DOWN's PEPPER KEENAN: 'Death Magnetic' Is 'What METALLICA Is Supposed To Be Doing'

Mia Timpano, a metal writer and broadcaster from Melbourne, Australia, recently conducted a backstage interview with DOWN guitarist Pepper Keenan. The seven-minute chat, which originally aired on the Melbourne radio station 3RRR 102.7 FM, can be streamed and/or downloaded as an MP3 audio file at this location. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow below.

On whether METALLICA's "Death Magnetic" would have been a better album with him playing bass on it: (Keenan auditioned for the vacant bassist slot before Robert Trujillo landed the gig.)

"Hahaha! Oh, I don't know! There'd have been some head-buttin', I'm sure. Hahaha. You know, I love what James [Hetfield, METALLICA frontman] does, man. He's got a great right hand and a great sense of melody. Sometimes I think there's too much thought put into it nowadays, because it's such a giant band. I think Trujillo's got it covered though. I think he's doing a great job."

On METALLICA's attempt to recapture the vibe from some of their '80s albums on "Death Magnetic":

"I mean, sometimes you can [go backwards]. I think the main thing that happened was that they had Trujillo in the band. So by having Trujillo, they could do things that they were doing with Cliff Burton that they couldn't do with Jason Newsted before, if that makes any sense. Because Trujillo plays with his fingers and they could really attack it. I think it brought some nostalgic thing to Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] and James, where they felt like they had the energy and the attitude, maybe, to go backwards now and start doing that. I think that's the main thing. I think they do it well. They ought to. Hell, they started it! And that record is what METALLICA is supposed to be doing. They kinda honed it down, and ['Death Magnetic' producer] Rick Rubin's very good at figuring things out and getting back to the basic essence of what makes that band, and I think he did a good job on it." [Interviewer: "I really like it when Trujillo moves like a crab."] "Hahaha! I'm not a big fan of the crab walk. He knows that."

On being artistically challenged:

"We [DOWN] don't set limits on ourselves. And that's the good thing about DOWN — it's a constantly evolving thing. We're not going to pigeonhole ourselves into one type of genre. If we want to write a bunch of acoustic shit around a camp fire, we will. In fact, we probably will. . . We're also stupid enough to not be scared of repeating ourselves. Because I enjoy the idea of playing ham-fisted guitar sometimes. Who gives a shit? You know, if you're beating the E chord to death and it sounds killer, and the crowd's going bananas, I'm not above that. We don't have to be elitist and start getting fancy or more progressive. We're still smart enough — and dumb enough — to know that going backwards is the right thing to do sometimes too."

On whether things happen for a reason, or life is just a wheel of fortune:

"Haha! Yeah, a little bit of both. I think I've been very lucky. Sometimes I wonder why certain things happen to me, or why I've been blessed. But then, you look back at it and you start to realize, fuck, I worked my ass off! I played guitar twelve hours a day for years and years and years while everybody else went to college and did the right thing, and now they're divorced and out of a job. Everybody thought I was crazy. But you start to realize that everybody now goes, 'Man, you're so fucking lucky; you get to travel the world.' It's like, no, motherfucker! I sat down and I played guitar all day long while you were going to college taking 'How to Write an English Paper' — things that you really didn't believe in yourself. I took something that I believed in and focused on it and now it's kind of paid off. I think that there's a degree of 'Come what may' attitude. But I think people who work hard tend to be successful at whatever they wanna do. And people who are focused and know what they wanna do tend to be able to control the situation better."

Photo courtesy of Downboard.com: