On Aug. 3, 1991, Metallica put its fifth album on the PA at Madison Square Garden and let a room of people sit and listen to it.
The band gave away a reported 19,000 tickets through the Wiz music store chain. Nobody could buy the record for another nine days. MTV News reporter Tabitha Soren said on air that it had “probably set the record for being the largest listening party ever.”
It was James Hetfield’s 28th birthday, and he went out on the floor to watch. “I had to run out there and see what they thought,” he recalled, “if they were killing themselves or killing each other. Or falling asleep.” They were “really attentive,” he said.
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Why the Black Album Sounded Different
Metallica hired Bob Rock, who had worked with Bon Jovi and The Cult and had made Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood. Lars Ulrich told Uncut in 2007 that “the ten-minute, 12-tempo-changes side of Metallica had run its course.” He added: “We wanted to streamline and simplify things.”
That side of the band is on “Master of Puppets” and “Fade to Black.”
Manager: ‘We Wanted to Get to No. 1’
Cliff Burnstein, the Q Prime co-founder who manages the band, put it plainly. “We wanted to get to No. 1 on the charts right away,” he said.
The album came out on Aug. 12, 1991, 35 years ago Wednesday. The sleeve is black, with the band’s logo in the upper left and a coiled snake in the lower right, a nod to the Gadsden flag and to “Don’t Tread on Me,” one of its 12 songs. Lead single “Enter Sandman” had arrived two weeks earlier.
Metallica entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 and spent four weeks there. It was the band’s first No. 1 album. Their previous best was …And Justice for All, which reached No. 6.