Metallica’s headlining at Glastonbury received a lot of criticism, especially because James Hetfield is the narrator of a new TV series about bear hunting on the History Channel. Hetfield is a real hunting enthusiast and you can easily find online images showing the Metallica frontman beside a huge grizzly bear that he may have just killed? At least, he wants you to believe so. It’s horrific and barbaric, I can’t express enough rage to condemn such stupid actions, and that’s why I was supporting the online petition to remove Metallica from the bill. Of course, it didn’t work out and Metallica played the festival on Saturday and had apparently a blast.
However, they played a little trick on their audience just before starting their set. They actually took the stage while playing a video entitled ‘Glastallica’, directed by Julien Temple and featuring, well, a lot of things. First a clip of the famous spaghetti western ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ as an homage to Eli Wallach who has just died (nothing controversial yet), followed by a longer mini-movie showing a traditional British fox hunt with Sweet’s ‘Fox on the Run’ for soundtrack. It was already unbearable to watch, since foxes are really amazing animals who don’t deserve such a treatment – if you haven’t seen these pictures yet, please do! – but the ending was unexpected, as the four Metallica guys in bear costume suddenly appeared in the middle of the wood, shooting the hunters and making a bloody mess. At first, I didn’t get it, hunters killing hunters? Was this a sudden change of heart? No way, it was rather an English-American thing and Hetfield just wanted to make fun of English people criticizing his favorite hobby whereas English people are fox-hunters themselves? Yes, except it doesn’t work at all. The ‘sport’ is controversial and was banned in Scotland in 2002, and in England and Wales in 2004 with a few exceptions, and even though some people still support it, I seriously doubt that the Glastonbury crowd, reputed for its hippie and liberal trend, is into fox hunting! You can’t mock people who aren’t concerned by the point of your joke! Plus this scenario was stupid, leave the poor bears out of this slaughter please!
At this same festival, people have protested against U2’s tax status in 2011, after the famous band moved its commercial operations to the Netherlands where royalties on music incur no tax, so it says a lot about the ideas of the people attending the festival. Did Hetfield even take the time to look at some pictures of the past festivals? It looks like a hippie fest with teepee tents, mushrooms and marijuana scent, and a giant LOVE sign inspired by the Beatles. On a musical level, the show may have been a success, but this video shows how much Hetfield and his band were out of touch with the Glastonbury crowd.
