Metallica- Too Heavy for Halftime- Super Bowl 50

Metallica reminds us that the last time that San Francisco was involved in a Super Bowl was not as a team but as host to the landmark Super Bowl 50 in February 2016. As it was the fiftieth anniversary of that most American of worldwide exports, the Super Bowl,  the site was carefully chosen by the NFL to be one of America’s finest regions, the San Francisco Bay area, a US metro with a long rich heritage of musical contributions and home to one of the world’s most popular bands, Metallica. And so who did the  NFL secure to perform at halftime during this historic All-American sporting event, broadcast to over a billion viewers worldwide ? Coldplay, the finest innocuous British band money could buy. Granted, at the time the NFL was embroiled in a concussion conspiracy scandal, so booking the ultimate head-banging  band might have been deemed not PC at the time. Actually, being branded too heavy for halftime at the Super Bowl that year played brilliantly into Metallica’s outlaw image: they decided to play the night before the Super Bowl in AT & T Park for a crowd even larger than that for the football game, and Metallica got to play for two hours in a thrash metal throwdown, neither of which would be possible in a Super Bowl halftime performance. Here is “Fuel” for your fire from that show.- Redbeard