(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Stills)
Tue 19 August 2025 19:30, UK
Poor Jason Newstead. All he ever wanted to do was play in Metallica.
Even taking into account the fame and fortune that came with it, it’s hard to argue that he had a rough old time of it. The tragic part is just how understandable it all is. You might think you’d sacrifice a lot for the sake of performing with your favourite band. Seems like a decent life, leaving behind mediocrity and unfulfilled ambitions in favour of strapping on a guitar and rocking out with your heroes.
You don’t even need to be a core member of the band. In fact, it might be better that way. They’ve already created your favourite music, you don’t want to get in the way. You also know you’re never going to be really “one of the boys”, so what’s a little ribbing here and there? It’s still a lot better than the kind of disrespect you get from working any customer facing job anywhere, and that doesn’t come with rocking out in front of packed out stadiums all over the world.
This was the logic that famously decent chap Jason Newstead brought into his stint with Metallica, especially taking into account the reasons for his joining. Founding bassist Cliff Burton had tragically died in a bus crash at the tender age of 24, so Newstead, of thash also-rans Flotsam Jetsam, was tapped up shortly afterwards to take his place. Being the nice guy that he is, he didn’t want to step on any toes as the band were literally grieving a friend of theirs. This was, as it always is, a colossal mistake.
Because Metallica expressed their grief by being colossal dickheads to Newstead for basically the entire time he was in the band. Their mistreatment of him went well beyond hazing and into genuinely disturbing levels of bullying, to the point where their desire to hurt Newstead began actively derailing their music. After all, the band’s first release after he joined was …And Justice For All. A masterpiece of heavy metal, but one that has a constant asterisk over it by virtue of all the bass being removed from the mix by Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield.
Why did Metallica treat Jason Newstead so badly?
To this day, the band swears blind that the record just sounds better that way. Considering that the best version of …And Justice For All is considered to be the version on Guitar Hero: Metallica because you can, y’know, hear the bass on it, I’d take that testament with a pinch of salt. This is especially galling because the very first song the band worked on for the record, the song that helped them restart the band after its lowest possible moment, was a song whose riff was written by Jason Newstead.
Not only that, but that song? Only fucking ‘Blackened’, one of the most beloved, enduring songs in the band’s back catalogue. That they would not have had with any other bassist. This wasn’t enough for Ulrich, Hetfield and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, though. Who, literally just after being handed one of their best songs on a platter, proceeded to completely shut Newstead out of the writing process for the rest of the record.
This is a gall they still have as well. In an interview with Kerrang, Hammett doubled down on this in a quite shockingly blunt manner. He said, “We were waiting for [Jason] to write some big, epic stuff, but it never really came. It was a nonstarter, in retrospect. It was great that he was there and was enthusiastic about it, but he didn’t make any huge contributions. I don’t know why that is, but it’s kind of just how the chips fell.”
It really does bring to mind football pundits saying things like “well, beside scoring 20 goals a season, what does that striker bring to the team, really?!” Newstead clearly did himself no favours, saying in the same interview that “I knew my place, and I couldn’t write songs better than James”.
He spent a decade and a half being treated like that. I’m sure he and his kids are set for life from it, though, and I can only hope that’s worth the trauma.
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