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METALLICA GRACE THE COVER of the new issue of Q. This will be the first time they have held such a lofty position on the magazine. And it’s probably fair to say that few covers of recent times have prompted such a level of debate and so many raised eyebrows as the one from which the eternal men in black glower.

The key topic of discussion within the Q office centred upon this: Metallica are, indupitably, a heavy metal band; heavy metal is the musical genre perhaps above all others that divides people into two distinct camps – those that love it to the point of obsession, and (many more of) those that look upon it with all the enthusiasm they would a plate of sick; Q could not be called the last bastion of all things heavy and metal. Ergo, there is the distinct risk that said issue will find itself cemented to the nation’s shelves.

Or possibly it won’t. Since Metallica are one of the biggest bands on the planet (their 90-plus million record sales dwarf those of, for example, Radiohead, Nirvana, Oasis, Coldplay and, well, pretty much anyone else you care to name that isn’t called The Beatles or Michael Jackson). They are also one of the select few bands around who have a proper story to tell. Metallica didn’t arrive, fully formed, to enjoy instant success and then fade as quickly as they’d come. Their journey to global ubiquity took several years, five albums, one death and enough tales of decadence and egomania to fill a library. Which isn’t to mention the ridiculous levels of madness that have ensued ever since. Ergo, there is a similarly decent chance lots of people will want to read a story of such depth and colour, including those not normally given to perusing Q – especially since it is a proper world exclusive, something of a surprise and Metallica are headlining Wembley Stadium this very month.

Such is the inexact science of choosing who or what to put on the cover. It’s a procedure prone to lead those who have to undertake it to sleepless nights, sudden cold sweats and a gnawing sense of anxiety liable to last a month at least. And, time and time again, it will prove you wrong, in ways good and bad.

On Q, I give you two examples. Firstly, The Darkness. Their first album Permission To Land (to which the only answer should have been, Not granted) was something of a phenomenon. This was a cause of no little frustration to those, like myself, who found them – not to put too fine a point on it – rubbish. And as funny as chemical warfare. Hence, we (more specifically, I), like some sort of crazed King Canute beating back imagined waves of spandex-clad cock rock hordes, refused to put them on the Q cover. Until they were so big to not do so became so far beyond the bounds of common sense as to appear perverse.

One couldn’t fail to shift impressive numbers of magazines with the nation’s then most popular band on the cover. Except we could and did. Indeed, aside from close members of the Hawkins family, it’s debatable whether anyone still owns that issue. The abject failure of the wholly unloved Sex Issue with Pink on the cover (may they flog me for evermore) one could perhaps have predicted, but this seemed to fly in the face of reason.

By contrast, during what we like to call a ‘quiet month’ (ie. there’s no U2 or Oasis album), I decided to put Led Zeppelin on the cover of Q for the first time, two decades after they had ceased to be, and for no good reason other than the fact it was 30 years since they’d released their Physical Grafitti album. It was, and is, a mighty work, but its anniversary had even passed the band by. Once the issue emerged, members of EMAP’s senior management began asking after my state of mind. And then, Lord be praised, it sold by the hatful.

And what of lists. You, the reader, and indeed everyone else in the known universe, tell us you are bored to rigidity with them. Yet each issue with such a thing on the cover sells more than the last. Hurrah! The list is our salvation. Until, that is, it isn’t, and with grim unpredictability and utterly without warning, what you say and what you do finally tally, and the list issue becomes as commercially viable as an igloo salesman in the Sahara. Damn, and furthermore blast.

All of which means I really have not the foggiest idea how the Metallica cover will sell. I can take an educated guess, cross fingers and toes, and pray to whatever God there may be for cash tills the land over to ring to the sound of untold Qs being bought, but it may all be for nought. Ultimately, the deciding factor is you. How powerful – and, may I say, thoroughly wise and impressively good looking – you are.

There was one cover I perhaps might have been able to stake odds on. In another life, whilst editing Kerrang! (the heavy metal bible, no less), I took the unilateral decision to put American blue collar rockers Live on the cover at a point when their brief peak had gone. Even more foolishly, I elected – to howls of protest from male and female office staff alike – to have just their singer, Ed Kowalczyk, on the cover. Naked. So out we came with a bald, hairy, naked man whose name no one could pronounce and whose band no one liked anymore carrying our hopes and our cover. A pulping plant in Skegness was kept in business for several years getting rid of all those unwanted issues.

Paul Rees – Editor, Q

12:46 PM | 29/06/2007