Original Metallica bassist Ron McGovney – who was briefly a member of the fold back in 1982 – talked about the band’s first live show ever. You can check out the conversation with Chris Jericho:
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What was the first Metallica gig like?
“The first gig was on March 14th of 1982 in a little club called Radio City in Anaheim, CA. It was in a little strip mall and next door was a club called Woodstock. We ended up playing Woodstock later, but Radio City was our first gig.
“We go ‘Hit the Lights‘ and then Dave [Mustaine] breaks two strings on his guitar. No backup. So he’s sitting changing the strings. We stopped. It’s like, ‘What are we gonna do now? We’re just gonna sit here?’ Sitting waiting there to tune it back up.”
How many people were there?
“Maybe about 40, 50, something like that. All our friends. [Laughs]”
How did you get that gig?
“I think we just went over there with a demo and they just put us in there in any slot. It was probably a Monday night, something like that. But yeah, it wasn’t really good.
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“We started over again. ‘Hit the Lights’… And we were playing ‘Sucking My Love’ from Diamond Head. We ended up dropping it because we had too many songs. Every time we got a new song, we’d drop a Diamond Head song. But we kept ‘Am I Evil’ for some reason. People wanted to hear that one. We kept that one.”