Deviating from the normal here - the following is neither a story nor an attempt at poetry. It is merely me recounting a memory I hope to have with me for years to come. (in a very long, very personal post)
It happens with
the best bands. It happens with the best songs. It happened with Metallica. I
don’t remember the first song I heard by them, but I know the first song that
changed me – The Unforgiven. Over the years, I fell in love with more and more
songs by them, I fell in love with the band themselves, and their stories. It
raised a want within – the want to see them perform live. A few months ago, the
rumours started – Metallica would be visiting India. There was hope, that
fizzled when the rumours got more concrete, about Metallica visiting India, but
in Gurgaon. That wasn’t an option. Then came the news – Bangalore too. Did I
dare hope? Would I ever be able to see my dream come true? When confronted with
a dilemma about a choice one has to make – there is only one thing to do. Stop
thinking. I had a friend book the concert tickets for me, had the tickets
booked a couple of months in advance, but I refused to think about it. I didn’t
want to jinx it.
After months of
waiting that I refused to acknowledge, the day was finally here. I would be
leaving to watch the Gods of music, perform LIVE. There was a little
nervousness, a little anxiety I felt all day that I couldn’t place, like
something was about to go very wrong. It was mostly nervous excitement, but
just before I left office I heard the news – the Gurgaon concert was cancelled.
No wait, postponed. No wait, cancelled. So no one was sure. We started the
train journey with uncertainty writ all over it. To add to it, tickets that
should have been confirmed, weren’t. That left three of us, sharing a berth,
sitting uncomfortably through the night, with me wondering – is this jinxed, or
would we be third time lucky? After a long
tiring journey, (for the nth time, Bombay-Bangalore needs a faster route by
train), we reached our destination. And it was raining. Rain has always meant
well for me. It was also a lot cooler than it is in Bombay this time of the
year. The next day arrived, with overcast skies. Would it rain over the
concert? I didn’t care if it flooded the city, as long as the concert happened.
The pass said, ‘Gates open at 3’. But news was that people had been camping
outside overnight. I reached the venue close to 3, where I was supposed to meet
my friends. The queue seemed to stretch along the perimeter of the ground. A
line of people in black, almost all in Metallica t-shirts, waiting patiently
while the sun played hide and seek. I managed to bypass the crowd and get into
the venue and met my friends. There were distinctly 3 groups of people I expected
to be around. 2 of them had guys. So, just before we decided to make our way
into the ground – there we were – 4 girls.
A little to be
said about the management. Imagine a huge rectangle filled with people, with
just 1 bit of a corner open, to let one person out at a time- that’s how they
planned to let us in. Not very confidence-inspiring for us girls to be in a
crowd full of testosterone fuelled metal heads. But we bravely made our way
through, me fighting my claustrophobia- counting the number of steps we could
move ahead, every few minutes – a grand total of 2. To add to it, guys around
us were lighting up like chimneys. 6 steps inside – with stale air and
cigarette smoke around, things didn’t look very promising for me. Just then
there was some chaos at one end of the crowd, and we were pushed to a side.
With mighty effort, our own and the guys around us, we managed to not be
crushed. I looked behind for an escape route – there was none. Luckily, there
was a small road-divider just besides the ‘wall’ we were against, and I got up
on it, balanced precariously till the end of the rectangle. Finally, we were
in. But wait, there were more queues to be stood in. Luckily these moved fast
enough, and we also got a chance to have a couple of bites – all that we would
eat all day that day.
Past that queue,
we were finally IN. Rushing as ahead as we could. In the queues, they wrote the
sections we were supposed to be in on our hands. Ours read ‘L6’, which happened
to be the third section from the front. But no one seemed to be entering that,
and seemed to be entering the section in front of that. We got into that one
too. Then we noticed our magic entrance to the front. The section right in
front was open and people were rushing into it. So did we. It felt good to be
this close to the stage. They also stopped letting in people after a while,
which meant we had lots of space to ourselves. We felt like royalty. By the
time we were there, Inner Sanctum was done with their bit and Guillotine was on
stage. Being a Delhi band, they were suitably boo-ed. But they managed to keep
a straight face, and did their bit. Then there was a long wait while Biffy
Clyro set up. Most of us sat down, saving up our energy for the main event.
This was a band I didn’t know about till before I knew they were opening for Metallica.
The last couple of songs they played were good, and it also rained while they
were performing. It added to the atmosphere loads. Once they were done, was the
long- almost insufferable- wait for Metallica to get on stage and get started.
