22 years have passed since the departure of Jason Newsted from Metallica: the most “mistreated” member of the band

After the death of their bassist, Cliff Burtonin a traffic accident in Sweden during a tour of the band, the remaining members of metallica they were forced to find a replacement just three weeks after the death of their partner and friend. As his replacement has not overcome mourning, Jason Newstedwho was a huge fan of the lineup, became the target of all the frustration and pain of Hetfield and company.

On the first album he recorded with the band, ‘…And Justice For All’ the bass is practically inaudible. This has two reasons, the first is that the instrument is recorded at the same frequency as the rhythm guitar of James Hetfield and both mark the same notes. When it was time to record his part, Newsted was met by a sound engineer who told him to just play and didn’t get a chance to talk to the rest of the group about how the mix should sound. However, the members of Metallica, more specifically lars ulrich and James, forced the sound engineer to turn the level all the way down, so that the line was almost inaudible.

However, this was not all that happened. the many jokes and mistreatment of his partner became a constant within the formation. One of the first was in Japan. The bassist had only been in the lineup for 11 days and was experiencing one of his first parties as a member of Metallica, so apparently he was in a state of complete intoxication. Then, kirk hammett He decided to play a practical joke on her, telling her to try a spoonful of a delicious “mint ice cream” that turned out to be wasabi, that is, a condiment made from radish that is extremely spicy. The musician obviously started choking and coughing, totally drunk and choked on the condiment. When he recovered, he realized that all the gang members had left him alone at the table where they were having dinner. Then, a waiter appeared with the bill, which amounted to an immense amount of money. Jason looked around, not quite believing what was happening. Luckily, it was all a practical joke and, after a while, his road manager showed up to take care of everything.

Another of the “details” that his bandmates had with him was to throw all his clothes and belongings out of the window of the hotel where they were staying, only to later destroy his room, also filling it with toothpaste and Shaving cream. “Welcome to the band, man.!” they yelled as they ran off, leaving Newsted alone and humiliated.

When, in 2001, the bassist left the band, it had become an institution in the history of rock. It must be taken into account that this was part of the recording of, in addition to ‘…And Justice for All’, the ‘Black Album’, ‘Load’, ‘Re-Load’ and the ‘Garage Inc.’. Despite his fierce performances, full of energy and in which he performed what are surely the best choirs that any member of Metallica has ever done, his compositional contributions, at least according to his colleagues, were quite limited. That does not mean that Newsted was a bad musician, but that he had never finished being integrated into the group. In fact, all of his creative restlessness was derived from an alternative project, echobrain.

This band held great promise and, with the members of Metallica taking more and more time off, was fully compatible with Newsted’s obligations as bassist for the San Francisco band. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, the different managers and publicity teams had agreed to help Jason charter his alternative project, which also did a different style from his main group. However, James Hetfield found out what was happening and his reaction was the worst possible. Echobrain was suddenly banned by everyone around Metallica and the bassist made the decision to leave the band.

In the documentary’Some Kind Of Monster‘, in which the process of rebuilding the formation is shown, as well as the recording of the disc ‘St. Anger’ and the multiple problems that the band members went through during that time. Jason Newsted is mentioned at various times in the documentary, including a moment when the band decides to play again and he finds out and leaves them a rather angry voicemail. They criticize him and decide that he has no chance of coming back to the group.

His substitute, in the first instance, was not robert trujillowho at that time had already played with great musicians such as Ozzy Osbourneotherwise Bob Rock, who was in charge of recording the bass lines for the failed ‘St. Anger’. However, after an exhaustive audition, Trujillo was chosen to enter Metallica. It seems that, thanks to the passing of the years and experience, this musician has indeed found a comfortable and definitive place within the group. Despite everything, the story of Jason Newsted in Metallica will always be that of the artist who, despite having helped the line-up tremendously, never had the opportunity to be a full member of the band.