Metallica Pay Tribute to Van Halen With ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ Cover in Pasadena
As the 'WorldWired' tour continues to roll through North America this summer, Metallica stopped at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. on Saturday night (July 29). The city is the home of '70s party rock legends Van Halen and the band found it appropriate to dish out a bit of the classic "Runnin' With the Devil" in honor of the rock gods as seen in the video above.
Robert Trujillo's thumping bass opened the song with the same heft of Michael Anthony while Kirk Hammett laid down the sultry opening riff. Imitating the raw yet flashy style of David Lee Roth is never easy, but James Hetfield pulled it off convincingly, even stretching his voice to its upper register for some of those familiar cat-wail shrieks.
Papa Het cuts the song short after this first chorus, laughing to himself before addressing the crowd (video below). "That's our little homage to the Pasadena boys, all right? Sorry you had to put up with that! That wasn't too bad, that was kind of fun," the frontman said.
Metallica's North American run in support of last year's Hardwired... To Self-Destruct began back in May and is entering the home stretch and will finish up on Aug. 16. Support has come from Avenged Sevenfold, Volbeat and Gojira all playing select dates and the rest of the dates for this leg of the tour can be seen here.
Metallica, "Runnin' With the Devil" (Van Halen)
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