METALLICA - 1990s
BOB ROCK
He initially turned down Metallica’s advances, but the super-producer would go on to helm four of the most important albums in the band’s career
WORDS: PAUL BRANNIGAN
PRESS/MIKE ZIMMER
Ambitious, driven, uncompromising and supremely self-confident, in the first decade of their career, Metallica weren’t used to hearing the word ‘no’. So when Bob Rock turned down an offer to mix the band’s fifth album, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich were initially affronted, then intrigued. Passing on that opportunity would turn out to be one of the smartest decisions of the Canadian sound engineer/producer’s career, for it opened up a dialogue with Metallica that would ultimately result in Rock producing the quartet’s next four albums: Metallica (known globally as The Black Album), Load, Reload and St. Anger. It’s fair to say that the relationship between the Winnipeg-born studio technician and the San Francisco band wasn’t always entirely harmonious…
Having graduated from engineering and mixing hugely successful albums (Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation) to producing hugely successful albums (The Cult’s Sonic Temple, Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood) your career was on a roll before Metallica entered your life: did that make it fairly easy to reject their offer to have you mix their fifth album?