In between should be something special, a moment decades in the making, from the first time in 2000 that Virginia Tech used the band’s 1991 hit, “Enter Sandman,” as the football team’s entrance music. The tradition grew over the years. Fans started jumping and later began to sing the chorus a cappella. It popped up at other Virginia Tech sporting events, with Metallica offering personalized messages from afar over the years.
Efforts to get the band to play a live version of the song in Blacksburg never materialized until a breakthrough in the fall when an entire spring concert was announced for May 7. The response locally has been overwhelming.
“We’ve seen hotels as far out as an hour and a half from here that are sold out and have been sold out for months,” Wurthman said. “We hope this is one of those experiences that help make an economic impact here in the community for sure, the larger community as well. It’s as if we’re adding a seventh or an eighth home football game as well is how we look at it.”
Wednesday will have that atmosphere, with schools around town closing early in anticipation of a massive crowd descending on Blacksburg. Given the limited access points to Virginia Tech’s campus, Wurthman suggests arriving early. Parking lots open at 1:30 p.m. and gates open at 4 p.m. for the show, which features Pantera and Suicidal Tendencies as opening acts.
“It’s going to be chaos,” he said.
Fun chaos, though, with a bit of unpredictability. Metallica’s set list won’t be finalized until hours before the concert, in large part because the band itself, which finishes up a two-show set in Nashville on Saturday night, won’t get into town until the afternoon the day of the performance. (It’s a safe bet “Enter Sandman” will be the show’s finale, however.)
Fans hoping for a visual of Metallica’s members coming out of the Lane Stadium tunnel might be disappointed — logistically, it isn’t on the right side of the field for the group to access the stage from its South end zone dressing room — but word is the quartet is amped to play at a place that’s so enthusiastically embraced one of the band’s hits, making it its own.
“What we keep hearing about their camp is that they’re thrilled to be here,” Wurthman said. “And that’s a pretty unique experience. So we’re asking everybody to make sure you get your fifth shot of espresso before you roll in here, because it’s going to be a long night and you’ll be ready.”
For more information about the Metallica concert on Wednesday, May 7, click here. To read an in-depth preview on what to expect at the event from Jeff Holland, a former Virginia Tech defensive lineman and die-hard Metallica fan, click here.