Metallica’s First Bahrain Concert Was a Teenage Dream Come True for the Venue’s Architect

Like many a teenage metalhead in the late ‘80s, it was Marwan Lockman’s dream to see Metallica in concert, though the place he grew up in rarely saw major rock bands. But while a metalhead from the Midwest or Northern Norway might load a bunch a friends into a beat-up van and road trip to the nearest big city, that wasn’t really an option for Lockman. Until recently, there wasn’t a modern music venue in his home country of Bahrain, period.

Many years later, Metallica played the Kingdom of Bahrain for the first time ever, rocking 10,000 adrenalized fans at the Beyon Al Dana Amphitheatre on Wednesday, Dec. 3, on their M72 World Tour. Lockman, naturally, was front and center at the sold-out venue — not simply because this was his teenage dream come true, but for professional reasons. After all, he designed the amphitheater that finally brought his all-time favorite band to Bahrain.

Eleven years ago, Lockman was a working architect with experience designing private villas and rebuilding 200-year-old structures. Around that time, Eric Clapton came to Bahrain, playing the country’s half-millennium-old Arad Fort and selling it out in minutes. Clapton’s 2014 concert demonstrated two things: the region’s growing demand for Western musicians, and the country’s lack of infrastructure to properly accommodate them. (Bahrain, an island country between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, was a British protectorate until 1971, eventually becoming a semi-constitutional monarchy in 2002. For the Gulf region, it’s relatively liberal: homosexuality has been legal since the ‘70s; alcohol is readily available; women can vote and hold elected office. With English widely spoken by many residents, Bahrain has a particularly high appetite for Western music.)

Born in Bahrain to Egyptian Chinese parents (his father worked as an architect, his mother as an art teacher), Lockman grew up not only idolizing Metallica — “80% of my room was covered in Metallica posters,” he recalls — but imitating them. He memorized guitar tabs to every song from the band’s first five albums (Kill ‘Em All to The Black Album) and even played DIY rock shows on the beach. “Or we’d find a house, somebody’s parents are out of town, and trash it, like every kid around the world that age — in the ‘80s especially,” he smiles. When he got wind that Bahrain was going to build its first major music venue, he wanted to shoot his shot: “At least let me show you what I got,” he recalls telling the officials facilitating the process. As he remembers it, their response wasn’t encouraging: “We doubt you’ll get it, but let’s see.”

To be fair, Lockman wasn’t expecting to land the mega project, either. But he had two things working in his favor: The winner was chosen by a blind test, and his design was like nothing else in the submissions pool. While other applicants designed structures in the style of Bahrain’s skyward reaching 21st century architectural marvels, Lockman kept it down to earth—literally. He imagined an amphitheater carved into the desert rock, following the flow of the landscape instead of imposing upon it. It would be a venue as much sculpted as constructed.

“You go to other venues in the region, and it could be anywhere in the world — and fair enough,” Lockman says. Inspired by Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater and Frank Lloyd Wright’s love for designing structures into landscape, he envisioned a venue that was “nuanced and memorable” on its own merits. His proposal, which he drafted on his mom’s kitchen table, even included a visual of the stage with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett rocking out in the corner.

To Lockman’s shock, he won the contract. He spent the next four years hashing out the design, paying particular attention to sustainability and accessibility concerns, as well as some vital input he’d received from musicians about how to build the best venue: “Just make the crew happy.”

Then, over the course of 15 whirlwind months, the 17,500-square meter venue came to life. Located about 30 minutes from the capital of Manama (right next to the country’s Formula One racetrack), Beyon Al Dana takes full advantage of the luminous tans and yellows of the desert, both for aesthetic and sustainability reasons. Lockman and his team (he formed S/L Architects in 2019) reused materials in novel ways, sometimes making changes on the fly.

“If tiles came in wood pallets, I’d use the pallets to make partitions,” he explains. “The corporate boxes are (converted from) shipping containers. All the rock you see is quarried from around here.” An in-venue bar, which hosts intimate performances and serves as a VIP area during shows, was carved out of a cavern (“If a Bond villain had a blues bar, that’s what it would look like,” he quips of The Quarry).

