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Joining an existing band is always a little bit daunting, but what happens when that existing band happens to be Metallica? In a recent interview with LiveDaily, bassist Robert Trujillo sat down to talk about Grammy nominations, how Metallica has grown since he joined in 2003, and what the future holds for the band.
LiveDaily: Congratulations on your Grammy nominations. At this point in your career, what do those Grammy nominations mean to you?
Robert Trujillo: It depends on the situation. Obviously, if you're Milli Vanilli and you get nominated for seven Grammys and then you have them taken away from you, it's not the greatest thing in the world. [For us,] it's an honor. We worked very hard on this record. Metallica, one thing I can say is definitely the work ethic is next level. It's been a great learning experience. I've been in a lot of situations, as you know. It's been a seriously great learning experience to sit alongside Hetfield and Lars and help them compose a song and watch the arranging process. It's like going to the best school of songwriting you could ever imagine. To be recognized for our efforts is wonderful and we're happy about that.
Metallica was nominated for three different awards at this year’s 51st Annual Grammy Awards. The song "My Apocalypse" has been nominated for the Best Metal Performance award, "Suicide & Redemption" has been nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and the album that these songs hail from, "Death Magnetic", is nominated for Best Rock Album.
What is the most important thing you learned so far from them?
Definitely in the world of Metallica there's a lot of detail that comes into the picture. Someone like James, like in his lyrics, for each word he'll have three words. He's very organized. Each song has a special font--the way it's written and everything about it. And that kind of detail goes into learning guitar parts or developing his vocal harmonies. It's really impressive to see that in them. Arranging songs, right down to the small details in the rhythms and the transitions and stuff. One of the coolest things about this body of music, to me, is [producer] Rick Rubin wanted us to write a batch of music that we could perform live. And we did that--right down to recording it. [Rubin said], "Everybody stand up and play like you're performing these songs." The whole theme was [to] kind of like try and imagine ourselves trying to impress an audience who doesn't know who we are at a small bar or a backyard party. We kind of went into that zone. He had Lars and James really reunite with the past and the thrashy years. That's why there's definitely moments of the old school on there, too.
How have you seen the band grow since you joined Metallica almost six years ago?
In a lot of ways: For starters, me, personally and Kirk, we've now got children. When I first joined Metallica back in 2003, I wasn't married, I didn't have kids. Now I’m sitting here with a 2-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son, happily married. That's a major transition in one's life. When I first joined the band, I was kind of like the boy in the bubble. I really had to focus on being a part of this band and learning over 23 years of catalog at the time, then learning all the "St. Anger" material, which was really crazy. So I had to create this bubble environment, so I could only focus on that. That would have been difficult with the full-on family back then. And then also Kirk, as I mentioned, has a couple kids as well. Lars had a child just over a year ago. There's a lot of new magic in the band, somewhere we can all connect, where we share the same interests. Outside of a lot of things like family, we don't have a lot of the same interests. We're all different. Our families sort of bring us together. The music brings us together, definitely. It's nice to have the family aspect in there too, something we obviously love and cherish. We can all share that.
What do you see for the future of Metallica? You have one more album left on your deal with Warner Bros., correct?
Basically, I don't know the technical details. I can only tell you this: outside of the business side of things--which is probably what you're asking me--on a creative level, the sky's the limit. To me, "Death Magnetic" is only a launch pad. We're already jamming on new ideas and new riffs. There's a rhythm-section thing that I'm feeling with Lars that I'd like to dive into even more so with the future. It's great to be playing thrashy, heavy riffs again, too. That's one of the things with this band--there's no shortage of musical ideas. When you check out some of the other bands that have been around for so many years, sometimes the hardest thing is to stay motivated. Sometimes bands will end up playing almost like-- how do you say it?--a tribute scenario where they're playing all the hits all the time. That's cool. But the future of [that type of] band doesn't seem as interesting. I think we still got it in us to create interesting music and to get even better with it. That's kind of fun.