METALLICA bassist Robert Trujillo spoke to NBC Boston about having his twelve-year-old son, Tye Trujillo, a member of NorCal group THE HELMETS, filling in on bass for KORN‘s recent South American tour after that group’s regular bassist, Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu, was unable to make the shows due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
“Every night he’s fearless and he’s just bringing the performance, playing the songs, even improvisational moments within the set,” Robert said of his son’s two-week stint with KORN (see video below). “Which is really a challenge, especially for… for anybody, let alone a twelve-year-old.”
Robert Trujillo previously told Brazil’s Globo Play that he “never forced” Tye to play music. He explained: “I always felt that if he wanted to embrace an instrument, great; I’d try to help him with it. So initially, at first, it was drums. And then around that same time, when he was one, he had a little plastic guitar, and he would play it all the time, just strumming it — always strumming it everywhere, to the point where the plastic was worn down.”
He continued: “It’s a beautiful thing, ’cause he’s still a twelve-year-old, and he still acts wild and crazy, as a twelve-year-old should, but when it comes to music, he’s very focused.”
Robert Trujillo told the Huffington Post that Tye is “an amazing bass player and a really great writer. The bass lines that he’s writing and the riffs, I’m like, ‘Man, I wish I had written that.’ He’s coming up with stuff on his own, but he’s also been influenced by players like Jaco Pastorius, but also Miles Davis or BLACK SABBATH or LED ZEPPELIN. He’s like a sponge. He loves funk. He loves James Brown, he’s this little twelve-year-old who’s soaking up and embracing all this different music and I can tell that it’s helping him creatively in what he’s writing with his band.”
Tye‘s own band, THE HELMETS, counts TOOL, ALICE IN CHAINS and METALLICA among their influences. Tye told Billboard last year, “We hate pop, we despise it. It’s all the same sound.”
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