Raven frontman and bassist John Gallagher recently sat down with Rock Daydream Nation and talked about Metallica’s fame they have built over the years. As it turns out, Gallagher never imagined they would get so big.
“People have asked me this, could you see that they would become what they did? No,” he admitted. “That band didn’t; it was the band that did ‘Ride the Lightning’ that moved forward because that was far more mature, wider-ranging, and had some pointers as to where they could go. The first album was, you know, kill your mother pretty much…”
He continued: “Not to denigrate, it’s a great… it’s the thrash album, but you could tell they wanted to be a lot more than that. But I… there’s no way… no way on God’s green earth you would have thought that, they’d be having ‘Nothing Else Matters’ played at some lady’s headdresses or something, you know? No, that wasn’t going to happen.”
The band came to the U.S. in 1983 and hit the road on the ‘Kill ’em All for One’ tour, where they were joined by a young Metallica as their opening act.
“We took Metallica out on their first tour,” the frontman said about their touring experience with Metallica in a 2019 interview. “No one knew who the hell they were, but we heard them and said, ‘Yeah, these guys are great. Let’s do it.’ What’s the point of having a bad opening act? You want to make an evening of it. You want to have a trajectory. You want to start somewhere and go somewhere.”
“We were lucky enough to get to open for Metallica a few years ago back in Brazil, with 70,000 people, which was unbelievable. They were more than gracious. They said thank you to us during the show, which we didn’t find out until afterwards because we left early. You don’t want to be stuck behind 70,000 people leaving the arena when you got a show the next night,” he added.
After opening for Metallica, Raven went on to tour the U.S. for 43 dates in October and November.
In other news, Raven recently released a new single called ‘Grey.’ The single came after their album ‘All Hell’s Breaking Loose’ last year.