Pat Boone in a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 31, 1997 | by John Berlau

Fifties recording star Pat Boone has become a headbanger ... performing heavy-metal ditties.

Pat Boone has taken flak from fans as well as foes of heavy-metal music since the release of his new album, Pat Boone in a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy (Hip-O Records) in which he covers the "metal classics" of groups such as AC/DC, Judas Priest and Guns 'N' Roses. After the squeaky-clean teen idol of the fifties appeared in a leather vest sporting tattoos, dog collar and earring, a religious-broad-casting network yanked his weekly gospel show because some viewers were convinced Boone had gone to the devil.

Meanwhile, Hit Parader editor Andy Secher expresses the view of some diehard metal aficionados when he tells Insight that Boone's album is "an affront to everybody who would consider heavy metal a serious musical form." Secher, however, admits that he hasn't listened to the album, and many of Boone's former Christian fans probably haven't tuned it in either. If they actually opened their ears and their minds a bit, both camps might be pleasantly surprised.

The controversy and curiosity created by this album have worked to its advantage by boosting sales so much that, according to Boone's publicist Susan Clary, it has become the first Boone record to hit Billboard's pop charts in 35 years. It debuted on the magazine's "Billboard 200" album list at No. 125.

There's something intrinsically intriguing about quirky "cover" recordings, as demonstrated by the success of the "Golden Throats" albums that feature celebrities performing awful renditions of popular songs. The novelty aspect certainly helps, although fortunately it is not the only thing Boone has going for him. The crooner succeeds in making these old headbanging hits new in unexpected ways.

Boone does not try to do straight metal. Instead, he arranges the songs in big-band style -- his backup group features brass, string and woodwind sections. While Boone sometimes sings offtune -- he is, after all, 62 years old -- his band always is in sync. The best cuts are Boone's covers of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," done as a cool jazz waltz, and Nazareth's "Love Hurts," arranged with a lush orchestration that recalls Boone's fifties hit "Love Letters in the Sand."

Much care also was taken to pick out the metal ditties most appropriate for Boone to sing. He writes in the liner notes that he listened to dozens of tunes before he and his producers narrowed the final cuts down to "songs [that] had the right combination of status, commerciality and conceivable believability from me."

One song that seems tailor-made for Boone, especially in light of the reaction of some of his former fans, is the title track "No More Mr. Nice Guy." More so than Alice Cooper, who originally recorded the song, Boone fits the role of "Mr. Clean" -- the guy who brushes his teeth after every meal and helps old ladies to cross the street -- yet has to go to church "incognito" because of an ensuing media flap. It's hard to imagine Cooper going to church at all.

Nevertheless, the album sometimes misses its mark. A devout Christian, Boone tried to pick songs that wouldn't conflict with his religious beliefs, and he changed a lyric in Van Halen's "Panama" about taking a woman to bed. But Boone seems uncomfortable reciting the song's many other double entendres -- he probably would have done better to steer clear of it entirely. He was equally unwise to arrange Metallica's "Enter Sandman," a song about the horrors children face in today's society, to an upswinging tempo.

On the whole, Pat Boone in a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy is a respectable tribute to an often undeservedly trashed musical genre, and it could introduce a whole new audience to some underappreciated metal gems. Party onward, Christian soldiers.