Chris Isaak Inspired James Hetfield’s Vocal Performance on Metallica’s Black Album

This is one of those stories that makes no goddamn sense… until you think about it for thirty seconds, at which point it makes perfect sense.

This is Bob Rock during a recent interview with Chris Jericho (listen at the bottom of this post):

“[Hetfield] said, ‘Bob, I’ve never really sang before — I’ve just kind yelled. He played me a Chris Isaak record, and he said, ‘On ‘Nothing Else Matters’ and ‘The Unforgiven,’ I want to sing. How do you sing like this?’

“I said, ‘I’ll get you a great vocal sound, so you don’t have to double your vocals. What you hear in Chris Isaak’s voice is the nuances when he sings — he isn’t doubled. He’s actually performing. You perform.’ We set it up so he was comfortable and had a great vocal sound, and then he sang. Every day he got better, and he got comfortable with it. He became a great singer.”

A lot of people have compared Hetfield’s post-Justice singing voice as having a very honky-tonk quality to it, so the Isaak influence actually makes perfect sense. What doesn’t make sense is Rock’s assertion that Hetfield “became a great singer.” I mean, Bob Rock has ears, right?

[via Loudwire by way of Metal Injection]