By this time, our spacious section was filling up with more and more people by
the second. Also, because it had rained, there was less ground and more slush
around, so the question of sitting down again was out.
The crowd was
getting increasingly impatient and exponentially bigger. It had started to get
darker, and the colour that ruled now was definitely black. At close to 8, the
magic started. The lights went out, the traditional AC/DC track playing loudly,
and then there were four- on stage.
The crowd went
crazy. They started with ‘Creeping Death’ and as one the crowd rose. Singing,
cheering, jumping, raising their hands in the respectful sign of the horns. You
could feel the energy spreading through the crowd in waves. Suddenly all the
space, lessening as it was, around us was taken up by more and more people.
With each song that they played, moving onto for whom the bell tolls, fuel, the
crowd seemed to get more energized, more enthusiastic, and chanting along the
lyrics with no less conviction than believers at a prayer meet. I loved James
Hetfeild talking to the crowd in between songs, loved watching the crowd
hanging on desperately to every word, cheering, being taken in by the music.
While the entire
duration of the show had everyone singing along, head banging (violently at
times, I had hair-whiplash marks on the back of my neck the next day :-P), and
going hoarse cheering, and fingers frozen in the sign of the horn, a few songs
stood out:
- The
crowd, swaying as one, cell phones raised high, to nothing else matters.
Being the only non-heavy-metal track they played that night, it was the
only few moments with everyone just singing along, feeling the magic that
the song creates, every time I hear it. And going by everyone around me, I’m
guessing it’s the same for everyone else there too.
- My
favorite Metallica concert song of all times: master of puppets. One of
their most energized, crowd, designed to drive crowds crazy everywhere,
and every single person yelling back ‘master’ at Hetfield with total
conviction. He never comes across as less than a ‘master of puppets’ in
this one.
- Undoubtedly,
something that everyone there will remember – the memory remains. The band
started the song, crowds went crazy, and when they got to the na-na-na
part of the songs, there was just no stopping us. Even when the part of
the song was done, the crowd kept on humming it, and the band had to wait
before continuing. Lars, kept cheering the crowd on while James just
seemed amused. Everyone broke into applause at the end of it, Metallica
got the stage back to themselves, finished the song, and James ended it
with ‘You are beautiful, Bangalore!’.
- The
pyrotechnics during ‘Fuel’ and ‘Enter Sandman’. I know it’s not uncommon
for a concert, but it always makes me fall a little more in love with Hetfield.
The band also
did their bit of drama, pretending to leave the stage. But everyone who is a
true blue Metallica fan knows that they never leave their concerts, without a)
a cover song, and b) introducing themselves. Fans waited impatiently for them
to come back on. They played ‘Am I Evil’, and the crowd, having re-energized
themselves in the previous couple of minutes, was BACK! James did some more
drama with putting his guitar on (everyone cheered), taking it off (everyone
boo-ed) a few times. One guy behind me yelled loudly, ‘yeh humko fuck raha
hai’. Then they got on to play ‘Battery’ and just when it seemed it would
really be the end (the crowd did not want it to end, and even though exhaustion
and claustrophobia was finally catching up with me, I did not want it to end
either), James announced their final song for the night, in ‘three simple words’.
He did not need to tell us what they were, because once again, in unison,
everyone yelled back at him… ‘Seek and Destroy’. Absolute mania.
Then the part
that makes Metallica, Metallica. They each came on stage to say their good
byes:
James Hetfield
announcing once again that Metallica loved Bangalore, asking how it felt to be
alive in India, that they had waited for a long time for this, but most
importantly, that it changed his life. Mine too – I screamed, with 40000
others. Robert Trujillo, was the one to watch out for throughout the show.
Being on the bass guitar, he pranced around the stage, and we got to see the most
of him right in front of us, less than 10 feet away. You have to love watching
him play with James, love his spider meets crab way of going real low on his
guitar and prancing around. Towards the end, he spun round and round on stage
his guitar, slung around his neck, swinging around in an outer circle to his
own spinning. On the mike, he – growled, once, twice, thrice, and the crow
growled right back. But Lars, my favorite drummer said the words the crowd was
dying for – ‘Is it just me that thinks Metallica should come back to India?’ I’d
like to think I was the first to scream back, ‘yes you should!’ For the
millionth time that night, the crowd went berserk, and Lars promised that they
would make it happen. I hope they keep that promise, but even if they don’t
that night was more than I could ever have asked for. Finally they each walked
across the stage, throwing around picks (a whole lot of them, and I didn’t even
get one :-() almost causing a stampede, and Lars even gave away his drumsticks.
They took their final bows, one arm around the other and the other raised high.
