Musings upon Metallica in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

By Martin Popoff

Yes, foregone conclusion, but totally deserving, and more so than many, simply on the basis of the third or so of inductees who aren't even Rock artists, but that's not saying much. Fact is – or fact in the mental shuffling and subsequent ossifying I've done in me head o'er the years – Ride the Lightning was the first complete overhaul and re-engineering of Metal since 1976's Sad Wings Of Destiny. Instantly, there was a new yardstick.

And Kill 'Em All had a whole different host of wonders, most of it revolving around an exuberant youthfulness and nastiness of tone and face pressed up against the glass, and pure unadulterated joy of heaviness as borrowed from the NWOBHM that no one from America did / had 'sides them.

Saw them for the first time on the Master Of Puppets tour and again, shined with a third refract shaft of greatness, this time, the inevitability of their superstardom because of how incredibly take no prisoners they were. Back-up band was Metal Church, who sporadically had a handful of songs as good, but just didn't feel the fire as hotly as these Metal munchers, who ate it like the gatefold of Tres Hombres.

Years later, after more than a few mis-steps, starting with first falling out of love with them right at their own dumbed-down British Steel Black Album, then Load, ReLoad and the Classical and the weird St. Anger (better than both Load and ReLoad – or at least more interesting like a car wreck), they are back as dudes with an album I found effortlessly enjoyable and of use on the treadmill.

Lars is a dude, and the rest have retained some of their dude-ness at least. Sure, they all have expensive tastes and have grown up, but no one seems to have fallen right out of touch like certain Scorpions, Def Leppard and Aerosmith members. They still seem pretty genuinely likeable and getting away from that into what matters subject-wise, they seem to really, really dig figuring out how to make great Metal.

Ramble back for a sec… Black Sabbath's Paranoid and Master of Reality, Deep Purple In Rock, Judas Priest's Sad Wings of Destiny, Sin After Sin, Stained Class, and Killing Machine, maybe Mercyful Fate's Melissa and Don't Break The Oath, Sirens barely and certainly Pantera's Cowboys From Hell... like I say, Metallica's got one of their own for sure there and that's Ride The Lightning. For that alone they deserve the Rock Hall for the purest of reasons, namely astounding achievement. My memory is fading a bit on this, as it was maybe two and not all three, but I always recount the story of coming home from a Spokane trip back up into Canada with these three blue albums; Savage's Loose 'n Lethal, Savatage's Sirens and Ride The Lightning. Loose 'n Lethal was amazing, a great sizzling alcoholic blast of a Metal record, worth the trip alone. Sirens was monumental, but just barely in the list above – it's one of those albums that is just a highly, highly skilled Metal record where one shouldn't have been. But it didn't reinvent the wheel.

But I can still picture dropping the needle on “Fight Fire With Fire”, the equally technical title track, and then the genius songwriting in a simpler form of “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and Metal had been hugely improved, that “you bastards!” smile across my face realizing that the rules had changed, that Kill 'Em All as good and beloved as it was, was child's play compared to what was next, and that it was the work of highly skilled Metal guys that unwittingly would grow by leaps and bounds come next record.

I'm rambling, but yeah, back to the original premise. I was twenty, and the thought never waned that this was the first album since Sad Wings that tipped over a full table and had the kid beating up his old man.