“METALLICA IS INGRAINED IN US”
Gabriela Quintero – one half of Rodrigo y Gabriela – on capturing the intensity of a Metallica song and developing her own technique for metal on nylon strings
How did you come to cover The struggle Within on The metallica black list?
Honestly, we love The Black Album. Any tune would have been great. They requested that we do The struggle within. We are Metallica fans. In our starting period back in Mexico City we had a metal band and we used to play Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Testament, all those bands. We had that ingrained in us. I guess when you love something so much it comes easily to figure it out. Metallica have a lot of melodies and harmonies. It’s very musical, so it was easy to adapt. We started off doing the ballads like Welcome home( san it ari um ). Progressively we started to put in all the rhythms and beats.
The riffs sound heavy when you play them even though you’re using classical guitars. How do you do that?
The instruments are classical but the techniques are not. Rodrigo plays the riffs with a pick and does all the mutes like on an electric. I concentrate on the drums and the harmonies, and play the full chord, not just powerchords. Then I add the rhythmic elements, which is not classical guitar! We do it like that because then it sounds intense. It’s important to capture the intensity and aggressiveness of metal.
What have Metallica said to you about your covers?
Robert Trujillo (Metallica bassist) invited us to play with him in Chicago. We played Orion, and that night he took us to House of Blues to meet James and Kirk. We were completely breathless, because to us they’re heroes. James said he’d seen us on TV, and said “You guys were amazing.” Sometimes when you meet your heroes you’re disappointed, but not this time.
How do you go about arranging a song in your own style?
The secret ingredient is that you really have to love the song that you’re going to rearrange. They gave us The struggle within, which is the most non-commercial track on The Black Album. It’s got a great riff, great drumming, it’s very groovy, and to translate all that without losing the beat was a challenge. There are some changes that are not obvious. I came up with an arrangement, and then Rod played the riffs with all downstrokes. Some guitarists use alternate picking but in metal that loses the power. If you watch flamenco or Mexican folk guitarists, you can see they do a lot of percussion on their instruments. I didn’t know how to do that, so I came up with an idea and thought I’d figured it out. Then when we lived in Spain I watched the flamenco guys, and I played nothing close to what they were doing! So this sound made me discover another different style.