The crowd saluted them back the same way, and it was the end of a truly magical
night.
I’ve already
mentioned before that the crowd around was awesome too, truly there for the
music. Considering the crowd was almost all male, there was pushing and shoving
and aggression, but there was no stampede and except for the occasional
headbutts due to all the headbanging, no one was hurt. I remember, sometime in
between, a couple of girls managed to squeeze their way to right behind where
we were starting, and asked, all pretty, if they could go further ahead. You’ll
know what I meant when I say the crowd there was all for the music; because the
boys they asked, replied back with ‘absolutely not’ and went back to enjoying
the music. The cops forming the human chain keeping us further away from the
barricade were mighty sweet too. They never pushed back till everyone was right
at the barricade, and then too, they were as polite as they could be. In fact
when James came to the part of the stage we were standing right in front of,
the guards even let a few of us go right
up to the barricade. Another big fat cop came right after and pushed us back
into the crowd, but for what it was worth, we were right there! They even
passed out water occasionally, and when you’ve been on your feet, jumping
around screaming your head off, you know what a boon that is. We overheard a
couple of cops cribbing about the ‘kind’ of music and wondering how people
enjoyed it, but for all their ignorance, kudos to them for a job well done.
There were a couple of slightly older men that I noticed in the crowd too,
enjoying the music like they had attained nirvana. I can only imagine what it
must have been like for them, having waited most of their lives to watch
legends from their younger years playing live in front of them – a dream come
true, am sure. Then there was this guy who had got along his younger brother,
all of a ripe age of 14. I loved how big-brotherly he seemed, am sure he had
gotten a huge list of to-dos from his family, but he kept watching out for his
little brother, making sure he was still standing in the crowd, ensuring he had
pulled his jacket over his head when it started to rain, and also trying to
keep him right in the front, to get an unobstructed view. When Metallica came
on, and the crowd went crazy, they got separated for a bit, and he was
constantly seeking him out in the crowd. Towards the end, I saw him lift his
kid brother high, sp he had the perfect view. I am sure the kid must have gone
back to school being the coolest kid of his age.
There was some
chaos getting out of the grounds again, thanks to the mis-management, just not
enough space for everyone to get out quickly enough. People got impatient and
brought down one of those cloth partitions blocking the exit. The exhaustion,
the noise, the smoke had finally caught up. By the time we got out onto the
road, our group of 4 that had somehow managed to be together during the
concert, had separated. i told my friend who was with me, to find the others
and meet me across the road, where I headed to sit down on the footpath to
overcome the nauseating feeling creeping over me. I wasn’t the only one, the
road was full of people sitting down
anywhere they could find, also trying to find the rest of their groups,
and getting back some of their energy. I don’t know if it was planned to be so,
but there were no active mobile networks in the area, adding to the chaos. We
had a tough time locating the cab we had booked for us, and then a tough time
finding a place to eat, considering everything shuts down in Bangalore, super
early, before we finally made it back to our room. Everyone else crashed almost
immediately, but I still had some of that adrenaline rush left over, and stayed
up late into the night, reliving the moments.
Because we
crashed with barely talking after the concert, the next day, or afternoon, by
the time everyone woke up was all about reliving the night – through the
blurred pics and videos on our phones, and hunting through TV channels for news
about the concert, and letting it sink in – I WENT FOR A METALLICA CONCERT!
Things seem
different after this concert. I feel different. I take music seriously. I judge
people by the music they listen to. I’ve believed in the healing power music
has. I’ve believed it is a religion, and I got to see the gods I follow, so I know
it isn’t blind faith. I’ve seen the power of music, the power it has to change
someone, the power to teach, the power to bring someone together. This concert
has strengthened all of these convictions, and even though there are a couple
of more months to go before this year ends, it has been the perfect way to end
a year that has brought about significant changes in me. A year where I’ve
decided and strived to put myself first, where I’ve made an effort to venture
out of my comfort zone and into territories I wouldn’t imagine considering
before. Most importantly, a year where I’ve been the reason for my happiness,
and found that I am truly my best friend. This concert helped me realize all of
this. Most people won’t understand this feeling. Most people don’t even get why
I had to be at the concert, or why I feel the elation from it. Am sure, normal
routine will take over and this feeling will wilt with time, and in time all of
this will purely be a memory. Am sure there will be times when I will be happier
than I can even imagine now, and times when I will not be sure if I can face
the day. But if I can remember what I felt like during those two hours, and
now, just the memories will suffice then.
So I don’t know
about you, but IT CHANGED MY LIFE.
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