Ted Nugent Forgets Metallica Member’s Name

Ted Nugent recently attempted to compliment legendary Metallica for imbuing their brand of heavy metal with “rhythm-and-blues” and said the thrash giants sounded as “if James Brown had more amplifiers and a white bass player.”

The only thing is, that Robert Trujillo 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 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.

Ted Nugent talks about Metallica

The subject arose as he was discussing the state of metal, saying:

“[Metallica] 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.”

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.”