If you need a new excuse to buy more guitars, try this: Metallica’s M72 world tour includes an arsenal of 64 electric guitars, 32 of which need to be riff-ready at any given moment.
WCCO-TV’s Jeff Wagner was given a peak behind the scenes as the tour rolled into Minnesota, and the logistics are enormous. The touring crew consists of 156 personnel, which includes 40 steelworkers, with an additional 168 local production hands and 92 truck drivers. 800 locals are also employed to support each specific date.
But the number of six-strings that are brought along for the ride is what really catches the eye. That figure of 64 is split between guitar and bass, with the 36 gig-ready axes equating to 12 instruments per member.
Justifying that inflated figure, tour coordinator Jon-Michael Marino told WCCO-TV: “Across, let's call it 15-16 songs, there's various tunings. There's also things that happen naturally like strings breaking, guitars going out of tune that have to be swapped in the moment.”
Metallica’s current run has found the metal titans stop at each destination city for two nights, and perform two independent sets with no repetition. That’s a grueling run for the musicians and instruments alike, and so a suitably vast army of guitars has been assembled to roll with the punches of such heavy touring.
Adding to that array of guitars – which is likely to include Kirk Hammet’s latest signature guitar, the ESP LTD KH-V, and his iconic Greeny Les Paul – are 6,000 guitar picks, used or given away to the crowd each show, and 25 drumsticks that succumb to the same fate. Per night.
Therefore, across Metallica's five September dates, roughly 30,000 picks will be needed – roughly the same amount this writer probably has down the back of his couch.
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To be fair, the construction of the eight towers, wrapped in LED screens, amounts to 36 hours of labor. They each weigh over 14 tons and are nearly 100ft tall. It would seem wrong, then, to tour with just a handful of instruments.
Kirk Hammett raised eyebrows late last year when he proclaimed that, no matter how impressive a player's solos are, they're going to be forgotten by most listeners: “I hate to say it, but non-musicians – who are the majority of the listening world – are not going to remember guitar solos,” he told Total Guitar.
