Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich has spoken about having to stop fans from snatching cushions from locations where the band was performing and hurling them around during their shows.
Lars Ulrich has spoken out about Metallica’s future as a touring band, speculating on how long the Californian metal masters can keep going until the march of time prohibits them from performing to the high standards they’ve set over the previous four decades.
However, this occasionally developed into fans throwing cushions around and leaving the band with a large tab to pay.
Speaking of the Long Beach Arena especially, Lars Ulrich said: “What are there, 16,000 seats in there? We’ve paid for about 15,000 of those 16,000 seats over the years because every time we were playing Long Beach Arena, people would just take the cushion, you know, play frisbee with it inside the arena.
“The next day [the venue staff] would be like, ‘Okay, Metallica, here’s those $300,000 worth of cushions that you have to pay for’.”
Lars Ulrich added that the band had to explicitly warn fans off doing anything similar to avoid them having to foot the bill. “We had to go on KNAC [radio station] multiple times and go ‘Listen, whatever. You know, you’re our fans, and we’re your fans and we’re all in this together. We want you to have a good time and we support that,” he added.
“But understand one thing, if you think you’re rebelling against the building or rebelling against authority or rebelling against the man or whatever the fuck it is, do you think you’re rebellious? The only people you’re really rebelling against is Metallica.”
Ulrich also talked about an event at the Los Angeles Coliseum where Metallica had to stop performing because fans started throwing folding chairs on stage.
“At that time, things were maybe slightly more unpredictable about the physical elements of the makeup of the shows, and in front of the stage the whole lawn, the football field at the LA Coliseum was [made up of] all folding chairs,” he said.
Lars Ulrich brought this up at a time when there have been several incidences in recent weeks involving fans hurling objects at artists during live events. Cardi B recently tossed her microphone at a fan who threw a drink at her on stage.
“I don’t know if any of you would like to guess where 40,000 folding chairs ended up three songs into the set. Yeah. That’s right. All those – whatever there was – 30, 40,000 folding chairs ended up on stage. And so we had to stop the show”.
Meanwhile, in one of the more dangerous cases, pop sensation Bebe Rexha was spotted dropping to her knees after a cell phone struck her in the face, demanding sutures above the eye.