Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich has recounted how he had to stop fans from stealing cushions from venues they were playing and throwing them around during their sets.
Ulrich recently appeared on the podcast Conan O’Brien’s Needs A Friend, in which he reflected on Metallica’s tour history in Los Angeles, the city where he formed the band with James Hetfield, and a place which he says has played host to “some of the best shows of our career” thanks to some particularly “passionate” fans.
However, this sometimes escalated into fans throwing around cushions and leaving the band with a hefty bill to pay.
Speaking of the Long Beach Arena specifically, 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’.”
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 said.
“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 discussed a show at the LA Coliseum where Metallica had to stop a performance when 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.
“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”.
Ulrich discussed this at a time where various incidents have taken place in recent weeks involving fans throwing things at artists during live shows. Most recently, Cardi B threw her microphone at a fan who lobbed a drink at her on stage.
Meanwhile, one of the most dangerous cases occurred last month, when pop star Bebe Rexha was seen falling to her knees after a mobile phone struck her in the face, leaving her needing stitches above the eye.
Drake has also been the target of items thrown from the crowd. Earlier this month, he was hit by an object while on stage in Chicago, during the opening night of his ‘All A Blur Tour’ with 21 Savage. The object, which hit him in the arm during the performance, turned out to be a mobile phone although he didn’t comment on the incident during the show.
Later in the tour, he halted one of his gigs to call out a fan after a vape was thrown at him mid-performance.
Additionally, P!nk was left confused after a fan tossed their dead mother’s ashes onto her stage in London, Harry Styles was hit in the eye by a mysterious object thrown at him in Vienna, and Ava Max was slapped in the face by someone who ran onto the stage during a gig in Los Angeles.
