Rock Hard

We weren’t in our seats long when I leaned over to the Bubbly Blonde and admitted I wasn’t sure what the procedure was in situations like this. On the plus side, I had made an effort to wear a black tee-shirt, and not the one with BEEN THERE FUCK THAT emblazoned across the front just in case that was too much.

The seats were high up in the nosebleed section. Because of the overhang we couldn’t see the tier directly below us, which made the perspective appear all wrong. The mass of people standing on the stadium floor appeared too small to be real.

In amongst the large mass circles appeared looking, from where we were sitting, like an inverted version of the Meteorological Office’s computer- generated images of a hurricane building up a head of steam. Inside what should have been the calm eye, tiny bodies were flinging themselves every which way. I asked if that was “moshing”. The Bubbly Blonde admitted that in her punk days she pogoed. Apparently it was slamdancing.

During the songs, everyone around us was chanting, singing, shaking themselves about and punching the air. When the songs finished they went even more mental. That was the part I wasn’t sure about. Were we supposed to leap up and make the horny demon sign or just clap enthusiastically? Or just carrying on sitting there, feeling our vital organs vibrate?

The blind fervour of the fans occasionally made it feel like the Reichsparteitag with musical accompaniment. Still, we had a good time, and the nice boys from Metallica seemed to have enjoyed themselves and were pleased that everyone had turned out to see them.

The only downside was that, in the time it took to raze old Wembley and build the new Stadium, you would have thought some decent exit routes could have been sorted out. The only other stadium I’ve visited is The Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, built in the shadow of I-10 and the Pontchartrain Expressway for a quick getaway.

Wembley just has a pot-holed road that winds around the sort of tatty warehouses begging to be bulldozed, reducing outgoing traffic to a bumper-to-bumper trickle. But that’s London for you. It's difficult to see the bigger picture with the smog and Hansom cabs getting in the way.