Robert Trujillo Talks on Learning Metallica’s “…And Justice For All” Songs

Metallica’s …And Justice For All is one of the band’s most classic albums, but it’s often maligned by bass players due to the almost inaudible bass. Bassist Jason Newsted‘s bass was just about mixed out of the album. Current member Robert Trujillo recently told Rolling Stone Australia that songs from the 1988 album were hardest to learn when he joined the band.

“Justice is the biggest challenge cos it’s also complex in the arrangements,” he told the magazine. “So as a bass player, it’s kind of open territory, and you cater to the riff, but then you listen to the live stuff, see what Jason was doing. ‘Frayed Ends Of Sanity’ off the Justice album is a song that I really wanted to play with the band, and for years and years I was always like, ‘Let’s play this song!’ But I’ll tell you something, I started working on that song almost from the very first time I joined the band. I knew some day we would play that song, and I knew that if I didn’t do my homework that when that day came I would have a hard time learning it the week before. So I nurtured that song for years, and we played it for the first time last summer, five times, and it was a dream come true for me.

“By the way, the tablature books too were very helpful when I first joined the band. Anything I could do. I wasn’t getting the master tapes back then. It’s a different time now. Nowadays you can go online and you can get the masters for just about any band out there, but back in the day you didn’t have that option. Kirk uses the tab books sometimes: ‘Let me get the tab books I’ve gotta learn my solo from “Dyer’s Eve” again!'”

Trujillo and the rest of Metallica will release their tenth studio album Hardwired… To Self Destruct on November 18th.