Geoffrey Dickens

Since the wave of support, but also hate, for Metallica is showing no signs of slowing down, here's a bit of history that will ruffle the feathers of a few communism enthusiasts. On 28 September 1991, Metallica, along with rock legends AC/DC and Pantera, whose career was about to skyrocket, performed at the Monsters of Rock festival in Moscow. It was the first time the festival had been held in Russia. Those who lived through Soviet occupation or have relatives who lived under Soviet communist control, whether in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states or elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, will understand the significance of this. For decades, Western music faced censorship and restrictions under communism. You couldn't simply walk into a shop and buy the latest Metallica album. Fans often had to rely on bootleg recordings and pirated tapes. Many of those people craved the West, its culture, its music and the freedoms that people on the other side of the Iron Curtain took for granted. That's why, when Metallica and the other bands performed in Moscow that September, it was about so much more than music. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered to watch Western rock bands perform in the heart of the Soviet Union, although some estimates put the crowd at over a million. This was at a time when communism was finally crumbling. James Hetfield recalled that even Soviet soldiers and police simply let go and joined in with the crowd, headbanging to the music. Less than three months later, the Soviet Union would collapse. That concert became a powerful symbol of the end of a dark chapter in history. And most importantly, and this will really annoy all the right people, no political statements were made by the bands. No preaching, no telling people what to think. As James Hetfield recently said, the audience came to escape reality. And as for any of the material performed by the bands being political in nature, well, they simply played their songs and let the music do the talking instead of preaching to the audience.