Of Wolf and Mach: #3

Posted by Mike Perera

Sex, Drugs, & Bob Rock

In the field of human endeavour, there are certain questions that will never satisfactorily be resolved - like, is there a God? Or do extra-terrestials really exist? Or when will Mick Jagger finally give up and die? As far as Metallica fans are concerned, though, all those are inconsequential.

Picture it. 1989. Metallica, hungry after releasing ...And Justice For All, and on the verge of taking over the world, makes contact with famed Canadian producer Bob Rock. Those who know their Metallica history will know that Metallica and Rock didn't mix well at first; Metallica had made one of the most technical, complex & blistering albums in heavy metal history, and wanted more - Bob Rock had produced for artists like Bon Jovi and Motley Crue, the same artists Metallica had rallied against in their "Young Metal Attack" days. Metallica were reknowned control freaks in the studio, and Rock came out of nowhere (well, Vancouver) and challenged their whole process of recording and songwriting. It was a match made in hell.

But this was a different Metallica from the days of 1983, when headbangers broke their necks to the primal scream of "Hit the lights!". Metallica had tasted critical success, and wanted to go for the jackpot - commercial domination. No longer a garage band content with playing Diamond Head covers in San Fransisco, Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammet and recent addition Newsted realized the time was right to announce to the world that METALLICA (in capital letters) had come for their children. The question was how to do it. How does a band that eschewed videos and commercial success suddenly start releasing radio singles, making videos, doing interviews 24/7, and make the monumental leap from being underground legends to rock gods?

It's a simple answer when you think about it - Bob Rock. To start thinking outside the box, Metallica needed someone outside the box. They got more than what they bargained for when Rock (initially hired as a mixer) told them he wanted to produce the album instead. Rock's ear for commercial mastery was what Metallica needed if they did, in fact, want to break mainstream. Metallica wanted to move away from the complex arrangements of the Justice album and make something more stripped-down, more laid-back.

People have often talked about the differences in sound and music between ...And Justice For All and the Black Album - songs on the Justice album were long, with one song containing maybe seven or eight riffs, with insane solos, drastic time-changes, and of course, abysmal production, where the guitars and bass drum were layered so heavy that Jason Newsted's bass was completely wiped out. The self-titled album, on the other hand, had shorter songs (the longest being "My Friend of Misery", clocking in at 6:49, as opposed to Justice's title track, hitting 9:47), songs that had a drastically reduced number of riffs ("Enter Sandman" being basically the same riff throughout), much shorter songs, in comparison to the tracks on ...And Justice For All, and of course, sonically perfect production. But the similarities don't end there; even the album covers are starkly different - a broken and chipped Lady Justice strung up by strings (harking back to the cover of Master of Puppets, maybe) with dollar bills falling in the background, versus the plain Black cover that was to follow. The album titles - ...And Justice For All, the mocking sycophanting of the Pledge of Alliegance, versus the plain, self-explanatory "Metallica". Even the position of the "Metallica" logo is significant - on the Justice album, top and center. On the self-titled album, off to the side and askew. Without pushing the envelope, one could infer that Bob Rock's entry into Metallicadom changed quite a few things.

Was this change in Metallica's sound and image inevitable? I think so. Metallica's music, even in the early days of their career, was leaps and bounds ahead of the other thrash bands of the time. Slayer were more intent on shocking the world with their Satanic imagery and breakneck speeds than they were making music; and Megadeth, fuelled by a pissed-off & drugged Dave Mustaine, wanted more to outdo Metallica than make actually good music themselves (although as years went by, they did). Metallica, on the other hand, seemed the only band with the balls to put melodic sections in songs like "No Remorse" and "The Four Horsemen", or actually have acoustic guitars providing the (gasp!) melodic foundations for "Fade To Black". But they did. A band that good, with that much musical talent and with that much of a devoted fan-base, couldn't stay in the underground forever. And for what Metallica wanted to do - break mainstream, take over the world, depart from making every song on their album a 6-minute-plus epic - Bob Rock was the only possible person who could've made that goal a reality.

So Bob Rock - necessary evil? Friend or foe? I'd say both. His streamlining Metallica into what they are today certainly resulted in them losing their "metal" edge and (I think) credibility (come on, when you have Linkin Park thanking Metallica for "starting metal", you know something ain't right); on the other hand, Metallirock (or Metallibob, if you prefer) improved and perfected their sound to something they were more comfortable with, as well as letting their hair down (or cutting it off altogether), making more radio-friendly, commercial, accesible music, and shedding some of the "seriousness" of their 80s image. It's been said a thousand times before, but Metallica couldn't make albums like Master of Puppets for the rest of their career. The Black Album, Load and Reload, and subsequent releases were all part of a necessary evolution for the band. An evolution they could not have pulled off without Bob Rock

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