After I had purchased the tickets for the Metallica Denver take over weekend and before I had made any travel arrangements, “Weird Al” Yankovic announced a new tour which included a date at the famous Red Rocks Amphitheater the Tuesday before the Friday Metallica show. It was a no-brainer to extend the Denver trip to a week, check Red Rocks off my concert bucket list and have a couple of days in between the shows to explore the area in and around Denver. My girlfriend Stacey who lives in Tennessee, would meet me in Denver for the week and I was excited for her to attend her first Metallica show. I arrived in Denver a couple of hours before she arrived, I picked up the rental car and went shopping for hydrational and nutritional hiking supplies before heading back to the airport to meet her. We then made the forty minute drive from the airport to our hotel, which was strategically selected because it was the same distance away from the mountains to the West as it was downtown Denver to the East.
The morning of the Weird Al show Stacey and I drove to the foot of the mountains and hiked the area trails around the Red Rocks venue. We then made the steep walk up into the amphitheater seating section. If the concert venue does not have an active ticketed event, it is open and anyone can go in and check out the amphitheater and the view. A good portion of the seating area has a view of downtown Denver in the distance. The direction we traveled from to get here had a small little town we passed through driving just before the turn into the mountain trails so that was the next destination so we could have lunch and check out the town. After we had went back in the evening for the concert, there was some rain in the distance and that gave way to the most incredibly vibrant colored rainbow I had ever seen as we made the trek up and into the venue. My photo does not do it justice.
For the concert that night it was such a fun show, the acoustics were fantastic, the opening performer, Puddles Pity Party, was brilliant (my 650th unique band I have seen!), and the attention to detail in Weird Al’s shows is legendary. Recreating the water gargling part in ‘Smells Like Nirvana’ was an obvious crowd favorite and his seismic jump in the song ‘Fat’, causes a slightly delayed tremor that makes the band behind him also feel the effect. I was beyond excited to see a live version of my favorite song of his, ‘White & Nerdy’, which I think is a masterpiece of lyrical brilliance. This show definitely ranks up there as one of my all time favorite concerts!
The next two days of the trip we had open, our plan was to explore the area. This is where I am thankful to be fortunate enough to have been able to extend the trip to this full week as it allowed both Stacey and me to see parts of the country neither of us had ever seen before. We discovered El Dorado State Park outside of Boulder and our time there was filled with jaw droppingly beautiful scenery. We later in the day found our way to a really nice nature trail along Boulder Creek in downtown Boulder. During our walk on that trail we watched a group of kayakers launch and paddle away, had some wildlife literally pose for pictures I took and just enjoyed the walk and the outdoors. It is amazing to have a trail and a waterway like this among the bustle of the surrounding busy streets. It was a fantastic day of nature and relaxation.
Our next day of exploring took us about ninety minutes south. I was behind the wheel for the ascending drive up to the summit of Pikes Peak. Two lanes of steep, sharp turns took us to fourteen thousand feet above sea level and we both were in awe of the breathtaking views from up there. For the descending drive the views are just as magnificent as on the climb up. I learned how to use the low gears of the car to safely navigate the downhill drive (we do not have mountains in Florida, so I had no clue). On the drive in we discovered Garden of the Gods park is on the same road as the entrance to Pikes Peak. Once again, we were both fascinated with the natural beauty and we saw a deer in the bushes and of course I took way too many photos.
We then made the drive from the wide openness and natural beauty to the bustle of downtown Denver to visit the Metallica Pop-Up store. The hopes of winning Snake Pit tickets now rested an enter to win card each visitor to the store receives. Sadly, neither of us won from the entry cards. Nor did she win the online Metallica Fan Club contest(s) which my hope relied on her to win as my Tampa win rendered me ineligible to win again for a calendar year. We had to at least try at the store, right?!?!? We left the store with some nifty new Metallica shirts and then went and saw the most picturesque mountain sunset you can possibly imagine. It was the exclamation ending to a perfect day.
The Friday Metallica Denver show arrived, and knowing it would be a late night, we lounged around the hotel and out at the pool for a bit. We met others who were staying at the hotel for Metallica downtown and others who stayed there for the three night weekend at Red Rocks with Widespread Panic. Later in the day we met up with my good friend’s brother and my friend Dean. Dean put the two Metallica shows on the front end of his annual hiking and camping trip. He had just made the eleven hundred mile drive from Chicago arriving in Denver that morning. Being the experienced camper his truck was well stocked with anything we needed to tailgate once we arrived at the venue. Adorned in her new Metallica shirt, Stacey was ready for her first real metal concert. Dean made us all sandwiches as we chatted and he and Stacey got to know each other. We then headed in to explore the venue as it was a first visit there for us all. We found a great spot for a photo of downtown Denver before heading to our seats. We heard some of the opening band, Ice Nine Kills, but did not see any of their performance as we were too busy exploring the stadium. We all had expressed a desire to see the entirety of the Limp Bizkit set and their set was an hour of fun entertainment. Dean had a ticket way up in the nosebleed seats, yet he worked his way down closer than the seats I could have almost made a mortgage payment with. It is a trait that runs in his family as his brother, Travis, has the same seat upgrade skills. Travis started with me in our seats in the stands at that earlier mentioned AC/DC concert a few weeks back and he ended up down on the field near the stage at the end of that show.
