Pat Boone – In A Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy – Review

Pat Boone

In A Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy (MCA)
by Nik Rainey

You wanna talk your shocking, controversial rock ‘n’ roll figures, look no further than Pat Boone. Back in the 1950s, he sent waves of outrage running through the seedy underbelly of popular culture by making that horrible colored people’s music palatable for the old folks at home. Though scarcely remembered these days, few sounds were as horrifying as clean-living, God-fearing, milk-drinking Pat clearly enunciating “a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom” with perfect Mother-may-I diction (one wonders if, in the current PC climate, he would have opted for “an-Italian-American-bop-a-English-term-for-toilet-bop” to appease the Wal-Mart crowd), and few facts as cringe-inducing as the fact that he outsold the originals five-to-one. He was so much the acceptable face of rock that he even managed to drain the remaining color from white boys like Elvis and the Beatles with similar commercial success. Now, forty years later, he’s resurfaced with a project so absurd that it can’t be ignored. That’s right, friends, Pat Boone has gone metal, chains, vest, rub-on Harley tattoos and all, with In A Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy.

The incongruity is so startling you can give yourself a brain clot puzzling over his intention. If he’s looking to make himself relevant to the kids, he’s a good ten years too late – straightforward cucumber-under-spandex metal ceased to function commercially some time ago. But then again, he could be shrewdly catching the wave of its possible resurgence (now that “alternative” has ebbed, leaving a beachload of future remainder-bin flotsam behind) before it crests again. After all, popularizing the unsavory’s what he’s always been about. Perhaps the only remaining hope for heavy music is getting an eternally out-of-touch old man to kitsch it up. Welcome to Camp “Camp,” Mr. Metal. Room for one more, honey.

Enough philosophizing, man, does the thing rock? Heck, no! That’s the point! Under a big-band blanket, Boone nuzzles up to these tough guys and finds their gee-whiz hearts. Take away the crunching guitars and the grate wails, and what have you got? “Take me down to the Paradise City/ Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty” – gosh, Wally, can I tag along? Ward and June said it was okay! In addition to that Guns ‘n’ Roses chestnut, Pat takes on a pretty comprehensive spectrum of hard rock standards (although he cops to some unfortunate omissions in the liner notes, so we’ll have to wait for Volume 2 to hear him wrap his pipes around “Orgasmatron” and “Animal (F*** Like A Beast)”), from Jimi’s “The Wind Cries Mary” to Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'” to the inevitable jazz waltz version of “Stairway to Heaven.” His literalism provides the best moments of high-kitsch here, like getting Dweezil Zappa to lend some licks to “Smoke On The Water,” a song that, after all, references his pop (first Tesh, now Boone – hey, Dweez, I heard Yanni’s looking for a sideman), or giving “Panama” the tropical feel it deserves (with Sheila E. on timbales – is this album the pop equivalent of the elephant’s graveyard or what?). Better still, his take on Dio’s “Holy Diver” features a visit from Ronnie J. himself (though his contribution was likely limited to standing around the studio, saying, “yeah, sure, Pat, it’s a Christian scuba song. Could you lend me ten bucks ’til the royalties come in?”).

My personal choice for best moment on the album is divided between his cover of the Alice Cooper song that gives it its title (a statement of intent so tailor-made for Pat I almost buy it) and hearing him opt to sing “gettin’ robbed/ gettin’ stoned” on AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)” but choose to leave out the “reach down between my legs” line from “Panama” (I guess he thought it was the Biblical interpretation of “stoned” – come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was pelted with rocks on a regular basis)… ah, who’m I kidding? The best moment on this album is hearing the female backup singers going “Crazy, crazy train!/Choo, Choo!,” a truly singular moment that makes me proud to live in this absurd universe of ours. Sure, there’s one or two flaws – doing “Love Hurts” shouldn’t count, since Nazareth was just lifting from Boone’s fellow nice boys the Everly Brothers to begin with, and his vocal interpretations don’t go as far as they should on one or two occasions, but these are petty quibbles over such an historic moment as this. In fact, why stop here? Gangsta rap could use some positive word of mouth; howzabout Pat Boony Boone: Menace II Nobody? (“Goshdarn tha police!”) Or make it a family affair and get Debby to do an album of riot grrrl standards? Can’t you just hear Marvin Hamlisch’s arrangement of “Shitlist?” Now that would light up my life.