Robert Trujillo‘s love for Cliff Burton and METALLICA was no secret. He recently shared on the “Toby Morse One Life One Chance” podcast that his youth training regimen involved running through the Santa Monica Mountains while listening to Ride the Lightning, his “ultimate” metal album.
“That was the album I would train to,” he said (as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). “The other one was SLAYER‘s Reign in Blood, and sometimes I had some ANTHRAX in there too. But Ride the Lightning was really the ultimate album for me. The thing that was so great about METALLICA — and I didn’t, unfortunately, get to see Cliff play, and it’s really weird because I became such good friends with Mike Bordin [drummer & Burton’s bandmate in their first band EZ-STREET.]. They were really close, and Mike‘s Ty‘s godfather…”
“This happened naturally, so when I was auditioning for METALLICA, Mike, knowing those guys but doing his own thing, was very supportive… I was crashing out on his couch. That’s where I would stay when I would come up to San Francisco, to the Bay Area, [when] we were working together in Ozzy‘s band. There was a photo of Cliff he had, and I remember when I was actually preparing for the audition, it’s two in the morning, and I’m looking up at the photo, and Cliff‘s like staring at me.”
While he never had the chance to forge a bond with Burton, Trujillo developed a close relationship with his predecessor, Jason Newsted. He even admitted to being closer to Newsted than any of his current bandmates before joining METALLICA.
“I even talked to Jason before I joined the band,” Trujillo revealed. “I was tighter with and closer to Jason than I was to the other guys in the group back in the day. I mean, he used to wear INFECTIOUS GROOVES shirts.”
During an appearance on The Surfer’s Journal‘s “Soundings” podcast this past September, Trujillo discussed a scene from the documentary Some Kind of Monster where he was visibly emotional upon receiving a $1 million signing bonus at his first METALLICA meeting.
“Well, that was weird and that was surreal,” he said. “I guess I didn’t believe it. It didn’t seem real. It’s funny, ’cause you don’t actually ever… It’s there, but it’s not there. Everybody says, ‘Wow, man.’ After taxes, it’s a little different than a million dollars. I guess I got so consumed with the workload to where I was, like, ‘Okay, that’s cool.’ But then in my head, I’m, like, ‘It’s time to get to work. I’ve got this mountain of catalog to learn.’
“And then there was this new album, St. Anger, that they hadn’t even played live yet, ’cause that album was created in the studio. So now I’ve gotta learn these songs. And I just saw it as, like, ‘I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. I’m not gonna worry about… I’m not gonna think about the money. I’m not gonna celebrate what’s going on because I’ve got work to do.’ I remember I didn’t go home for, like, six months, almost. I might’ve gone home for a night or two to go get some clothes or whatever I needed and to bring it back up north, but I basically moved to San Francisco right at that moment. And my life changed forever.”
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