Later today, Metallica takes the stage in Lane Stadium for a performance many thought would never happen in Blacksburg.
The band’s one-night stop on its M72 World Tour in Blacksburg is historic — Metallica has never come to the town, getting only as close as Roanoke on four previous occasions and not since 2004. In fact, it’s been 16 years since the group played in Virginia, last stopping in Charlottesville for a 2009 performance in John Paul Jones Arena on the World Magnetic tour.
That stop — and that entire show, for that matter — wasn’t quite the same magnitude as the M72 World Tour, a massive stadium production in support of the band’s 11th studio album, 72 Seasons, that’s three years in, with 59 shows already performed in 32 cities.
Blacksburg, with a population of around 45,000, is by far the smallest stop on the docket not affiliated with a music festival, though there’s a good reason it made the cut: The football team has embraced the band’s hit “Enter Sandman” as its introduction song for nearly a quarter century.
To give a sense of the type of work and scale that goes into a production of this size, Jon-Michael Marino, Metallica’s tour coordinator, walked media members through the stage setup and labor required to put on the show on Tuesday afternoon.
Needless to say, the message board rumor that seemed to pop up every few years — that four hotel rooms were reserved in town the night before a big Virginia Tech football game under aliases the members of Metallica use — seems hilariously quaint in hindsight.
How big of a production is it to get everything set up?
Marino gave a few numbers that help put into perspective just how much labor is involved in moving the stage from site to site and setting up for the band’s show.It involves 87 semis to get gear from one market to the next, with 42 steel trucks working in two sets (leapfrogging each other, due to the time constraints of constructing the stage) and 45 production trucks. That requires 87 drivers, which doubles (or occasionally triples) in size if the distance between markets requires trading off shifts on the road.
The process takes four days. First, the field is covered to prevent damage to the existing infrastructure. After that, it takes two days to set up the eight large towers in a steel structure surrounding the circular stage. (It comes down afterward three times as fast.)
A “Met crew” (Metallica crew) of 130 people put the stage together, not including the 40 steel personnel and 92 local stagehands. In total, about 350 people are involved in the tour production, not including security, ticket takers and concessionaires.
What’s the purpose of the towers?
Mainly, to connect with the audience. The curved video walls are to make the show accessible to everyone in stadiums that hold as many as 80,000 people.“The goal of this production is to have somebody who’s up in the 300 level feel like they’re sitting as close to the production as somebody who’s down in the ‘Snake Pit’ looking up at the band without the video wall,” Marino said. “Have everyone feel like, wow, this was an incredible view and an unbelievable production.”
There are eight towers, each 90 feet tall, that weigh 14.1 tons apiece — 11 tons in the base and three tons in the vertical truss structure. There’s 26,000 pounds of tension on the cabling keeping a 110,000-pound PA system hung safely above the stage.
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I heard music coming from Lane Stadium on Tuesday that didn’t sound like Metallica.
That was the sound engineering team using various genres of music to do live checks of the systems, testing out different frequencies to match the profile of the building.
“Obviously, every building is totally different,” Marino said. “Some are domes, some aren’t. Here we have open air, you have to deal with weather and you don’t have to deal with as much echo and reverb bouncing around. So that’s why you’ll hear very different songs being played on the live test.”
The sound system is massive, with 588 total speakers, 192 audio inputs and two miles of fiber optics connecting them all. Marino said it’s the single largest touring audio production that’s been brought on the road, only surpassed by a few festivals that have played one-off shows without moving from city to city.
Numbers! Give me more numbers!
Gladly. The LED screens on the towers add up to 13,000 square feet with 36.3 million pixels. A total of 72 cameras from around the stadium will serve as video sources for the boards.There are 72 lights — sense a theme with the number? — on each tower, with 48 moving lights around the floor. Altogether, there are 650 moving lights around the stadium, with 22 miles of fiber-optic cables connecting them all.
Since you can’t follow lead singer James Hetfield around with a single microphone on the circular stage, there are 14 vocal mics throughout the setup.
Audio engineers have extra work to make sure different zones of sound don’t bleed into each other.
“You don’t want the band hearing your sound that’s being directed to the ‘Snake Pit,’” Marino said. “And you don’t want the ‘Snake Pit’ hearing the sound that’s directed to the band. And the same goes for the sound that’s coming out away from the stage. So there’s several different show mixes that are happening because of the unique nature of the production.”
That circular stage looks pretty neat. Tell me more about it.
