METALLICA Bassist On New CD: 'The Attitude And The Conviction Of The Old School Is There'

Author and journalist Joel McIver spoke with James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo of METALLICA before their spectacular Wembley Stadium show on Sunday night (July 8). McIver has released the following excerpts from the conversation to BLABBERMOUTH.NET:

Q: A lot of long-time METALLICA fans are asking one simple question. Is your new album going to be old-school thrash metal?

Trujillo: "There's a lot of everything, man. There's speed on this. There's a couple of tracks where you're gonna go 'Wow!' and I know you're gonna like it because it has the flavor of the old. But it has this kind of groove and power behind it that I think is us today. And then there's stuff that I think is pretty progressive. Sometimes, when you're in the thick of it, when we're all creating it together, it's hard to get the feel of an outside perspective. But then you get someone like Scott Ian from ANTHRAX, who is in the lounge waiting for us to go to dinner or something, and he's like 'Rob, man! That riff fuckin' ruled, bro! What song is that? Is that on the album?' and stuff like that — and you go, I think we're doing the right thing. I gotta say, the attitude and the conviction of the old school is there, the speed is there and the power, there's an element of groove there that's really strong."

Q: Are you contributing to the songwriting, Rob?

Trujillo: "Yes. This is a collaborative journey for us, and everybody's contributed riffs. There are some of my ideas in there, and there are a ton of James' ideas, and a lot of Kirk's ideas. Kirk was away a lot because his wife was having a baby, so often it was just me and James and Lars — so for me to witness the collaborative spirit between James and Lars was so motivating. It's kind of mindblowing. It was really neat and inspirational to see them both going back to the old-school method. The general spirit of a lot of these arrangements and ideas is taken from what it must have been like back in 1982."

Q: Does producer Rick Rubin make suggestions about the songs?

Trujillo: "Yes, he does. He actually makes suggestions, and you try them: some of them are great, and some of them aren't gonna work — but that's OK. Some of his words of wisdom were very inspirational in bringing this band back to the old school, and getting James and Lars to step back in time. It's pretty exciting, although it's not like there haven't been any headbutting contests: there's been a little bit of that, but sometimes that little bit of tension is good for the tracks."

Q: James and Kirk, you both played bass alongside Rob with SPINAL TAP at the Live Earth concert, also at Wembley Stadium, on Saturday. Did you enjoy it?

Hetfield: "Dude, I'm telling you, I told 'em yesterday, "Don't plug me in!" No, it was fun. He [points to Trujillo] ripped into this solo that was fuckin' unbelievable. I was like, 'Dude, why don't you do that with our shit? Come on!'"

Hammett: "I woke up this morning, and I'd been playing bass with my fingers — and my whole muscle all the way up my arm was sore. I just shook it out and it got better, but it's never happened to me before."

Trujillo: "When you're playing with your fingers in cold climates, and you're playing with these guys, your fingers want to cramp. Playing with METALLICA in cold temperatures is a taboo, man!"

Hetfield: "METALLICA give you the cramps!"

Trujillo: "We have a chiropractor guy who's with us."

Hetfield: "He's a voodoo doctor."

Hammett: "He's my personal assistant!"

Trujillo: "He's there and he makes things better. He gets in there and works it out in the forearm, and also in the bicep. It's like acupressure."

Hetfield: "He makes everything else hurt, so your arm doesn't hurt as much!"

Q: Robert, you've been a member of METALLICA for four years now. Do you remember much about your audition for the band back in late 2002?

Trujillo: "Oh yeah! [Therapist] Phil Towle was there and the cameras were all there, so it was kinda crazy. I didn't really know how to handle myself. At 11 o'clock on the first night, Lars said, 'Hey man, let's go get a beer,' and I was thinking, this guy could potentially be my boss, so I'd better go and have a cold one with him. I'm not a big drinker, but we ended up drinking until five in the morning. This guy's a crazy Viking, right? People talk about hazing — like the hazing that went along with Jason [Newsted] — and I felt in a way that this would be the beginning of their new version of hazing. I slept maybe three hours, and I literally had the worst hangover of my life — and then we went to the studio and I had to play. So on the DVD footage that you see of me doing my audition, I was pretty hammered!"

For more information on Joel McIver, visit www.joelmciver.co.uk.