Robert Trujillo
It's all about the experience and having a good time and connecting with the fans.Collection: Experience
As long as there is communication, everything can be solved.Collection: Communication
I feel that music is such an inspirational form of energy, as baseball is. And especially with Metallica, believe it or not, our shows are very physical. Sports is a very physical thing, too.Collection: Inspirational
Between 'St. Anger' and 'Death Magnetic,' we had, if I'm not mistaken, five kids born. And, of course, that would allow things to take time.Collection: Anger
You can be an incredible player, but when you get onstage, you've gotta be yourself, and you've gotta bring it, as we say, and that just means give 120 percent.
I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.
One thing about being in Metallica is I've always felt challenged.
When I was younger, I was trying to create from attitude more than anything else.
Playing with Ozzy was a dream come true.
Jaco Pastorius gave the bass a new voice. I mean, he was very inspired by singers like Frank Sinatra. And in a lot of ways, maybe he wanted to be a singer himself.
With the fretless bass, you have a different tone and different sound, a different dynamic to the instrument, so you can really make it sing.
Sometimes artists die young, and we don't know exactly why. I think that, in life, you have these special individuals, whether it's Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or Kurt Cobain. They're on this journey - they're on this earth to change things, to make things incredible - and then they're not with us anymore.
'Justice' is the biggest challenge 'cause it's also complex in the arrangements.
'Frayed Ends Of Sanity' off the 'Justice' album is a song that I really wanted to play with the band, and for years and years, I was always like, 'Let's play this song!' But I'll tell you something: I started working on that song almost from the very first time I joined the band.
Flamenco was probably the first music that I may have heard as a baby, because my father played flamenco.
My father had a friend who actually had a hollow-body bass guitar and didn't work through an amp, but because it was hollow body, I could play it. So I kind of played on that for about a year, learning scales and all that. And here I am.
It's really, really great; it's special when people embrace your music.
We just like to make great songs and have fun, and if people want to nominate us for a Grammy and celebrate it, then we'll take it.
You just go out and do the best that you can. I think people feel that, and they embrace it, and it's a part of what makes Metallica special.
I've been wearing Vans since I was a little kid. I wear them on stage, and I grew up skateboarding and surfing.
James Hetfield, I mean, the minute he plugs in his guitar and adjusts the tone knob, he comes up with the world's greatest riff.
We all grew up with Black Sabbath. I mean, there's no secret there. Any of us, any of the members of any band I've ever been in, or anyone I've ever worked with.
Sabbath is always some of the best music ever. And the reason is because it grooves. It's funky. It's heavy. It's got lots of great changes, twists, and turns.
I was in a party band in the early '80s, and we played Sabbath and Ozzy songs as well as Rush and Van Halen... all that kinds of stuff.
With our fans, a lot of times, people get upset because maybe they didn't get what they wanted, whatever. But we always write the songs for us, number one.
It's always nice, no matter what style of music, as long as it's grooving and you feel that, I feel that's what makes... part of what makes a great song, for sure.
A lot of the hardcore fans wanna hear the deep cuts - songs like 'Orion' or maybe like a 'Disposable Heroes' - you know, songs that we don't play all the time - and then, of course, they wanna hear 'Sandman' and 'Nothing Else Matters' and some of the hits.
You've gotta be careful because art is really important to most people, and you wanna respect that as much as possible. So I live by that rule.
With our producer, Greg Fidelman, it was really a joy to work with him and to try different things and experiment.
Mike Clark, who's a really amazing surfer, got me back into surfing. I surfed a lot from '82 to '86, and then I kind of started slacking.
Being able to surf in Tahiti and places like Brazil was unreal.
With my experience with Metallica, I've already surfed Portugal, Morocco, and all over Australia with Kirk.
I think every Metallica album is unique in its own way.
I've been a baseball fan in the early part of my life, so through the '70s and the '80s, I was a huge fan. I actually followed the Dodgers back then, back in the Kirk Gibson years, Steve Garvey.
It's really a rush and a thrill to feel you've been part of a body of music that's inspiring.
If you choose to take care of yourself, you're going to get more mileage for your career.
I've played with the best drummers in rock, ranging from Josh Freese to Brooks Wackerman to even Dave Lombardo.
There's a lot of personality in Lars's drumming. That's what makes it unique.
There were a lot of different styles in the house - Motown, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, jazz - and my dad played flamenco guitar. Soon I realized that bass was what was really grooving me.
That's what I find so special: when you actually imagine something. But really, when it comes to you in a dream, and then you can bring it to life on the screen, it's very powerful.
I've always been a fan of animation. As a kid, I used to watch a lot of the Saturday-morning cartoons, and I was always a fan of even claymation and that whole medium.
To have the opportunity to bring 'Tallica Parking Lot' to life through images was really special. And also to have a lot of my heroes and my friends in the film was really, really special. People like Lemmy from Motorhead.
I'm a person that takes on situations from passion. I get passionate about things, and I try to help.
I call it a process of elimination. You're nurturing ideas, and that takes time. What happens is there's so many, what I say, 'great ideas.' What you have to do is try to consolidate them and put them into one song, and then your song becomes eight minutes long.
'Tallica Parking Lot' is, basically, roughly about a four-minute animated short which is centered around the parking lot of Metallica, and that can be anywhere in the world.
Lars Ulrich is not a jazz drummer, but he grew up listening to jazz. Why? Because his father, Torben - an incredible tennis player - loved jazz. Jazz musicians used to stay at their house.
Traditionally, the role of the bass player was just to keep things simple and solid, so it's really a special thing when you can get a player that can actually bring in a lot of presence and also a visual presence, too.
I had a band called Infectious Grooves back in the Nineties. That music was really a mixture of styles, and we had some stuff that was punk rock, ska, but then we had a lot of funk in there.
'Mama I'm Coming Home' is one song that I think is incredible. One of his best songs ever written. Lemmy wrote the lyrics to that.
I'm always pulling and really feeding off of my inspirations. I think most musicians do.