The in-the-round stage includes a feature from earlier Metallica tours — the ‘Snake Pit,’ a central area that’s accessible from the general admission floor. The M72 version of the pit is larger than past setups, the capacity for which varies depending on the fire code of the city the band is in. It can be limited to as small as 300 to 400 people — “Not ideal from a production standpoint,” Marino said — to as big as 1,000 to 1,100.https://twitter.com/ivanmorozov/status/1919905364054556768
The stage has higher and lower segments, which serve a couple of functions. First, it accounts for sight lines. You don’t want everything high, especially for people on the floor. But you don’t want everything low — it is four feet at its lowest — because of potential security risks.
Secondly, there are practical matters. There needs to be a way for fans to get into the "Snake Pit," which the 12-foot sections account for with an entryway.
There’s also storage and production space under the larger sections, with each tech getting its own portion, zones for instrument racks and areas known as “quick changes,” where band members can switch wardrobes if they need to.
Or grab a Gatorade. Ten laps around the stage is a quarter mile, which makes for a lot of moving during a two-hour show.
“They’re getting their steps in for sure,” Marino said.
The pictures have four drum kits. What’s up with that?
Marino said it’s best to think of the stage in four quadrants. Each section has its own kit, which rises out of the stage when Lars Ulrich is going to play for a particular segment of the performance. (They’re also on a turntable, allowing the drums to rotate during the show.)There’s actually six drum kits total on site — four on stage, one in a tuning room and another “uh-oh” set in case anything goes wrong with everything else.
Ulrich uses 25 sets of sticks per show. Not that he needs that many, but he often throws them out to fans.
Similar contingencies are set up for other members of the band, who each have 20 instruments each, making for 60 total guitars and basses. Of the 20 for each member, 12 are show-ready and eight are reserved as backups.
Were there any logistical issues with putting on a show in Blacksburg?
Marino said every site has its own set of issues. In Blacksburg, the field is not particularly wide, with the full stage, which does not ever change in size, barely fitting width-wise.The platforms under the towers going up to the sides of the seating area could create a sight obstruction issue that’s not ideal, with the lower 100-level seats, which are usually the best in the house, possibly having an obscured view if there’s a platform full of standing patrons in front of them. (That can be solved. by not putting people on all of those platforms.) That’s less of an issue in larger stadiums.
Also, it’s an outdoor venue, which brings weather into play. Although there’s a low chance of precipitation on what looks like it’ll be a lovely Wednesday night, everything on the stage is made to get wet.
“It’s a matter of what else are we dealing with,” Marino said. “Rain is not a problem. Wind can be a problem and lightning is always a problem.”
Ironically, for the show of a band with a logo that features two ends of a lightning bolt, delays have happened. A lightning storm in Nashville led to a 30-40 minute delay while everybody sheltered in place before the band could come out.
“This time around, the stars aligned,” Marino said of all the logistics in Lane Stadium. “I think it’s going to be a hell of a show, for sure.”
OK, OK. But when are they going to play “Enter Sandman?”
The set list hasn’t been decided yet. That’s put together by the band the day of the concert, just a few hours beforehand once Metallica's members gets into town, with more care being put into the selection of songs than just playing the hits.“Lars certainly is the ring leader of the set list for the show,” Marino said. “He’s the one that likes to get hands-on analytically. What did we play the last time we were here? How long has it been? What have we come out with since then? Every show is different.”
For cities on the M72 World Tour with two shows at the same site over a weekend, the band has a standing rule not to repeat any songs in the two sets, making for a completely different show each night.
Blacksburg only has the one show, with a fairly obvious song that’s near the top of everybody’s wish list: “Enter Sandman.”
“I would be a little surprised, personally, if they started the show with it,” Marino said. “I feel like that’s going to bit of a climactic moment in the production of the show. To me, personally, it makes more sense at the end, but I’m not one of the four guys on stage, so that’s not for me to decide.”
This is all pretty cool, isn’t it?
Sure is. Even for someone like Marino, who’s been touring with Metallica since 2017, seeing the camaraderie among a band that’s been in existence now for 44 years is remarkable.“If you think about the dynamics of the family, a four-person family, and then apply that to an artistic environment, you start to wrap your head around, hey, it’s something that’s really special,” he said.
“Four guys, and obviously not the original staying the same the entire time, but four guys that are able to stay together creatively, personally, travel the world, write incredible music, still be creating new music at this stage of their career and have it be some of the best, intense music in their storied career, it’s pretty wild. It’s pretty incredible.”
While other cities on the M72 World Tour are used to productions of this size, this one in Blacksburg is in a category of its own — both for the town’s size and the specific connection of “Enter Sandman” to the community.
“It’s been on our calendar for a while,” Marino said, “but I think when we look back on the year, it’s going to stand out.”