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Metallica brought forward European tour because of Eurozone crisis

By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 7 December 2011

You may well have noticed that Metallica are playing a number of rock festivals next summer, despite having already cropped up at quite a few European fests in the last two years. You may have also noticed that at some of the 2012 festival dates they will be playing ‘The Black Album’ in full to mark its twentieth anniversary, even though you might usually expect a 21st rather than 20th anniversary to be overtly celebrated.

This might all be linked to the fact that the band originally planned to take next year off and tour Europe in 2013. But, it seems, such plans were altered earlier this year when the Eurozone crisis started to escalate, amid fears that the European currency will crash and take years to recover, rendering any festival fees paid in euros impractical for major American bands. The solution, it seems, was to bring forward the European shows so to get fees before the Euro totally crashes and burns, and then prioritise Asia and Latin America in the years following 2012.

Needless to say, it’s not the band themselves agonising about the fate of the euro, but their manager Cliff Burnstein. He’s admitted that Europe’s faltering currency has impacted on the way he has scheduled Metallica’s live plans for the coming years, telling the Wall Street Journal: “We’re a US export the same way Coca-Cola is. We look for the best markets. And you have to ask yourself, what’s the best time to be doing what, when and where”.

So, European Metallica fans, make the most of the gigs while you can, and then just pray for a speedy resolution to Europe’s economic collapse.