Soon it was time for Metallica and my excitement for this moment to experience a first timer’s reaction to the spectacle of the production and the awesomeness of Metallica kicking ass live. They opened with a top three favorite of mine with ‘Creeping Death’, a staple opening song of the first night of prior stops on the tour. Playing a sixteen song set spanning nine of their studio albums, the band has enough musical history that they can play a night of greatest hits and still have another night’s worth with no duplication ahead. Stacey’s welcome into the Metallica family was a positive one with her excitedly expressing her desire for the Sunday show. There was excited show chatter on the ride back to the hotel as we also made plans to meet up with Dean for an adventure the next day in between the concerts.
Stacey and I met up with Dean early the next morning and we headed northwest towards Estes Park with The Stanley Hotel our destination. This is the hotel depicted in the cult classic movie ‘The Shining’. Having seen the movie as a youth, reading the book later in life and then eventually working as an overnight hotel auditor at a hotel that had two elevators at the end of a long hallway which creeped me out too many nights, this certainly was an exciting stop on our adventure. We explored as much of the interior and exterior grounds as we were able to without being on one of the (already) sold out tours, we encountered many people in Metallica shirts as we walked around both the hotel and the tourist town nearby, we metalheads roll deep. Having camped near this area on several of his prior camping adventures, Dean knew of spots with good probability of seeing wildlife and sure enough we encountered elk in a couple of different locations before concluding the day making plans for Metallica night number two the next day.
To begin our final full day in Colorado, a walk along a nature trail for Stacey and I preceded lunch with Dean. Supplies were acquired for dinner while tailgating later in the day then sadly it was time to head back to the hotel and start packing, the week seemingly having gone by in a flash. Stacey and I each had mid-morning flights the next day and were not familiar with the rental car return or the airport itself, that meant an early alarm to ensure no flights were missed. We met back up with Dean and the adrenaline of us rocking out to John Denver songs on the way to Metallica is a memory the three of us will never forget. We had dinner and more conversation about Dean’s upcoming camping trip which started after the show tonight, then headed into the stadium.
Suicidal Tendencies opened the show and I must say their sound mix was not good. Vocals were muffled yet the tunes are familiar to the audience and many chanted along S.T.! S.T.! The band certainly had fan interaction throughout their set priming the crowd for the rest of the night. Pantera took the stage next and their set literally defines the word “heavy” describing their eleven songs. Playing deep from ‘Vulgar Display of Power’, and ‘Far Beyond Driven’, it was not the first time or city where I heard those around me wanting more off ‘Cowboys from Hell’. No complaints from me, their set kicked ass!
I started the month of June having seen Metallica fourteen times and as the band takes the stage this night, my count is now at eighteen. The band opens with one of their songs that helped define the thrash metal emergence, the furious ‘Whiplash’, and then continued with two timeless classics from ‘Ride the Lightning’, then to one of the songs we played enroute here, after John Denver, ‘The Memory Remains’. Their set was off to a fantastic start. At one point in the show James Hetfield mentioned the band gets to know the fans who travel to each city and recognized a fan in attendance at their two hundred fiftieth Metallica show and a seven year old at his twenty fifth. With every song they played being someone’s favorite song, another sixteen song performance spanned eight of their albums and in my opinion solidified the epicenes of the M72 tour as a whole for me, having seen four weekend take overs in five cities, including a split one over two weekends in two cities.
Once again there was excited show chat, all of us agreeing we liked the second night song selection better. A last play of John Denver on the way back to the hotel and soon Dean was off on his camping and hiking adventure. Sadly, it was an early alarm the next morning and reality hit that the incredible month that I had envisioned nine months ago was concluding. Stacey and I had different destinations and were departing from different terminals. My plane was an hour after hers which gave me the opportunity to people watch in two of the three terminals in the spacious Denver Airport. Specifically, I was looking for and counting those in Metallica shirts and ended my count at thirty two. Interestingly I did not notice any shirts of the four opening bands. Later in the week after returning home I saw several Reddit posts of two Metallica members traveling through Denver airport headed to England for their ‘Back to the Beginning’ performance celebrating the history of Black Sabbath. Had I have just picked later flights…you never know who you might run into at the airport.
The Metallica June that I splurged on acquiring tickets for in September of last year has given me memories that will last the rest of my life. The photos I took in Tampa while I was ‘working’ and the ones I took in Colorado while Stacey and I were ‘vacationing’ are the visual testimonial to how blessed I am in this life. The Metallica shows themselves absolutely kicked ass and I already have my eyes on my next Metallica adventure. Several reliable metal sources are reporting that Metallica is in negotiations to play a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
To see photos of our Colorado trip, click here.
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