Metallica in Moscow, 1991: The Free Show That Followed a Failed Coup
A month after Moscow faced down a coup, Time Warner threw a free Monsters of Rock show at Tushino airfield. Metallica played to a crowd nobody could count.
Photo: kallerna · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Every few months a Short tells you Metallica once played to 1.6 million Russians. The real story does not need the inflated math. On September 28, 1991, about a month after Moscow crowds stared down tanks, Metallica played a free show at Tushino airfield, and the footage still looks unreal.
Moscow, Tushino
Sept. 28, 1991 · free show
A Concert as a Thank You
In August 1991, Communist hardliners tried to push Mikhail Gorbachev aside. Moscow residents, a lot of them young, threw up barricades around the Russian White House, and the coup collapsed within days.
Metallica
Metallica · 1991
Time Warner then bankrolled a free Monsters of Rock show at Tushino, on the edge of the city. Officially it was a gift to the young people who had stood up to the tanks, and the company filmed the whole thing for home video. James Hetfield put it more bluntly to Joe Rogan years later: Time Warner wanted "to basically get their foot in the door."
AC/DC headlined. Metallica, touring their brand new Black Album, played before them, with Pantera, the Black Crowes and the Soviet band E.S.T. also on the bill. One correction to the Shorts: this was not the first big metal show in Moscow. Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne and the Scorpions had played Lenin Stadium in 1989.
Helicopters Over the Pit
The night before, Rolling Stone reported, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett watched the changing of the guard at Lenin's tomb at 2 a.m., then visited the tent camp near the White House where three people had died during the coup. Ulrich said the kids there ran off, came back with guitars and played them a song. A Scorpions song, naturally.
The Scorpions in Russia are ten times bigger than all those other bands put together.
Lars Ulrich
Show day was rough around the edges. More than 10,000 police, soldiers and guards worked the field, and some of them swung truncheons. No beer was sold, but nobody checked bags either, so you can guess how that went. Ulrich remembered giant helicopters hovering so low it looked like the crowd could reach up and touch them. He also remembered the soldiers who were supposed to be protecting the crowd getting into the show and rocking along with the kids.
Metallica opened with Enter Sandman, and the set also packed in Creeping Death, Sad But True and Master of Puppets.
So How Many People Were There?
Nobody really knows. Rolling Stone's report that fall gave estimates from 150,000 to nearly half a million. Moscow police, as quoted in Meduza's 30th anniversary history, counted about 300,000 by noon and close to half a million by evening. The organizers claimed more than 700,000, and the original home video says 500,000.
500K
roughly what Moscow police counted by evening
The famous 1.6 million showed up later, and no police or organizer count backs it up. What is on record: police listed 51 people hospitalized, and nobody died.
The show became the 1992 film For Those About to Rock: Monsters in Moscow. Ulrich has called it some of the most surreal footage the band ever shot. Watch it once and you will stop arguing about the number.
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// Quick quiz
Which band closed the 1991 Monsters of Rock show at Tushino airfield?
AC/DC headlined. Metallica played before them, and Pantera, the Black Crowes and E.S.T. were also on the bill.
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