Behind the scenes of Metallica's 2-night stand at U.S. Bank Stadium
MINNEAPOLIS — Heavy metal fans had a roaring good time over the weekend as Metallica performed two shows at U.S. Bank Stadium.
The M72 World Tour is an incredible production with more moving parts than you can imagine.
Heavy metal worthy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rumbled through U.S. Bank Stadium as Metallica shredded and pounded through two energizing shows. It's an astounding production made possible by hundreds of hardworking people.
"What we do in Minneapolis might not be the same as Chicago last week," said Jon-Michael Marino, the tour coordinator. "Metallica alone has a little over 150 crew."
Add to that 40 steelworkers, 168 local production hands and 92 truck drivers. A band of four that's supported by more than 100 times that number. Another 800 people are employed locally to support each tour stop.
"The tower system is about 36 hours of labor," said Marino.
There are eight steel towers surrounding the circular stage, each weighing more than 14 tons and standing nearly 100 feet high. Marino said they're easily the most cumbersome aspect of the stage production. Because of that, a second set of towers is already en route to the next tour stop. It's the only part of the production that has duplicates. Once the towers are in, he says "it's about another 12 hours to build stage, video, audio, lighting on top of that."
"The sheer weight that's surrounding us is pretty mind-boggling. There's a tension system of about 20,000 pounds of cabling above our heads right now. And all of the speakers added together is about 120,000 pounds," he said.
There are 588 speakers in total, enough to be considered the largest touring audio system ever, according to Metallica's team. There are also 650 lights, 24 LED screens that take up 1,200 square meters of space and 37 miles of fiber optic cable connecting all of them. If you rolled out all that cable, it would stretch from U.S. Bank Stadium all the way to Stacy, Minnesota.
"The amount of logistics and engineering that goes into our basic 'rock show' is pretty incredible," Marino said.
Speaking of rock show, the total number of instruments needed for the band is staggering. There are four drum kits on the stage with two backups in the truck. There are 64 guitars and bass that go on the road, and 36 of them need to be show-ready (12 per band member).
Why do so many guitars need to be ready for each show?
"Across, let's call it 15-16 songs, there's various tuning. There's also things that happen naturally like strings breaking, guitars going out of tune that have to be swapped in the moment," said Marino.
All the guitar and bass strings are changed for each show.
There are 6,000 guitar picks used or given out per show. If you snagged a drumstick in the crowd, consider yourself lucky. Only 25 of those are used or given away per show.
Metallica is deservedly front and center on their tour, but it's the crew behind them who should also take a bow.