Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [216]
Best – and worst – of all are the often toe-curling scenes with Dr Towle. Seen one moment sticking up signs in the studio with the words ‘Zone It’ on them, or suggesting the band enter a ‘meditative state’ when jamming together, some might find it easy to dismiss him as offering little they couldn’t have found just as easily in a self-help book. It’s through their sessions with Towle, however, that they finally address the fact that they never properly dealt with the death of Cliff Burton, and that they allowed that unexpressed grief to turn them against Jason first and then against themselves. As Towle told Classic Rock, ‘There was healing that needed to be done with Cliff Burton in using psycho-drama role-playing. We didn’t do it, but it was done in James’ rehab process. The band never said goodbye or grieved appropriately…They just ploughed on like they’ve always done, sweeping things under the rug…So much of what they’ve learned is that past undone and unfinished [business] contaminates the present.’
One of the less harrowing sequences in the movie shows them auditioning bass players. Early on, they vow the new guy will not suffer the same fate as Jason. Consequently, the people they try out come from high-profile bands in their own right, including Pepper Keenan from Corrosion of Conformity, Scott Reeder from Kyuss, Chris Wyse from The Cult, Twiggy Ramirez from A Perfect Circle, Eric Avery from Jane’s Addiction, and Danny Lohner from Nine Inch Nails. Each has something different to offer. But as Lars astutely points out, ‘If Cliff Burton showed up today maybe he wouldn’t be the guy, either.’ Eventually, though, the guy they do decide on, Rob Trujillo, has the most in common with Cliff musically – with his fulsome finger-picking style – and personally, in his laid-back, almost stoic ability to deal with anything the others might throw at him.
Born in Santa Monica, California, on 23 October 1964, Roberto Agustín Miguel Santiago Samuel Trujillo Veracruz had learned bass at fifteen. Growing up listening to the snapping rhythms of James Brown and Parliament but playing Black Sabbath and Van Halen songs at backyard parties, he was studying jazz at college when he dropped out to join Metallica’s contemporaries, Suicidal Tendencies, whose punk-metal crossover became absorbed into the proto-thrash scene (and who supported Metallica on tour in 1993). More recently Trujillo had been in Ozzy Osbourne’s backing band, appearing along the way on albums by funk-metallists Infectious Grooves, a solo album by Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell, and other one-off projects. Then thirty-eight and married with two children, a bulky, surfer dude rarely seen out of calf-length shorts and cut-off tee, unlike the men of Metallica he had never contemplated cutting his waist-length hair. But then Rob Trujillo was not a man lacking in knowledge of his own self-worth. He was vacationing in Tahiti when he got the call. ‘Well, come on over to the studio, we’ll hang out,’ he recalled being told by Kirk. With ‘zero time to learn songs’ he began by playing ‘Battery’, which he already ‘kind of knew’, followed by ‘Sad but True’, ‘Whiplash’ and ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’: ‘They don’t tell you a film crew is going to be there, and they’re making a documentary – until twenty minutes before – “You’re okay with that, right?” It’s funny. Prior to that, I was always trying to hide from the cameras Ozzy had following him around for his TV show. This was obviously going