Robert Trujillo confessed that he felt like a “loser” when he showed up to his METALLICA audition with a massive hangover, the result of a night of heavy drinking with Lars Ulrich. He hinted that the drummer might have been “testing” his limits to see how much he could handle.
In a newly released excerpt from the Beneath the Bassline documentary, Trujillo reminisced about experiencing the worst hangover of his life right as he was gearing up to prove his worth to his future bandmates.
“It was a two-day audition, but the first day was more fly-on-the-wall,” says Trujillo. “[Longtime METALLICA producer] Bob Rock had already recorded bass guitar and he was also producing St Anger, so I’m just there at the studio watching guitar tracks go down.
“The evening rolls around and Lars says, ‘Hey, let’s go get a drink.’ I could hold my own with a few beers, but we end up drinking until 5 in the morning. I wake up with the worst hangover of my life, and now I’ve got to play with METALLICA.”
The situation wouldn’t have been as precarious if James Hetfield hadn’t recently quit drinking just before the audition. Because of this, Trujillo remembers trying to keep his distance from Hetfield as much as possible.
“James is sober. He’s gone through rehab,” Trujillo says. “So I decided I would connect with my bass tech and decide what bass I was going to use, and what amp.
“What I was really trying to do was get away from Hetfield because I didn’t want him to smell the alcohol on me. Lars was probably just testing me to see how much I could handle, but I just felt like a loser.”
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