A few hours before Kirk Hammett took the stage with Metallica, the guitarist paused on the black, not red, carpet outside the YouTube Theater in Inglewood to talk about the importance of the night’s benefit for All Within My Hands, the band’s charitable foundation.

“For me, it really makes it makes a difference,” Hammett said of the organization that has raised millions to send students to trade schools, help food banks, respond to climate emergencies and more. “People need this kind of thing. People need help. People fall through the cracks.

“All Within My Hands is here to help those people.”

The group does a lot of direct contact stuff with food banks, Hammett said, noting that the band and its fans regularly work with food groups in cities where they tour. “We’re actually getting our hands dirty, so to speak, with a lot of this.

“The most interesting thing is with the academic arm of All Within My Hands, we get letters from people who thank us and say, ‘You know, if it wasn’t for the scholarship and me learning how to be an electrician, I would have been homeless,’” he continued. “It’s a really, really great thing. It’s special.”

The concert that followed was equally special, a reward for fans who have supported the band and its foundation throughout the years. Metallica is two years into its M72 World Tour, with more dates slated for 2025. But the Helping Hands concerts the band does every two years are something else entirely.

On Friday, Metallica opened with a mostly acoustic mini-set, digging deep into its catalog for songs it seldom plays. The group delivered a few unexpected covers and performed several of its best-loved numbers in strikingly different arrangements.

The acoustic set opened with “Low Man’s Lyric,” a bluesy number that Hetfield said was inspired by Tom Waits, which Metallica hadn’t performed since 1998. Covers of Diamond Head’s “Helpless” and Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Away From Home” followed.

As for the acoustic nature of the set? Well, this wasn’t anything like a Laurel Canyon folkie show by any stretch of the imagination. Hetfield and bassist Robert Trujillo played acoustic instruments and Lars Ulrich’s drums are by definition acoustic instruments. Hammett clearly had a lot more electricity flowing through the strings and pickups of his guitar.

Add to that a level of amplification of which Spinal Tap would approve and you had an acoustic set that, as my friend Kelli noted, “sounds like they’re breaking things.”

“If Darkness Had a Son” and “Nothing Else Matters” closed out the first set with a pair of moody slow classics, and as the band turned the stage over to emcee Jimmy Kimmel, Hetfield promised the crowd they’d be back soon with much louder guitars.

Throughout the concert, which included opening sets from the violin-cello duo Sista Strings and hard rocker Sammy Hagar with his Van Halen bandmate Michael Anthony, guitar whiz Joe Satriani, and drummer Kenny Aronoff, other celebrity guests introduced several of the organizations to receive grants from All Within My Hands this year.

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, who’d emceed the pre-show black carpet, introduced Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, whose Montana Pool Service non-profit builds skateparks for rural and indigenous kids in his home state of Montana. RZA from Wu-Tang Clan introduced leaders of Homeboy Industries, the Los Angeles-based organization that helps former gang members and ex-convicts reenter society.

Video clips from Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell introduced their mother Maggie Baird whose Support and Feed works to increase food security and fight climate change.

Jason Momoa, who unlike many actors actually is as big as he seems on screen, introduced Metallica’s return to the stage for the louder part of their 13-song set, saying, “Every bone to blood cell in my body is excited to be here.”

Earlier, Momoa had talked on the carpet about how discovering Metallica as a 9- or 10-year-old living in Iowa changed his life as a boy.

I heard ‘Whiplash,’ and I was like, you know, politely, ‘What the hell is this?’” he said of the track on Metallica’s 1983 debut “Kill ‘Em All.” “Like, I had no idea that music can make this sound. Then (my cousin) went back and plays ‘(Anesthesia) – Pulling Teeth’ into ‘Whiplash’ and I was just like, ‘Metallica forever!’ Like it was seared into my soul.”

The instrumental “Orion,” written by the band’s late bassist Cliff Burton for the “Master of Puppets” album, opened the second set. “The Shortest Straw,” which has seldom appeared in the band’s sets over the last decade followed.

Hetfield then introduced “The Unforgiven II” as “a song we haven’t done for 134 years,” which really isn’t that big of an exaggeration. This was only its seventh time played since Metallica debuted it live on the Billboard Music Awards in 1997.

The final stretch of the show shifted back toward big hits with a slow, swampy blues arrangement of “Fuel,” a racing thrash metal run through “Hit the Lights,” which featured Ament of Pearl Jam doubling Trujillo on base, and the crowd-stirring, thrilling finale of “Master of Puppets.”

“We’re not celebrities,” Hetfield had told the crowd earlier at the close of “Screaming Suicide.” “We’re just dudes up here doing the right thing. We really understand that we’re all just people.

“We’re doing this for us and for people. No words for that. Just serenity and peace.”

More ‘Helping Hands’

Watch the concert: Metallica will release Friday’s concert at the YouTube Theater on YouTube at noon Pacific on Thursday, Dec. 19

There’s a Helping Hands Auction, which runs until noon Pacific on Jan. 7. It includes cool stuff including instruments played by Metallica during Friday’s concert, concert experiences and memorabilia, and more. To see all the auction items and learn how to bid go here.

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