“The right hand of Hetfield is the heartbeat of Metallica.” Referring to singer/guitarist James Hetfield, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo opens our conversation about new album Death Magnetic. Trujillo replaced Jason Newstead after Metallica’s infamous 2002 St. Anger sessions – the recordings immortalised in Jay Berliner and Bruce Sinofsky’s acclaimed Some Kind Of Monster depicting Trujillo’s induction into the band. It was – surely – the least private audition in history.
Death Magnetic is Trujillo’s debut with Metallica. A veteran with time served with hardcore legends Suicidal Tendencies and funk/metal pioneers Infectious Grooves on his CV, Trujillo toured with the band in the wake of St. Anger, but hadn’t recorded with them until now. At the same time, the band has severed ties with long-time producer Bob Rock. Trujillo says the change was a natural evolution.
“We had a meeting, and thought it would be good to look at other options. Bob Rock had been part of the sound for so many years, they felt, with a new bass player, it was time for a new vibe. We knew Rick Rubin would have an interest in producing Metallica.”
Where Bob Rock is musician as well as producer – he played bass on studio sessions before Trujillo was hired – Rick Rubin is not. In Trujillo’s words, Rubin – who’s worked with acts as diverse as Run DMC, Slayer, and Johnny Cash – is more of a ‘song doctor’. “It’s more about what he feels and hears in the music, and he’s very clever with the lyric phase,” says Trujillo, who also says Rubin was upfront with the band about their identity as long-standing metal icons. “He said, ‘you should reconnect with the past. How would you have arranged this song in 1981? What were you thinking, what were you listening to back then?’ He was saying not to run away from the past, from the old music. I thought that was great,” enthuses Trujillo.
But he says the ‘Rubin effect’ went deeper than a creative recording approach.
“When we tracked these songs, Rick said ‘stand up like you’re performing...’ I was actually head-banging! There was no crowd – but I felt the energy coming through the speakers. When you hear these songs you hear a bit more angst in James’ voice. It sounds like he’s working a lot harder, in a positive way. There’s more grit coming from the attitude he’s presenting. Rubin made that happen.”
In the middle of the St. Anger sessions, Hetfield entered rehab, putting the album on indefinite hold and forcing Metallica to re-assess their internal dynamic. While Hetfield got himself straight, the rest of the band got straight with each other. Some Kind of Monster depicted the pain of the band with brutal honesty; if St. Anger was a purging of the past, Death Magnetic is a leap into the future, at the same time returning to the defining Metallica fundamentals. But Trujillo says Hetfield’s working relationship with his bandmates remains changed for the better.
“He seemed a bit guarded in the beginning. You really had to abide by his schedule and his world, but it seems nowadays he’s got his groove back,” he says. “If someone’s having a drink now, he’s fine with it. In the past you could sense his discomfort. It was a strange time for him to be creative, maybe. He’s got his juju back, his fire. James has really blossomed into this fine, active person again.”
Few other bands command such loyalty, dedication and mass popularity as Metallica. Although they couldn’t get arrested on commercial radio in the pre-web ’80s, they defined metal’s evolution with vanguard efforts like Kill ’Em All and And Justice For All, through sheer grassroots metal fandom. While they’ve sometimes clashed with fans online, in 2008 the band were determined to be web-friendlier, instigating missionmetallica.com where fans could track daily recording activity, demystifying the recording process.
“It was definitely an experiment,” says Trujillo. “We realised the fans liked a day-to-day update on what we were going through. It ended up being very cool because every song is captured, every special moment we experienced.”
Death Magnetic is out September 13 via Universal
Metallica’s take on Global Metal
When Global Metal directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn (see page 27) caught up with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, they
asked him about the vexed question of downloading.
Given that Metallica infamously sued file-sharing site Napster, his response was slightly awkward, but McFadyen says drummer Ulrich was magnanimous.
“That was a memorable moment! We didn’t get an interview for Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. When we walked into Metallica headquarters and met Lars his first words were, ‘Don’t make another film without us!’ Given the stories from metal heads in the Middle East … if it wasn’t for the internet, most of these kids would never had heard Metallica!”
