Making METALLICA Sound Great: Band's Dual Monitoring Team Speaks Out (Video)

Meyer Sound has uploaded video interviews with METALLICA's dual monitoring team, Bob Cowan and Adam Correia, as they share the lessons they have learned from mixing the band. They cover everything from METALLICA's stage volume, the utmost importance of consistency, earning and maintaining the artists' trust, and how they meet the high expectations from the band, longtime front-of-house (FOH) engineer "Big" Mick Hughes, and fans. Check out the clip below.

METALLICA has recently added 76 Meyer Sound MJF-210 stage monitors to its touring inventory.

Regarding how he landed the METALLICA gig, Hughes told Mix magazine in 2007, "I already worked for the management company I worked for a PA company in England called Texserv, with Bob Doyle. Peter Mench, who managed METALLICA, and DEF LEPPARD, and CHILI PEPPERS, said that he wanted one of Bob's guys to engineer this new bad he signed in England called the ARMORY SHOW. I ended up with those guys for like a year and a half; this was in '81, somewhere around there. Q Prime, who was the management, said, 'We're losing these guys, but we like you do you want to do this band we just signed? It's a new band called METALLICA.' And I say, 'Well, what is it?' And he says, 'It's heavy metal.' I say, 'What the fuck is heavy metal?' He goes, 'Well, you'll find out if you do it.' And I went, 'Alright, then; I'll be in for a penny, for a pound.' So I went off and we did November, December around Europe. And the band says, 'We like you; do you want to be our engineer?' I said, 'Well, what does that involve?' Because I'd never been the band's engineer, I've always been the guy that came with the PA: Set the PA up, work it, put it back in the truck and leave. We started in January with W.A.S.P. and ARMORED SAINT. And off we went, and that was January '85, and then here we are."

He added, "People say to me, you're so fortunate to have seen the entire transition from bars to clubs to theaters to half arenas, to full arenas, to stadiums. It's pretty bizarre to see how things changed. Before, it was just literally the band and myself and a couple of other guys on the bus we all went off on one bus on tour and that was it. All the trials and tribulations that I couldn't possibly talk about that happened to 19-year old guys in bands on buses in those days. They were 19, 20, you know what I mean? And here we are, still doing it. And they're all married with kids now."