LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) — Metallica frontman James Hetfield has shed some light on why the band didn't pursue their festival after it ran for only two years.
The festival, Orion Music + More, which took place on June 23 and 24, 2012, in Atlantic City and then in Detroit in 2013, featured Metallica as a headliner for both days as well as artists such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Silversun Pickups, Rise Against and Deftones. In 2014, the band said the festival was on hiatus and it did not make a return in 2015 either.
Now, in an interview with the band's fan club magazine "So What" Hetfield said the festival would not be making a return, stating that the band lost "millions" on both years of the the event.
"I'm so glad we did Orion. Those two we did were fun," Hetfield said. "We got some bands out there in front of people, our fans mainly, and that was the whole idea. If it would have broken even, we'd still be doing it, but we lost millions both times. We can't do that. At some point, business comes into play. Why would you keep doing something that's damaging you and could prevent you moving forward."
"It was fun to do, we had a blast doing it, employed a lot of people and helped out both cities it was in. A lot of good came out of it, but we can't do it again," Hetfield added.
When pressed on why he thought the festival didn't prove popular with the punters, Hetfield said: "Maybe it was too adventurous, bill-wise. I think it was too wide. If it was more of a metal fest, or really hard, maybe? What we were going for was 'edge.' Every band that was there had some kind of edge. And it didn't matter what genre they were in. I won't say every band, but that's the vibe we were going for. Maybe it needed to be a little more secular." – Staff Writers
