Dr No James Hetfield BUTTS HEADS with Bob Rock

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Bob Rock has worked with a variety of talented artists including Motley Crew, Aerosmith, and David Lee Roth. He also had great results working with Metallica on their self titled black album. So Metallica brought him back to work on their fifth (and sixth) studio album(s) Load (and Reload).

However, this decision didn't come without its own little controversy. Metallica are a no-nonsense band and often enter the studio knowing exactly what they want to create. This can bother some producers who often like to have some creative input on the albums they work on. Bob Rock once referred to James Hetfield as "Dr No" because he was always saying "no" to the producer's suggestions.

As he told Louder Sound:

"There’s always a warming-up period on every project, and, er, it just took a while longer with them! They had one way of doing things, and they didn’t really trust outsiders: not just me, they were suspicious of everybody. I can say that I’d never been involved with people who were as intense as them. But the tensions came when I challenged them or they challenged me, it was never personal...

But the thing is, I never said, ‘No, you’re wrong.’ I just showed them other ways to potentially get what they wanted. It’s well known that by the end both [engineer] Randy Staub and I said we didn’t want to work with them again, but that’s because we were so beat: eight months in that environment would test anyone. But some of the best work comes out of tension: with all the great bands… Jagger and Richards in the Stones, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry in Aerosmith… there’s friction. Metallica are not wimps. They believe that they’re the best band in the world, and everyone else needs to get out of the way...

In this industry when something has the impact that The Black Album did, it only makes sense to put that team back together. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The previous sessions were intense, but when we started Load we put all that had happened behind us, and moved on...

To be clear, I have lots of happy memories from The Black Album too! They’re great people to hang out with, and we had a lot of fun. My 15 years working with Metallica were some of the best times of my life.” - Rock, Bob Rock Reveals Secrets... Paul Brannigan, Metal Hammer (Sept 20, 2022)