What Was The Difficult Part Of Being In Metallica For Jason Newsted?

Megadeth bassist David Ellefson opened up about the difficulties of being a member of Metallica for the band’s former bassist Jason Newsted during an interview with Another FN Podcast, and apparently, the transition from being a bandleader to only being a member affected Newsted.

As you may know, Jason Newsted’s music career pretty much started when he started performing bass for Flotsam and Jetsam on their 1986 album named ‘Doomsday for the Deceiver’ for which Newsted wrote the majority of lyrics.

During the Damage, Inc. Tour, bassist Cliff Burton passed away when the band’s tour bus crashed on September 27, 1986, therefore, Metallica started to look for another musician to fill in Burton’s place. That’s when they started to work with Jason Newsted and remained as their bassist until his decision to leave the band on January 17, 2001.

After his departure, Newsted only revealed that the reason behind his decision to leave Metallica was private and personal in addition to the physical damage he has done to himself over the years while playing music along with wanting to focus on his side-project Echobrain.

During a recent interview, David Ellefson opened up about the difficulties Jason Newsted had to go through during his time as the bassist of Metallica and revealed that he knows Newsted since his days with Flotsam and Jetsam in which he was a bandleader, however, with Metallica, he was just a member. This must have been a mental challenge throughout the time period he was with the band according to Ellefson.

Here is what Ellefson said:

“Look, we all know Jason’s a great player. I knew him from Flotsam and Jetsam. He was a great player. He was a bandleader, so when he joined Metallica, he then had to come back to being an Indian and not a chief, which, I’m sure, knowing him, was probably difficult.

I mean, look, you’re in the biggest heavy metal band in the world, but you still have a different role being in that group, as big as it is. So there’s definitely a mental adjustment I’m sure that he had to go through with that.”

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