A newly published feature on Rollingstone.com goes behind the scenes on what it takes to make each date of Metallica‘s ongoing summer North American stadium tour a success. Much like the stage production crew Guns N’ Roses‘ employed for their summer touring last year, the logistics are staggering. According to the article, 48 trucks carry the production to each show with more than 350,000 total watts of audio being played.
The stage design features 83 laser fixtures that took 640 hours to program to the band’s music. Nearly 40,000 speakers are also involved with the production, generating 2.5 megawatts of power each night—which according to the piece—is roughly enough to power 1,800 homes for a month. Then there’s the giant screens, pyro, video production, videographers and more.
The band members also frequently fly in and out of shows each night, while there’s also the complexities of security, ensuring their crew is fed, the scheduling of meet and greets, press and more.
As members of the group go on to state in the piece, they’re not sure that any future metal or rock acts will make it to this level in the future. Drummer Lars Ulrich stated:
“Not a lot of bands have been jumping from the middle to the top. Guns N’ Roses have been around for 30 years, AC/DC have been around 45, we’ve been around for 130 years – it’s an odd thing. Sometimes it’s like, ‘Holy fuck, we’re playing stadiums. What if somebody finds out that we shouldn’t be playing stadiums?'”
Guitarist Kirk Hammett added:
“There are a few bands still doing it on a level that’s similar to back in the day. There’s Guns N’ Roses, Tool, I wanna say Rage Against The Machine, but I’m not sure what their status is right now. But it’s weird. Like, what happened to everyone? Did they just fade away, give up? Did they lose interest? Did the audience lose interest? Why did the audience lose interest? There are a bunch of different questions on why they’re not here now and why are we.”
You can find a lot more insight into the tour over at Rollingstone.com.
