Journeymen rockers ... the Cult in 1987, when Electric was released. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis
So Metallica's new album, produced by Rick Rubin, is finally ready. The news has got me listening to the Cult's magical 1987 album Electric, which Rubin also produced.
By the mid-80s the Cult had regenerated more times than Doctor Who, but the release of Electric caused an almost Dylan-goes-electric controversy and the Cult were derided in the press for "selling out". Their previous album Love (1985) had found success with its mélange of psychedelia and stadium rock, but the band now wanted to claim American-style rock'n'roll for their own. Frontman Ian Astbury hooked up with Rubin at an awards show and asked him to remix Love Removal Machine, originally produced by Steve Brown. When Rubin heard the song, he insisted that they re-record everything from scratch. The band dumped Brown and started work with Rubin.
Back then, Rubin was on a creative high - one he's managed to sustain over two subsequent decades. Having started life in music in a Flipper-inspired art rock band called Hose, it was hip-hop that gave him his groove. The mid-80s saw him produce a succession of landmark albums by LL Cool J, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. When he met Astbury he admitted that he had become bored with hip-hop and was already working on the Slayer album Reign in Blood, now an acknowledged classic.
The lessons he learned from hip-hop and thrash metal is what I think made Electric such an enduring record. Electric had much in common with the hip-hop that he was producing at the time - only with the guitar and beats as source material rather than samples. On the back of LL Cool J's Radio album Rubin is credited by the words "reduced by" rather than "produced by". Reduction is exactly what Rubin did to Electric. The album is rock'n'roll stripped of frills and exercises in ego. The album, which Astbury calls a "rite of passage", was a case of producer and band making a record that was not only culturally important but extremely popular. They were looking for a hit and went to the classic rock template to find it, eventually locating it somewhere between the heavy hip-hop beats, the AC/DC and Led Zeppelin-style guitar riffs and the genius of Astbury's T Rex-inspired poetry.
Electric also inspired Metallica and Guns'n'Roses (with whom the Cult toured). The Cult's next album Sonic Temple saw guitarist Billy Duffy taking controls of the Cult machine, and by the end of the 80s he'd steered them to the huge, neon-sign success they'd aimed for. Rubin got involved with the band again in '93 with his production of the underrated song The Witch. To me, the old school beats, dirty bass playing and tight, aggressive sound remind me of 99 Problems by Jay-Z, another Rubin production. The Witch was a missed opportunity for the Cult. It was a great transitional record that would have got people to understand their next move: 1994's self-titled album.
Since, then, the Cult has reconvened when they want. As the frontman puts it - the Cult happens when Duffy and Astbury feel like being the Cult. Astbury is one of the great rock'n'roll characters. From championing electronic music and rock'n'roll, to a Johnny Cash-like love of First Nation people, travelling to Tibet and being heavily involved with Buddhism, he is one of rock's journeymen. What can never be forgotten is what an indelible impression on the psyche of rock'n'roll Rick Rubin and the Cult had. Now that Electric is over 20 years old they should team up again to see what happens.
