Metallica rocked Glastonbury on the night of June 28, confounding critics who said heavy metal had no place at Britain’s biggest music festival.
After opening with Creeping Death and For Whom the Bell Tolls, the frontman James Hetfield said they were representing "the heavier side of music" at the festival held on a farm in rural south-west England.
Both fans and newcomers to metal enthusiastically welcomed songs such as One and Enter Sandman in the Pyramid Stage performance.
The choice of the American group, who have sold more than 120 million records, for the prestigious Saturday headline slot had been controversial.
Some of the 135,000 festival goers complained that their music did not fit into Glastonbury’s hippy ethos. Others said Hetfield’s narration of a television show about bear hunting did not fit the event’s environmental culture.
Hetfield answered both counts in their performance. He said all types of music were represented at Glastonbury, “so why not heavy rock?”
And a film at the start of the performance took a humorous swipe at the hunting controversy.
It showed a traditional English fox hunt ending with the red-jacketed huntsmen being shot by bears, revealed to be the members of Metallica in costume.
Ending with Seek and Destroy, Hetfield shouted: "Metallica and Glastonbury, together at last."
He thanked Michael Eavis, the 78-year-old founder of the event that was started in 1970.
Eavis had defended the bill toppers, telling the BBC earlier this month: “There’s no other band in the whole history of the festival that has been so keen to play. They will do the best set of their lives here.”
