![]() They managed just one new song, Blackened, that sounded like a keeper. But trying to come up with material with Newsted – not Burton – in the band was proving difficult. In the summer of 1987, the plan had been to begin writing for the next album, broken up with a smattering of lucrative festival dates. We didn’t know how to get through those types of situations, other than jump to the bottom of a vodka bottle and stay there for years.” But we also weren’t capable, because we were twenty-two years old and we didn’t know how to deal with this type of stuff. I think certainly one could argue that maybe we didn’t give a fair shot. Or as Ulrich put it, speaking to me in 2009: “It was difficult. “There was a lot of grief that turned into spite towards Jason,” Hetfield admitted in 2005. “I didn’t sleep properly for three months after I joined Metallica.”Ĭlearly there was something more going on here than the normal high jinks associated with a touring rock band. “I was definitely frustrated, fed up and kind of feeling unliked,” he said. Years later, Newsted still recoiled at the memory. What Newsted later characterised as “hazing and a lot of emotional tests” included such stunts as telling everyone they introduced him to that he was gay signing meals and drinks to his room invading his hotel room at four in the morning – “Get up, fucker! It’s time to drink, pussy!” pounding on his door until it almost came off the hinges – “You should have answered the door, bitch!” grabbing hold of his mattress and yanking it off the bed with him still lying on it, then piling everything in the room – TV, chairs, desk – on top of him. “Jason fit, but the razzing of Jason was terrible,” Schneider recalls. Hetfield and Hammett: a formidable front line (Image credit: Rodd Halfin)īy the time they arrived in Japan in November for their five-date tour, the set now included a decent enough bass solo immediately after Ride The Lightning, but in every other respect, Newsted was seriously struggling. Metallica, Newsted was not shy of telling you, were his “favourite band of all time!” When Hetfield asked him at the audition which song he’d like to play, he answered: “Any one you like. ![]() “Jason could eat, shit and sleep Metallica. “Jason had the spirit,” says Metallica’s then tour manager Bobby Schneider. Jason Newsted, a 23-year-old former farm boy from Michigan, auditioned for them exactly three weeks to the day since Burton’s funeral. ![]() “We have to do it for Cliff… If he knew we were sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves, he’d come round and kick us in the ass and tell us to get back out on the road and continue where we left off.” “I don’t understand how anyone who knows what Metallica is about could honestly think that we’d give up,” Ulrich said at the time. But a Japanese tour in November 1986 – their first visit to the country and another important milestone on the route to success – could not be delayed. A cancelled European tour could be rescheduled for the New Year. ![]()
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