METALLICA: THE BEST OF THE REST

ROB TRUJILLO

REVOLVER So I guess you deserve all the credit for the new Metallica record, Death Magnetic?
ROB TRUJILLO Yeah, give me all the credit, man. I’ll just take it all. I accept. [Laughs] No. You know, the greatest thing about this body of music is that it was a very collaborative effort. Lars and James, definitely. When those two go at it, whether it’s head butting or anything, there’s just something magical. It’s a great honor for me to be able to experience the building and creating process of Metallica through Lars and James. It’s like going to the greatest university of music, the highest standard of rock-and-roll education.

From what I’ve heard, most of these songs sort of grew out of the jam room. Is that true?
A lot of them did. The seeds came from the jam room. But then sometimes that evolved into a different riff or groove or whatever. It’s interesting for me because over the course of the, I don’t know, couple of years or whatever we were touring, a lot of where I was coming from was just trying to concentrate on learning the catalogue. You know what I mean? These guys were like, “Why don’t you get this new riff?” and I’m just going, “Man, I gotta learn ‘Phantom Lord’” or, you know, “Metal Militia” or something.

Yeah, well, these last few years you guys have been pulling, like, every old song out of the vault.
That just kind of became the new theme; it was like, Let’s play songs that we never played. Let’s mix it up. Let’s do it sort of spontaneous. So it was always a challenge, and I was always trying to stay three steps ahead. It was difficult to do that. I feel much more comfortable now because I’m in tune with the catalogue. We’ve been doing it a while now, so I’m all right. At the same time, though, obscure songs like “Dyers Eve,” you know, I was able to motivate the band to play a song like that, which had never been played. A couple of years ago we toured Master of Puppets, kind of a 20th anniversary of the album, and we played the entire album top to bottom live. And that’s something—you know, “Orion” had never been played live—so that was a wonderful experience for us.

I was at the Download Fest performance, and I have to admit I had a little glint in my eye during “Orion.”
It was a special moment for us. It also coincidentally happened when we were creating a lot of the new music for this album. I feel that the spirit and some of the dynamics and the vibe and the arrangements live in what we’re about to release. I’m not saying it sounds like that. I’m saying there’s something there that kind of goes hand in hand with what we’ve created out of that old-school magic.

How long would you say it took before you felt truly comfortable as a member of Metallica?
Well, I know that the guys in the band really wanted me to feel comfortable from the beginning, they did. And that’s a hard thing to do. You’re talking about a band that’s been around for over 25 years, and you can’t just walk into a situation like this, especially when an album’s being created. You’ve got opinions and you can share them and they’re open to that, which is great. It was an honor for me to be a part of the writing process. Back in the day it was, like, Submit your cassettes to Lars and James; they’ll listen to your riffs. See you in six months. But they wanted me there all the time. Kirk was having his first kid, so he wasn’t there a lot of the time. He was in Hawaii. So, I was there, and sometimes I was the mediator. So, obviously, I will offer suggestions when I really feel necessary. I’m not gonna just butt into their magical moments or their head-butting contests sometimes. You gotta just let those guys run with it. You gotta be able to kind of cater to and balance that creative spirit that they have. It’s intense; it’s been there forever. It’s the magic of Metallica; the way they arrange songs, their music. It’s great. Definitely, they wanted me to feel comfortable to the point where there was the whole money issue [as captured in the documentary Some Kind of Monster, Metallica gave Trujillo a million-dollar signing advance]—I mean, I would have done it for free. Come on, this is Metallica. I mean, when they called me to audition, I was like, “I would love to come in and play ‘Battery’ with you guys and send me home, I don’t care. I get to jam with Metallica.”

Has it been weird for you with this “Mission Metallica” thing, on top of Some Kind of Monster? The fact that basically since you’ve been in Metallica, there’s been cameras around all the time?
When I first joined the band—actually, not even when I first joined the band—when I was going for my first audition, I was being driven to the studio and I get a phone call and they say, “Oh, by the way, you don’t mind the camera thing, do you?” And I’m just kind of like, “Oh, what do you mean?” “Well, there’s gonna be a film crew there documenting all of this. That’s cool, right?” [Laughs] “I guess so,” you know.

You’re not gonna say no.
Yeah, what am I gonna say? And it was weird for me because prior to that, with Ozzy, they were filming his TV show, and I was trying to stay away from those cameras. You didn’t see a whole lot of me in that series because I was trying to avoid the cameras. And all of a sudden it’s like, well, I was thinking to myself, You’re not gonna be able to avoid this. They’re making this documentary and there’s just too much involved with filming the audition process, the whole thing. So, I had to kind of live with it. It’s strange. A lot of what’s been captured for “Mission Metallica” is not, like, really a film crew. It’s just a couple of cameras set up, like Big Brother’s watching you. So it’s a little easier than having four guys follow you around in your face the whole time. The beauty of the “Mission Metallica” deal is that there’s definitely some special moments captured. The creation of this music, some of that as far as the recording goes, and funny moments, a lot of funny moments, which is good. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of humor that kind of goes hand in hand with Metallica, just tons of it. Lars, James, and Kirk are funny guys, man. I’ve had the good fortune to work around some humor, whether with Ozzy or whatever, but Metallica is hilarious at times.

To what extent have you had to adjust to a new level of celebrity? Are you recognized on the street now a lot more often?
It’s very interesting. In San Francisco or in Los Angeles, people are cool. No one’s, like, running up to you and acting crazy. When you’re in other parts of the world, it’s very different. My wife and I tried to grab lunch in Ireland and we had these cats following us around. And it’s great, you appreciate that, but at the same time you also want them to respect your privacy. There are times when people, especially when they’re drinking, it gets to be a bit much. Overall, it’s been pretty good; people have been pretty respectful. I’m starting to understand it a bit more. At first I didn’t see it; I didn’t see that there was a change. Maybe I didn’t want to accept it. I feel that overall I’m pretty grounded. That’s one of my things; I always try to keep two feet on the floor. Even when I got the gig, I was like the boy in the bubble. Don’t let the outside world kind of affect me and my focus and what I have to do. I can only give 100% and do the best I can. No matter how much money or fame or fortune, to me, there’s always gotta be a work ethic with Metallica. These guys, they thrive on a strong work ethic. Whether it’s songwriting or putting the show together, or the flow of the show, just stuff like that. And you can’t really cut corners because they’re not into that. So I always really try to stay focused. I didn’t know what was going on in L.A. because I was in San Francisco, but I know there was probably a lot of people really excited because of where I’m from and this is Metallica. When I got back to L.A., whenever I’m in L.A., again, people are cool, man. I’ll be walking down the street or walking my kid down by the beach or something and you’ll get the “METALLICAAAAA!” and that’s the extent of it. It doesn’t get too much crazier than that. And the other side of that, too, is the house that I was living in then, yes, there were people that occasionally drove up or would kind of stare in or, you know, knock on the door. People from high school would show up that I hadn’t seen since I was 17 years old. Maybe they had a bit of a drug problem or whatever and are borderline on the streets. That thing actually happened to me a couple of times; that was really, really weird. Overall, it hasn’t been that bad. At a certain point, you go, Wow, OK, this is Metallica, I’m in Metallica, and you know, people are gonna want pictures or autographs, and you gotta try and do the best you can. That’s the bottom line. They’re your fans. We always do meet-and-greets for our fans; we never stray from that. It’s really important. We do the best we can.