HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: The All-Star Sessions – Roadrunner United

Collaborations usually go one of two ways, they are applauded for their ingenuity or damned for not being as impressive as the sum of their parts. Well collaboration doesn’t come much bigger than the huge undertaking of the ROADRUNNER UNITED project which came to fruition back in 2005 and has now been celebrated with a much requested re-release this year. Something which was one of a kind and we may never witness again. There are many people responsible for making such a mammoth task come to fruition but the mastermind who sparked this incredible feat was A&R legend Monte Conner. 

When we asked Monte about how he felt looking back on this endeavour he responded with “to be honest, it totally thrills me because I achieved a lot at Roadrunner. I’ve been a part of a lot of amazing bands and albums but it’s literally the single proudest moment of my career. I’m excited that it’s reaching new ears or people who may have missed it the first time round. I may not be a rockstar but reading all the reviews allowed me to feel like what it must be like to be a musician or an artist. I felt like it was my record. As an A&R guy I just try to help bands realise their vision but this was a unique experience for me and a lot of fun.”

This revelation all stemmed from a discussion on how to celebrate the milestone of 25 years of Roadrunner Records. No one could have possibly imaged what would be the end product. “Cees Wessels got all the key players together for a conference and wanted to discuss the 25th anniversary of the label and how we could celebrate it,” explains Monte. “At the time there was ideas like a vinyl boxset or a documentary but those kind of things have been done a million times. To Cees‘ credit he shot those ideas down and said we needed something more ground breaking and newsworthy. Afterwards I called Mark Palmer, one of my closest friends who ran Roadrunner UK and was always a guy with great ideas. He came up with the idea of getting some big Roadrunner musicians together to collaborate on a single. I loved that idea, but who cares about a single? I thought if we’re going to something like that then we need to do it on a massive level and Cees loved that idea right away. We were given less than a year to put it all together. I was like ‘fuck, what did I just get myself in to?’. It’s mind blowing when you think about how much we achieved.”

The roster of Roadrunner Records has always been synonymous with some of the biggest rock and metal acts to ever grace the planet. Where on earth do you start with such an undertaking? “The masterstroke of the whole process was the team captains,” confirms Monte. “Once that idea came along it all just fell into place. Being able to break it down into pieces, to make it manageable. The captains, to me, were very obvious. You had to have somebody that the fans cared about, you had to be a songwriter and it had to be someone that could command respect and someone who the other musicians could take direction from.”

“Someone like Dino Cazares, Robb Flynn, Joey Jordison. Obviously Paul Gray and Corey Taylor played a big part too so I don’t want to discount the other members. I wanted to have Adam D as KILLSWITCH ENGAGE were blowing up and they were the youngest success story on the label at the time. He is also an amazing producer and he accepted the chance to be a captain but due to all of his other commitments he had to pull out. I also looked at Max Cavalera as that was another obvious choice but he also couldn’t make it happen due to time constraints. So we chose to go with Matt Heafy. It seems like an obvious choice but not at that time. The guy was still 19 years old. TRIVIUM wasn’t the big band we all see now. We took a risk on Matt but I had an amazing feeling about him. He was full of energy and positivity and he came through big time. He really showed himself as a jack of all trades, every song he contributed to was completely different. He was the captain I was the most proud of.”

With the four pillars firmly in place it was a matter of recruiting the additional musicians who were going to contribute to the project. This is where the project very nearly descended into chaos. “I was talking to Robb and I proposed the approach of having two guitar players, a bassist and a drummer and those members would play on all of the songs, then they’d get different singers on each track,” discusses Monte.

“That soon went out of the window! I want to blame Robb but Joey was the king of this. He was a Roadrunner historian, he had all these ideas of who he wanted to use for each track and started breaking the rules. He wanted to work with all of his favourite musicians and he’s Joey Jordison, I’m not going to say no! I fucking love Joey, he’s one of the greatest people I’ve ever met in my career. I think Dino was the only one who actually followed the rules! I gave all of the team captains a wish list of musicians as I wanted it to represent all the eras and all the key bands in the history of Roadrunner. That list also included NICKELBACK. They were a huge part of the success of Roadrunner. The perfect example was I had the money to sign GOJIRA to a really significant deal because of their success. They kept the lights on at Roadrunner. Fuck all the haters. I’m so proud that they were part of my journey.”

The project was really starting to come together and what was initially planned to be around approximately 20 or so musicians soon exploded to over 50! It takes a special someone to keep a firm grip on something this ambitious and Monte knew the exact person for the task. “We hired a coordinator to book the sessions, do the paperwork, arrange the travel etc. I hired Lora Richardson, the ex-wife of producer Colin Richardson as she understood how to work with musicians as well as managing Colin‘s career. She was awesome, a workaholic and a complete drill sergeant. It would have never happened without her. She sadly died a few years later and the world needs to know how pivotal she was in making this happen and she was very proud of it. She was the unofficial fifth captain. We had all these different sessions, players, producers, engineers it could’ve sounded like a fucking mess but it actually worked!”

Roadrunner United: The Concert is out now via Roadrunner Records.

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