Metallica Throw ‘All Within My Hands’ Benefit In L.A. With Greta Van Fleet, Jimmy Kimmel

Last night (December 16), Metallica held a special fundraiser for their All Within My Hands Foundation at L.A.’s Microsoft Theater. Streamed live on Paramount + the three-hour show, opened by Greta Van Fleet and hosted by Jimmy Van Kimmel, found Metallica doing double duty, playing both acoustic and electric for an audience that included Tom Morello, Matt Sorum and more.

Opening with “Blackened,” the band did five acoustic songs, including the first ever performances of the Thin Lizzy cover, “Borderline,” and the UFO song “It’s Killing Me.”

They followed that with a nine-song electric set, highlighted by the live debut of “Lex Aeterna,” the lead single from next year’s 72 Seasons album, a guest appearance by St. Vincent on “Nothing Else Matters,” “Enter Sandman” and the closing “Seek & Destroy.”

For Morello, the opportunity to mix philanthropy and metal was a perfect one. “It’s a Yuletide heavy metal charity jam. I’m gonna be banging my head, enjoying myself. I had my kids’ winter sing earlier today, which it was all about Santa and how to make Latkes. And then tonight is about ‘Creeping Death,’ so it’s a perfect bookend for the holidays,” he told me on the “Black Carpet” before the show.

According to All Within My Hands Executive Director Peter Delgrosso, the charity organization has three primary goals and philanthropic activations. “The core mission of the foundation is three-fold. It’s to support the trades, so work-force education. We have an amazing program with the American Association of Community Colleges, 32 schools, 27 states, 3000 Metallica scholars where we’re helping support tuition, tools, child care, transportation. And the net is they’re up-scaling, learning new traits and they’re getting better paying jobs. So that’s a big job,” he told me. “Second is fight against hunger, self -explanatory. We work with Feeding America, World Central Kitchen, one of the first groups to support the effort in Ukraine in Q1 of this year. And then the third is kind of a catch all, local critical services, primarily disaster relief. So when there’s something that hits quickly we deploy quickly. So whether that’s a hurricane, the grid goes out, fires here in California we lean in quickly cause that’s where it needs to happen. The board and the band care and the results we generate are demonstrative of that.”

For a lifelong activist like Morello, seeing Metallica use their considerable reach and influence as one of the world’s biggest-selling rock bands to help people is what rock should be about.

“It’s great. Rock and roll can be used for a lot of different purposes. One, to buy a second home in the Hamptons. And, two, to help people who are in dire need,” he said. “Tonight’s about that and Metallica recognizing that. I’m just so happy to be here to support that and I’m super psyched to see Metallica. They came out to one of the Rage shows at MSG (Madison Square Garden) and so it’s nice to return the favor and support and bang my head.”

As mentioned, the show was opened by Greta Van Fleet, who spoke to me before they took the stage about being inspired by Metallica’s philanthropy and how they hope to follow a similar path.

“I think we’re on the same trajectory as Metallica with that because they kind of started it small and quiet and they really didn’t tell people they were taking two dollars a ticket and putting it toward a local foundation. So that’s kind of what we’ve been working on the last few years,” Sam Kizska said. “And yeah, down the line really seriously starting a foundation and doing something like that is inspiring.”

So what would the focus of the foundation be? “Our generation has a morbid crisis and that’s climate,” Kiszka said.

“Climate, environment, the world we live in, the air we breathe,” Daniel Wagner added.

“Yeah, so that’s pretty relevant for us and that’s something pretty close to our hearts cause we’re the ones growing up in this crazy world that’s getting hotter and crazier with weather events,” Kiszka adds. “And it’s scary. So that’s what we would do. And it’s no telling what the climate of the climate crisis is gonna be like in five, 10 years time. So we’ll check back.”