Even the men’s restroom is upcycled. “We had leftover sheet piling, which I used to push the sound in the first third of the amphitheater, so I made urinals out of the sheet piling instead of buying the ones they were offering.” He chuckles. “People are like, ‘Why are you talking about urinals?’ But it makes everything (in the venue) flow and make sense together.” Speaking of liquid, when the typically dry, temperate country receives its annual rainfall around January, the venue’s extensive drainage system takes that precipitation and uses it for the venue’s flora.

Lockman’s commitment to sustainability wasn’t just good ethics — it proved to be smart economics, too. Not only did the venue come in well below cost, but the weather-resistant amphitheater (precast concrete serves as benches, for example) doesn’t require constant fixups. It’s a high-end venue that’s built to last.

“His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince, is a massive fan of music. This was a passion project for him,” Lockman says of Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who is the son of the King of Bahrain. “We were very lucky to have his patronage on this, allowing us the freedom to imagine this in the unorthodox way we did.”

After a COVID pandemic pause, Beyon Al Dana opened to the world in 2021. Since then, it’s brought Bruno Mars, Backstreet Boys, Tïesto and Kevin Hart to Bahrain, presenting Western acts with a new touring market that simply didn’t exist a decade ago, despite demand for them in the region. (The night after Metallica, rising country star Stephen Wilson Jr. played the venue’s secondary stage.) Not only do Bahrainis come out to support touring musicians and comedians, but residents of nearby countries are known to flock to Bahrain on weekends. (With its comparatively lax culture and the availability of alcohol, Bahrain has been called the Las Vegas of the Middle East.) When Metallica rocked Beyon Al Dana on Dec. 3, for instance, there were people from more than 30 different countries in the sold-out crowd of 10,000 fans.

Metallica’s opening number at their first-ever Bahrain concert was the 1984 classic “Creeping Death,” a song inspired by the Biblical Plagues of Egypt. As Lockman had predicted to Billboard ahead of the show, his country — which has long housed an underground metal scene — went wild. “Tonight, when you see 10,000 people singing along to ‘Creeping Death,’ going ‘die, die, die!’ in the Middle East, it’s gonna be kind of a trip,” he laughed.

Even before Metallica hit the stage, the desert air felt electric that night. There’s a certain ecstatic catharsis you get from an audience that doesn’t often see their favorite artists live — a pinch-me adrenaline that’s contagious, spurring the performer to greater heights. A Bahraini metal band, Bloodshel, opened for the rock gods on the main stage, while several other metal bands — some of those kids who had been trashing houses and playing beaches back in the ‘80s and ‘90s — performed in the venue’s courtyard leading up to the main event.

The impact of their Bahrain debut wasn’t lost on the band. “Metallica loves Bahrain!” frontman James Hetfield shouted at one point. “We are very blessed to be here. There’s some old faces we see here — you traveled to see us — and there’s new faces, and we’re so glad you’re here.” Before the band left the stage, they promised it wouldn’t be another four decades before they played the country again.

“It’s a rare opportunity to witness a globally renowned act performing to fans for the first time,” Lance Tobin, the venue’s vice president of talent booking, told Billboard. “The intimate connection from band to fan is a piece of what makes Bahrain a very special and unique home for concerts. Even Metallica, one of the most legendary touring acts, still have fans they haven’t met yet, and our job was to make the introduction. We hope it will be the first of many more.”

For Lockman, the entire thing was a bit “surreal.” “It’s weird when I see concerts at the venue here,” Lockman shared. “I’m always a little nervous: is everyone happy, is everything okay? I don’t often get to 100% enjoy the music. But tonight is different.” Prior to the Metallica taking the stage, I asked Lockman what it would feel like to watch his teenage metalhead dream come true at a venue he designed. It was the first time during our interview that the impassioned, driven architect faltered for words.

By the time Metallica’s 16-song set passed the halfway point, it was abundantly clear that everyone — from the band to 10,000 headbanging fans — was enjoying a night they’d remember for a long time. With that pressure off his back (and a little tequila in his body), Lockman was finally able to put the full-circle experience into words. “I built them a temple,” he said, simultaneously stoked and dumbfounded. “And they’re f–king playing it.”

Billboard’s travel and accommodations were provided by Beyon Al Dana Amphitheatre.