Especial Monstros do Rock 1991 em Moscovo na Rússia. Nesse ano um aglomerado de gente nunca visto coloca em estado de sítio Moscovo, uma multidão a viver os primeiros passos em democracia e sedenta de liberdade.

Que outro tipo de música juntaria um milhão e seiscentas mil pessoas de todas as raças, religiões e cores políticas?

Um passo incontornável na história do Heavy metal e dos concertos do género.

The History

In 1980, promoter Paul Loasby planned a day-long summer festival dedicated specifically to bands from within the heavy rock and metal genre. As he had been promoting the recent Rainbow UK tour, he asked the band to headline, to which they agreed.

The venue chosen for the event was the Donington Park motor racing circuit at Castle Donington, Leicestershire. Capable of holding up to 100,000 fans, it was near to the industrial Midlands and had easy access to major transport links. Early preparations were delayed after objections from locals and police but the festival organisation had addressed fears the event was scheduled for Saturday August 16, 1980.

The rest of the bill meantime was assembled as a balanced mix of British and international hard rock. A quadraphonic sound system was installed. Parallel to a Judas Priest sound-check days before the event a test of Cozy Powell’s pyrotechnics resulted in an explosion heard some three miles away, that blew out all the P.A. and caused £18,000 worth of damage to the stage set-up.

Ticket prices were £7.50 in advance. Though torrential rain over the preceding week had turned the site into a quagmire the day itself dawned bright, hot and sunny. The P.A. system only seemed to work well for those few thousand crammed down the front of the stage but, minor criticisms apart, the occasion was deemed an overwhelming success. From the organiser’s point of view they had lost money but had proved the principle sufficiently to have the confidence to organise a festival for following years.

Within a few years it became the annual event for the UK hard rock fraternity, superseding the rival Reading Festival. The event was destined to become a British music tradition for over a decade, and was eventually extended to include a list of dates through mainland Europe as well.

Paul Loadsby: "It was a great day, the show Rainbow put on is still one of the best headlining performances at Donny...the first of its kind and a terrible risk."

Attendance at the first festival in 1980 was 35,000, and this continued to grow to 107,000 at the 1988 show when 2 fans died in a crowd surge during the Guns N' Roses slot. The festival was cancelled in 1989 because of this. When it was held in 1990, the attendance was capped at 72,500. In 1991, Metallica, AC/DC, Pantera and some other artists, played in Russia one of the biggest gig in Rock history and the biggest in a Monsters of Rock Festival, in front of 1.6 million people in the Tushino Airfield. In 1997, as the event had always been a one-day festival, organisers would add on a second day only to have the event cancelled shortly after.

In 2003 the year after the Ozzfest festival took place at the same venue after two visits at the Milton Keynes Bowl (1998 and 2001) and a Stereophonics concert at the same venue in 2001, Download Festival took over where Ozzfest had left off and is seen by some as a successor to Monsters of Rock. The Download Festival website claims to be the successor to Monsters of Rock, that the return of rock music heralded the return of rock to Donington.

In 2006 another festival by the name of Monsters of Rock was held at Milton Keynes Bowl, headlined by Deep Purple and with Alice Cooper as a special guest.