What happened the night Jethro Tull beat Metallica to a Grammy Award

“After a two-minute silence, everyone started giggling. They believed that I was making a joke.” What happened on the night Jethro Tull won a Grammy Award over MetallicaIt’s still a topic of conversation because progressive rockers Jethro Tull defeated Metallica in 1989 to win the Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Recording award.

To demonstrate that they were trying to be ‘down with the youth,’ the Grammys added a new category in 1989 called Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Recording. So far, everything is going well.

But when the year’s top contenders in the new category, including Jane’s Addiction, Metallica, and Iggy Pop, arrived at The Shrine in Los Angeles on February 22nd for the Grammy Awards ceremony, none of them could have predicted that the winner of the Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Recording of 1989 would be a folksy, flute-fronted prog rock band called Jethro Tull, who is decidedly non-metal and far from hard-rocking. Award presenter Alice Cooper opened the envelope and announced, “And the winner is…

You are free to chuckle. That night, a good number of people did.

Chris Wright, the founder of Tull’s company, Chrysalis Records: The Heavy Metal Grammy debuted in 1989. At the time, Chrysalis Records was headquartered in Los Angeles, but I don’t believe that anybody at the business ever considered the possibility that Jethro Tull might take home the Heavy Metal trophy. We weren’t even expecting it to be given out live on the broadcast, I don’t believe.