Moscow 1991 – Metallica

Tushino airfield, 28 September 1991: Enter Sandman in Moscow

Tushino Airfield, Moscow, 28 September 1991. The Soviet Union had weeks left to live, though the paperwork would wait until December. A coup had failed in August. Into that pause, Time Warner and local organisers put a free Monsters of Rock: AC/DC at the top of the bill, Metallica, the Black Crowes, Pantera, and the Soviet band E.S.T. James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Jason Newsted landed on the same field they would play. The crowd was already a problem of counting. City police later spoke of about 300,000 by noon and close to half a million by evening. Organisers said more. The figure of 1.6 million, repeated for years, is a legend the day itself does not support. Hetfield’s own later memory is the honest one: a million, or half a million, nobody knew.

What the pictures do support is a horizon made of heads. Helicopters moved over the mass. At the front, men in uniform stood where a barrier should have been. Metallica opened with Enter Sandman, a song that had been in the world only since 12 August, when the Black Album came out. Then Creeping Death, Harvester of Sorrow, Fade to Black, a shortened Master of Puppets, One, Whiplash. The encore reached for Last Caress, Am I Evil? and Battery. It was daylight metal, no club ceiling to hold the low end, just air and a public that had not grown up with a pit.

Hetfield has come back to one picture more than the number. After a few songs, some of the military at the front took the uniforms off and started moving with the music. He has called it a freeing thing, people changing in front of the band. That is a better document than any attendance claim. A closed society does not come apart just because a riff asks. For an hour and something, on that airfield, some of the people there tried.