Bassist Robert Trujillo admitted Metallica was rusty before starting rehearsals for last summer's “Encore Drive-In Nights” concert broadcast. Trujillo spoke to the band's official So What! magazine, and explained where he was physically after having so much time off due to the pandemic: “I'd say mid-July, we received a text that said we were moving forward with the gig. . . At that point, I was like, 'Man, I'm rusty, the rust has definitely settled.' In the house, I'm downstairs and I hear (son) Tye playing every day, and then all of a sudden it kind of dawned on me that wow, I haven't even been playing bass so much.”
He went on to say, “So when this gig opportunity came, it forced me to get back on the bass and start hammering out the songs. Then you realize how those muscles and those tendons in your arms, and even up to your shoulder, they're not active. Along with the calluses! Y'know, bass strings are big and fat, man, and they hurt. It hurts when you haven't been playing in a while.”
Trujillo revealed: “I asked James (Hetfield) after the first or second day of rehearsal, how do your fingers feel? He goes, 'Sore, totally sore.' So it wasn't even just me, y'know? I was like, 'OK, good, it's not just me.”
Robert Trujillo talked to us about the August 29th concert shown at hundreds of open-air drive-in theaters across North America. He recalled the band performing a full-on gig — to nobody: “The preparation was at HQ — at our rehearsal studio — and that led us to a location in Sonoma, (California). An outdoor area. And obviously, it's without a crowd, which was a bit strange. So, you're literally playing — Y'know, when they say, 'crickets'; you use the term, 'Oh man, we played to crickets' — y'know what I mean? 'Nobody showed up,' that's literally what it is. You're playing to crickets. You hear the crickets (laughs) in between songs. So, this was for the wildlife, y'know?”
Robert Trujillo On Metallica Performing Pandemic Concert :
