During his time there, he collaborated with producer Bruce Fairbairn, engineering and mixing several influential rock albums, including Loverboy's Get Lucky (1981), Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet (1986), and Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation (1987).
Rock was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and moved with his family to Victoria, British Columbia at 12 years of age.
[2] He regularly attended all-ages performances at such nightclubs as Club Tango, the Purple Onion, and Ninth in the Fifth.
[2] Rock went to Belmont High School located in Langford, a Victoria suburb, and it was there that he met future Payolas bandmate Paul Hyde.
[2] Influenced by musical artists such as David Bowie, Slade, T. Rex, Alex Harvey and Be-Bop Deluxe, the pair formed the Paul Kane Blues Band and toured Vancouver Island in the mid-1970s.
[5] After his work on Permanent Vacation, Rock decided he wanted to move away from audio engineering to focus mainly on music production.
[6] Rock told Billboard magazine in 1992, "If I didn't take the next step, I realized I'd be engineering the rest of my life.
[7] It also marked a longtime relationship with the band, as Rock went on to produce their albums The Cult (1994), Beyond Good and Evil (2001), Choice of Weapon (2012) and Hidden City (2016).
The band's frontman, Ian Astbury, told Billboard in 2000, "[Bob Rock is] pretty much the only person qualified to [produce us].
So, from that fire, somebody that can get a hold of that energy and harness it-and put it in the right direction-is the person that's really qualified to be our producer ...
[11] In 1995, Rock relocated to Maui and converted part of his home into his own private music production facility, known as Plantation Studios, three years later.
[12] Rock told The Honolulu Advertiser in 2003, "Actually, over the next few years I'm probably going to be weaning myself off of what I do a little bit... And I would really love to be able to get involved more with local music.
[15] Rock's son provided the voice of the child reciting the "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" bedtime prayer in the song.
[9][21] Rock wrote and played all of the bass guitar parts on St. Anger, replacing Jason Newsted who left Metallica in 2001.
[5] At Metallica's 30th Anniversary Concert on December 10, 2011, Rock joined the band on stage, and performed bass alongside Trujillo on the songs "Dirty Window" and "Frantic".
[24] After being hired by Little Mountain Sound Studios in 1976, Paul Hyde followed Rock to Vancouver and in 1978 they formed the Payola$.
[32][33] In 2007, the Payolas became briefly active once more as a touring and recording act, releasing the EP Langford Part One.
Rock produced the five finalist songs of CBC Sports's Hockey Night in Canada Anthem Challenge in late 2008.
[37] In 1985, producer and songwriter David Foster helped assemble the supergroup, Northern Lights, to record the song "Tears Are Not Enough" to raise funds for relief of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.
[5] The album included the Payolas track "At Angels Feet" and the band performed at the One X One child poverty benefit gala in Toronto the following year.