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the ball rolling’ the first release on MFN, on 4 February 1983 – Hooker’s 30th birthday – was the self-titled debut from New York outfit Virgin Steele. Attracted by the band’s unashamedly American rock stance, mingled with the musical theatricality of Rainbow, the Anglo-American vehicle of former Deep Purple guitarist Richie Blackmore, equally appealing was the fact that the album had only previously been available in the USA from the band’s own vanity label, VS Records. Virgin Steele’s only other minor claim to fame was the inclusion of a track, ‘Children of the Storm’, on the 1982 compilation, US Metal Vol. II – almost entirely unknown outside hardcore US metal circles but, coincidentally, much admired by a certain Lars Ulrich.

Closer to Hooker’s avowed intention to seek out ‘Mötley Crüe-type bands’, the second release on MFN was the seven-track mini-album from LA glam-metal roisterers Ratt, entitled simply The Ratt EP. Originally released on the little-known Time Coast Records and featuring the track, ‘Tell the World’, the original recording of which had been on the same Metal Massacre compilation that also featured Metallica, both this and the Virgin Steele album became unspectacular but steady sellers for Hooker and his fledgling enterprise. Next up would be Tank, a British trio fronted by former Damned bassist Algy Ward. Modelled on the punk-metal mien of Motörhead, Tank had already had two well-received albums released on the UK independent Kamaflage Records. By the time MFN put out their third, This Means War, the novelty was wearing off and the album did not do as well. By that time, though, Martin was already in the process of signing another new young American metal band he would have a far greater degree of success with even than his days at Secret.

‘The very first time I listened to the No Life demo, I thought, wow, this is just fantastic! You have to remember, in those days nobody had heard of speed or thrash metal. So it was totally, totally different to all the pompous nonsense that was going on with a lot of heavy metal bands at that time. And it was totally in keeping with my kind of punk thing. Certainly my friends at all the majors thought I was mad – completely. They just didn’t see it. But I just thought they were the most exciting band I’d [heard] for a very long time. We ended up doing a deal with Jonny Z to put the [Kill ’Em All] album out in the UK and Europe.’

Aware of the amazing job Hooker had done with his friends Twisted Sister, when Jonny and Marsha decided to go it alone with the first Metallica album, part of the plan to help allay costs and forge a presence for the band outside the USA had been to do some sort of licensing deal with either a foreign major, or, more likely, a fellow independent – hence the brief flirtation with Bronze. Says Hooker, ‘Jonny wanted somebody to come in and share the costs, I think. He’d already recorded the album and then we licensed it from him.’ In fact, the deal Hooker did was for three Metallica albums. But after Kill ’Em All, the relationship between Megaforce and MFN ‘became a lot more complex’. Initially, however, with the album already paid for and completed, ‘it was a straight deal to license that in’. He adds with a smile, ‘I dare say that what I paid for it more than covered the recording costs at the time.’

Hooker had never met the band, let alone seen them play live. Apart from the music, ‘all I had to go on were these pictures of these four spotty herberts’. Consequently, when MFN released Kill ’Em All in the UK ‘it was really, really hard work. The initial manufacturing quantity was fifteen-hundred and it took a long time to sell them. Then after that we were remanufacturing for quite a while in five hundred units at a time.’ He already had a network of distributors in every country in Europe through his days at Secret. ‘I used predominantly the same people, so they were already releasing the first batch of MFN titles. I was able to slot Metallica straight into that distribution network, which was great for them.’

The key to getting Metallica