Kirk Hammett regrets how he treated Jason Newsted
It’s commendable that any of the members of Metallica wanted to continue past 1986. After losing founding member Cliff Burton in a tragic bus crash, the rest of the band didn’t know where to go next, knowing that a core foundation of their sound had died that night. While they were able to forge on with Jason Newsted at the helm, Kirk Hammett admitted that not everything was smooth sailing throughout the process.
Half a world away, Jason Newsted was also grieving Burton’s passing, telling Behind the Music, “I remember tears hitting the newspaper as I read that headline. ‘Cliff Burton killed in a bus accident. 24 years old’”. As the rest of the band regrouped in San Francisco, Newsted found his way to the top of a shortlist of potential people to join Metallica.
After playing through every song in their setlist, Newsted came out on top, getting the gig and touring Japan only a week after the funeral proceeding wrapped up. Though he may have secured the gig of a lifetime, Hammett also remembered this being a dark time for Metallica.
When recalling the auditions, Hammett found it hard to stay focused, remembering, “I just remember those early bass auditions being really bad because we were drinking throughout the whole thing. We were still grieving, obviously”. Instead of going to any form of counselling, the band seemingly decided to take out all of their pent-up anger and aggression on the new guy.
Aside from the casual teasing that would go on in any band, Newsted found himself having to make up for not being heard in the studio. When working on new material for the album And Justice For All, Newsted’s bass parts were severely brought down in the mix to the point of being nearly inaudible.
When talking about that period after the fact, Hammett thought that the band needed more time to regroup, explaining in Gibson Icons, “I hate to say it, but Jason became the scapegoat for all those feelings that we did not know how to process. And to this day, I regret behaving like that and then taking that attitude, but you didn’t know better. As far as the grieving period is concerned, I think we’re all still grieving”.
While Newsted was able to grin and bear it throughout most of his career, things started to not sit well with him during the early 2000s. In light of Metallica making a new record in St Anger, Newsted wanted to get out his creative energy in his side project, Echobrain, only to be shot down by James Hetfield.
When talking about it later, Newsted was determined not to be stepped on anymore, telling MTV Icons, “I asked James, straight up, ‘Dude, you’re saying that you can’t be in a band with me if I put the Echobrain record out’. After he said yes, I said, ‘okay, then I’m going to have to step off’”.
The dark times for Metallica were just beginning, though, with Hetfield later leaving the band to go to rehab before finally reassembling in the early 2000s to make St Anger. Though Robert Trujillo was brought in as the best replacement for the bassist position, it’s hard not to see Newsted as the main emotional casualty of Metallica.
