Quotes from Robert Trujillo

I feel like I've always been a great mediator.

'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.

We enjoy playing small shows, big shows, whatever. There's the energy of the visual production, and all that stuff starts to happen, so when you see it come to life, it's pretty exciting.

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 like that Metallica has found a way to have these non-pedestrian arrangements but then the vocal melody is strong and intense. I've always appreciated that as a fan.

We see kids out there on their parent's shoulders rocking out. And that's really special.

I don't generally like things that are too pedestrian. But at the same time, and if I'm in the right mood, hey - I ain't gonna lie - I listen to Joni Mitchell. I listen to 'Blue,' I listen to Miles Davis.

'Justice' is the biggest challenge 'cause it's also complex in the arrangements.

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.

Bill Ward, when you hear his beats, he's not just playing a straight 4/4 beat; he's doing almost a hip-hop beat. There's a song called 'Sweet Leaf.' The drum beat that he's playing, he's trying to kind of swing and funkify it. Now, is he doing a great job of it? Maybe not. Maybe.

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.

That's all I ever do, just try and do the best I can and cater to the song, cater to the music.

Joe Walsh is somebody who... he's a writer, obviously, and he's a singer-songwriter, whatever, but at the end of the day, when it comes to the Eagles, he's there to play guitar, and he's there to supply whatever is needed for that band, and that is what I feel with Metallica.

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.

I knew Rocky George, the guitar player, 'cause I went to junior high school with him, so I've known him for many years.

The great thing about Santa Monica civic auditorium was it was a place you could ride your bike to. In this case, my dad dropped me and my friends off, and we'd go see Ronnie James Dio or Jean-Luc Ponty or Weather Report or the Pretenders.

With my experience with Metallica, I've already surfed Portugal, Morocco, and all over Australia with Kirk.

If you choose to take care of yourself, you're going to get more mileage for your career.

I'm a person that takes on situations from passion. I get passionate about things, and I try to help.

What I have learned about Metallica is that it's all about taking chances and challenges.

We like to challenge ourselves, and having new material and presenting it to the world is fun and exciting and fresh.

With our producer, Greg Fidelman, it was really a joy to work with him and to try different things and experiment.

I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.