Throughout Pat Boone‘s 70-year career, he’s crisscrossed nearly every genre in music, releasing country albums, along with recording pop, rock, a cappella, gospel, and more. Then, on January 28, 1997, Boone went somewhere no one expected. He released his first and only harder rock, heavy metal album In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy.
The title, a play on Alice Cooper’s 1973 hit, saw Boone covering songs from his next-door neighbor Ozzy Osbourne, Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and more, along with a collection of special guests, including Ronnie James Dio, Ritchie Blackmore, Sheila E, Dweezil Zappa, Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band drummer Greg Bissonette, and others.
Throughout In a Metal Mood, Boone covered 12 hard rock songs: Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”; Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”; Judas Priest‘s “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'”; “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple; AC/DC‘s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)”; Van Halen’s “Panama“; The Everly Brothers’ “Love Hurts,” also popularized by Nazareth; Dio’s “Holy Diver”; Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City”; “The Wind Cries Mary” from The Jimi Hendrix Experience; and the album namesake, Cooper’s 1973 hit “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”
Videos by American Songwriter
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“Those were great arrangements,” Boone tells American Songwriter. “Many people, including heavy metal artists like Poison, and Ratt, said ‘Hey, do some of our songs.’ They were so complimented by me doing their songs.”
Boone also covered Metallica‘s 1991 hit “Enter Sandman” from the band’s fifth release, The Black Album. Before taking on the more sinister track, Boone consulted with Metallica frontman James Hetfield about the child heard saying the “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” bedtime prayer in the song.
“I asked a James Hetfield who that was [speaking] toward the end of ‘Enter Sandman’ with that foreboding ominous sound,” said Boone. “You hear him saying [the prayer]. It’s a song about putting your kid to bed and scaring him into staying in bed. It’s their biggest-selling hit, ‘Enter Sandman,’ and it was about a guy putting his kid to bed.”
He added, “On my record, my four-year-old grandson was answering me when I did that part.” In Boone’s Big Band jazz version of “Enter Sandman,” he’s heard reciting another version of the bedtime prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep / I pray thee Lord my soul to keep / Guard me angles through the night / Wake me in the morning light.
While making the harder album, Boone said he wanted to treat each song with respect and intentionally chose songs that didn’t condone drugs. At one point, Slash was going to play on Boone’s version of “Paradise City,” but couldn’t make the sessions to contribute, so another guitarist took his place.
“When he [Slash] heard the record he said ‘Hey, you did it too fast. I can’t play it that fast,'” said Boone. “I said ‘C’mon, you’re Slash. Are you kidding?'”
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Boone still managed to pull in a group of special guests, including the late Ronnie James Dio singing on Dio’s 1983 classic “Holy Diver,” and Blackmore recording his parts on Deep Purple’s 1972 song “Smoke on the Water.”
“Ritchie was recording in a château in Germany when I did the record, and he played his own guitar on that,” remembered Boone. “Then Dweezil Zappa is playing a Stratocaster on Hendrix’s ‘The Wind Cries Mary.'”
In a Metal Mood: No More Mister Nice Guy brought Boone back on the charts for the first time in 36 years and peaked at No. 125 on the Billboard 200.
Photo: Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
