‘They Sound Like James Brown Had More Amps and a White Bass Player’: Ted Nugent Attempts to Compliment Metallica

Gee, isn’t this awkward.

Ted Nugent tried to compliment Metallica for imbuing their brand of heavy metal with “rhythm-and-blues”, saying the thrash giants sounded as “if James Brown had more amplifiers and a white bass player.”The only thing is, Robert Trujillo (full name Roberto Agustín Miguel Santiago Samuel Trujillo Veracruz) is of Mexican and Native American descent. As for his sense of rhythm, Trujillo’s history-making tenures with Suicidal Tendencies and Infectious Grooves alone speak volumes.

In any case, The Nuge apparently isn’t up to speed with the world’s biggest metal band — even though Trujillo has been at its core for over two decades now — but he nevertheless attempted a compliment on his “Spirit Campfire” YouTube Show (with “attempted” being the key word).

The subject arose as he was discussing the state of metal, saying (transcription via Blabbermouth):

“There’s a lot of great music out there. Who else is out there playing? I think — isn’t Metallica still doing gigs? They do stadiums. They make 26 million dollars a night.”

“You guys are awesome. And they play soulful heavy metal. It’s more rhythm-and-blues-oriented heavy metal — just heavier… Like if James Brown had more amplifiers and a white bass player. I’m not knocking whatever that bass player’s name is in Metallica. He’s awesome. He’s got the rhythm groove down.”

Robert Trujillo’s heritage & its surprising connection to ‘Inamorata’

Although there are few instances of Trujillo speaking about his origins in interviews, ICT, an independent nonprofit platform focusing on Indigenous stories, says he is of Taos Pueblo origin.

Incidentally, ICT wrote how a chance meeting between Trujillo and another Taos Pueblo man, Mozart Gabriel Abeyta, led to Abeyta and his wife Helly March storyboarding the music video for “Inamorata” (from Metallica’s latest album ’72 Seasons”), as their art deeply impressed the bassist. Helly was reportedly even partly inspired by Trujillo when designing the music video’s main character.

Reflecting on the experience of working with Metallica, Abeyta told ICT in June last year:

“He was so respectful, and he loves creativity. You can feel that he loves making things happen. He seemed to be the producer on this video, and he was making it very clear that this was the most important video of the new album, this is one of the most important Metallica songs.”

“It was exciting to be able to hear it before it got released. The whole band wrote us a letter and said they were so grateful, and they really loved it, it was one of their favorite videos out of the whole entire album.”

He added:

“I was happy to do this, especially growing up in the ’90s. You go into the Pueblo houses and people would be jamming out on their battery-powered little radio players to Metallica.”