Metallica have paid tribute to one of music’s most unique names, performing a cover of a Prince classic at their recent US concert.
Sunday night saw Metallica kick off the latest US leg of their Worldwired tour, and it also saw the band continuing their recent tradition of playing local cover songs during the set.
Following the performance of ‘Halo On Fire’, guitarist Kirk Hammet and bassist Robert Trujillo have been treating fans to a cover song from an artist native to the area they’re performing in. Recent performances have seen the group cover ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ in Sweden, A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’ in Norway’, and Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ in Austria.
Now, we’re seeing some covers by American artists.
The first date of the band’s US tour took them to none other than Madison, Wisconsin, which just so happens to be the hometown for ’90s alt-rockers Garbage. To pay tribute to the band (who celebrate their 25th anniversary this year), Rob and Kirk decided to deliver an intriguing cover of the band’s ‘Stupid Girl’ single.
Then, the band hit up Minneapolis, in the US state of Minnesota, a city made famous thanks to one of its most famous residents, Prince.
Yes, halfway through the group’s Tuesday night show, they treated fans to a very unique cover of Prince’s 1984 breakthrough single ‘When Doves Cry’.
With Robert Trujillo taking over vocal duties, the cover was definitely a bit of a divisive one, but certainly served as a rather special experience for fans in attendance.
Metallica’s current tour is set to take them into March of 2019, but a recent interview with drummer Lars Ulrich has reignited hope that the band might be able to squeeze in some Aussie dates as well.
“I mean obviously there’s an end [to the tour] at some point,” Ulrich explained to So What!’s Steffan Chirazi.
“We gotta just sit and look. There’s Japan. There’s Australia. There’s New Zealand. There’s a couple other pockets that obviously Metallica has a long and very cool relationship with, so we just gotta sit down and figure it out.”
“But to me the most important thing is, and this goes back to what we were talking about [the last time], the maintenance thing,” he continued. “We gotta go to Japan, we gotta go to Australia, we gotta go here, we gotta go there. That’s fine. As long as it’s done within the boundaries that exist.”
While there’s no saying just when Metallica will be making their way back to Aussie shores, we definitely have to start wondering which Australian bands might get covered at their local gigs.
While Metallica have covered AC/DC in the past, we wouldn’t say no to hearing covers of other classic Aussie acts like The Saints, The Angels, or maybe even Sleepmakeswaves, who recently dropped their own Metallica cover recently.
Check out Metallica’s ‘Halo On Fire’:
