Enter Night, page 31
Now, with Cliff gone, those values would become steadily eroded. They still talked of not selling out and only doing things their way, but the reality was that their way, without Cliff, quickly narrowed down to the laws of the jungle and the rule of tooth and claw, where only the strongest and fittest survived. Where the only voices that count are the ones the business itself takes seriously. In that respect, Metallica with Cliff had started with a disadvantage. There were always caveats about what they would and would not do; always special pleading to be judged not as others were but on their own singular terms. Now, without Cliff’s sardonic voice to offer an alternative view, Lars and James were able to get down to the real nitty-gritty. In many ways it would be the making of them – a bold new pragmatism that ensured Metallica would not just survive but continue to prosper with ever-increasing abundance, no matter what.
Auditions for Cliff’s replacement began straight after his funeral, in special rooms set up at Hayward, their usual rehearsal space. ‘They really tried to do it so it wasn’t awkward for anybody,’ says Bobby Schneider. ‘Guys would come in, wait in a room then come into the main rehearsal room and play.’ Among the cattle call of nearly sixty people who showed up – including one kid who brought a pal just to stand by the door taping it; another who didn’t even get to plug in, shown the door by James as soon as he saw the Quiet Riot autograph on his bass – were some notable applicants, such as Les Claypool of Primus, Lääz Rockit’s Willy Lange, Watchtower bassist Doug Keyser, Troy Gregory of Prong…
One bassist who actually turned them down was Joey Vera of Armored Saint: ‘I got a call from Lars asking me to come up and jam with them, because they were becoming very disillusioned. They wanted to play with some people that they knew and were familiar with. I was very honoured that he called me [but] I had to say, “Well, let me think about this overnight.” And I had to come to this conclusion that…if I go up there and play with them, I have to go up with the intention that I’m gonna be that person [and] I’m gonna quit my band.’ In the end, Joey simply decided that, ‘I wasn’t ready to bail on Armored Saint, who were still signed to Chrysalis. As a matter of fact we were in the middle of recording our third record with them. So it wasn’t a situation I was ready to take as an opportunity for me to move on.’
Lars took it well, he says. ‘He was very cool with it. I think he respected my decision at the time. He probably thought I was crazy later. But at the time, he just wanted to reach out to people he knew personally to come up and jam and take the load off of this cattle call. It must have been horrible, I can’t imagine it…I knew that him and I also had a kinship with a lot of other things. And it’s like, I wanted to help my friend out…I almost wanted to go up just to give them a fuckin’ hug. But I had to say, it was a time in my life where I wasn’t ready for that change.’ He adds with a sigh, ‘Of course, I get asked this question now by people that are much younger, and they have this look in their eyes, like “Are you fuckin’ crazy?” The question is always: do you regret it? And my answer is always: no, because I’ve had a wonderful life since then.’
Then, on the afternoon of Tuesday, 28 October – exactly three weeks to the day since Cliff’s funeral – Metallica found what they thought they were looking for when a twenty-three-year-old former farm boy from Michigan named Jason Newsted walked through the door at Hayward and plugged in his bass. ‘Jason had the spirit,’ says Bobby Schneider. ‘Jason could eat, shit and sleep Metallica. It was Jason’s dream.’ Bobby recalls picking up the wide-eyed hopeful from the airport and Jason realising halfway through the drive that he’d left his bass amp at the luggage collection. Going back to pick it up made Jason late for his audition, which made him only more nervous. ‘The kid must have had balls of steel, though,’ says Bobby, because as soon as he started playing, ‘I think they knew he was the one.’
It had been Brian Slagel – the very same guy who had first turned them onto Cliff – who first mentioned Jason to Lars. Just as with Trauma, the first release from Jason’s current band, Flotsam and Jetsam, had been a track on one of Slagel’s ongoing Metal Massacre compilations (MM VII in 1984). They had followed that with an album for Metal Blade, Doomsday for the Deceiver, released in July 1986, which Kerrang! had over-excitedly awarded six out of a maximum five stars to. ‘Lars said, “Okay, cool, send me some stuff,”’ Slagel recalls. He also spoke to Jason: ‘I don’t want to get you too excited [but] what would you think about possibly auditioning for the Metallica gig?’ Jason immediately began freaking out. ‘Are you kidding me? They’re like my favourite band of all time!’ A perfectionist by nature, Newsted had spent every waking moment since Slagel’s call learning the entire Metallica back catalogue. Friends clubbed together to help him pay for the $140 plane ticket to San Francisco. When James asked him which song he’d like to play, he answered: ‘Any one you like, I know them all.’
At that point there were three names on the mental shortlist: Mike Dean of Corrosion of Conformity, Willy Lange of Lääz Rockit and Kirk’s boyhood friend Les Claypool of Primus. Within minutes of Jason playing, his name was also added. Said Lars at the time, ‘We wanted to spend a whole day with each of the four because, for us, it’s about more than whether he can play a song well. The whole vibe and attitude of the person, how we would get on with him, the friendship, was just as important.’ Jason was second of the four. ‘We played all day and then went out for a meal. And then we went for the big test, which was obviously the drink test.’ For this, the band took Jason to one of their favourite local bars, Tommy’s Joint. ‘Somehow,’ said Lars, ‘and I swear it wasn’t planned, me and Kirk and James ended up in the toilet together, pissing. So we’re standing there at three in the morning, out of our faces, all of us in a line and not saying anything, and I just said without looking at anybody, “That’s him, right?” And the other guys said, “Yeah, that’s him.”’ The only one not completely drunk was Newsted himself, whose nerves were keeping him sober. He later recalled, ‘They all came back and sat down and Lars said, “So, do you want a job?” And I go, “No!” at the top of my voice. People were looking at us and thinking, “What the fuck?”’
Jason Curtis Newsted was born on 4 March 1963, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Growing up on the family’s horse farm, his parents bought him his first bass guitar for his fourteenth birthday. Like practically every other American boy of his generation, Jason grew up as a Kiss fan, basing his first school band, Diamond, on their songs. His second band, Gangster, had barely begun practising when the Newsted family moved from Michigan to Phoenix, Arizona. Flotsam and Jetsam, which he joined in 1982, were heavily influenced by Metallica and were the first self-styled thrash metal band in Phoenix, down to encoring with a version of Metallica’s ‘Whiplash’ – which Jason would sing. But then he was always more than just the bass player in the group. He was the organiser, the leader, the one who wrote the lyrics and took care of the day-to-day business; the one with the energy and ambition; the Lars and James of the group all rolled into one.
The only time Newsted had seen Metallica play before he joined them had been in Phoenix on the W.A.S.P. tour two and a half years before, standing there in his Metallica T-shirt, eyes fixed the whole night on Cliff. When a friend had phoned him at six in the morning to tell him that Metallica’s bassist had died in an accident, Jason couldn’t believe it. It was only after he’d read it in the paper that it really hit him. ‘I remember tears hitting the paper and watching them soak into the print,’ he later famously recalled. As a mark of respect, all of Flotsam wore black armbands at their next gig.
Jason Newsted never had the pleasure of actually meeting Cliff Burton. When it became known he’d got the job in Metallica, Cliff’s family made a point of wishing him luck. ‘They were the first ones to embrace me. His parents, especially. They came down to meet me the very day I joined Metallica. His mother held on to me for a while and didn’t let go. She said in my ear, “You must be the one because these guys know what they’re doing,” and wished me luck. Very warm, wonderful people.’
Understandably perhaps, his former bandmates in Flotsam did not share in his joy. ‘There was a lot of animosity. But as time went by, they accepted it. Who wouldn’t have tried out for Metallica? My heroes became my peers.’ He did, however, agree to go back and play one final show with them, on Halloween. Ironically, he said, ‘It was probably the best show I ever had with them because I didn’t have the pressure of the business shit going on. This time I just got up there and did it and it felt good. I had plenty on my mind.’ Not least when he sang ‘Whiplash’…
Jason Newsted’s first show with Metallica was on 8 November at the Country Club in Reseda, an unannounced Saturday night opening slot for Metal Church before a couple of hundred in-the-know fanatics and genuine Church fans. Essentially an extension to the solitary week of rehearsals he’d had, they performed a full-on thirteen-song set that included material from all three albums and an extended solo spot from Kirk. A second show the following night at Jezebel’s in Anaheim was shorter but provided the band with a final tightening of the screw before the official start of Jason Newsted’s career in Metallica. Flemming Rasmussen was at the Country Club show. ‘That place was packed. They tried to keep it a secret but word had gone out.’ Not seeing Cliff there, ‘It was pretty terrible.’ Seeing the new guy, ‘It was strange but I was happy that they were going on, that they weren’t stopping, because I thought they had much more in them.’
The five-date Japanese tour took place, as scheduled, between 15 and 20 November: three shows in Tokyo, plus one each in Nagoya and Osaka. The set now included a decent enough bass solo immediately after ‘Ride the Lightning’ but in every other respect Jason was seriously struggling. ‘We’d all pick on him,’ tour photographer Ross Halfin later told Joel McIver. ‘We’d all get a cab and make him get a cab on his own. It started off as a joke and then it got really beyond a joke.’ Bobby Schneider agrees: ‘Jason fit [musically] but the razzing of Jason was terrible. They never really gave him a chance.’ He explains, ‘All of us, me included, started really making it hard for Jason. First as a joke but it started to get…they were sort of childish jokes in my mind, you’re just razzing the new guy. But as it started coming from them as well, then a lot of people on the crew…because you know what that’s like. Once it becomes okay to bully somebody then most people unfortunately, the shitty human nature that we have, without really realising it, you jump on.’
What Jason 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; and 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 Jason still lying on it, then piling everything in the room – TV, chairs, desk – on top of him. Fifteen years later, Newsted still recoiled at the memory as he told Playboy, ‘They threw my clothes, my cassette tapes, my shoes out the window. Shaving cream all over the mirrors, toothpaste everywhere. Just devastation. They go running out the door, “Welcome to the band, dude!”’ The only reason he put up with it, he said, ‘Because it was Metallica, it was my dream come true, man. I was definitely frustrated, fed up and kind of feeling unliked.’ More recently, he said: ‘I didn’t sleep properly for three months after I joined Metallica. They’d charged thousands of dollars to my table at a restaurant. I had no idea about it. I was a hired musician at that point, earning $500 a week. Before I joined, I was still rubbing nickels together.’ As if to add insult to injury, Lars recalled how in Tokyo, ‘all these kids gave us gifts. Jason didn’t get any, though – they thought he was part of the road crew. So he had a temper tantrum. Poor guy. Maybe we should have got him a T-shirt with the statement: “I’m Jason, dammit, gimme a gift!”’
Clearly there was something more going on here than the normal high jinks associated with a touring rock band. The problem was twofold. First there was Newsted’s generally diffident personality; on the one hand so awed by his plunge into the deep end – not just joining his dream band but trying to replace its most important figurehead – that he tried to cover up his nervousness and lack of experience by putting on a front that more than one observer mistook as arrogance; on the other, having to find a way to come to terms with his newfound role, no longer as leader of the band but as the newbie, do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do hired hand – an incredibly precarious balancing act that almost inevitably left him flat on his face.
Then there were the more subtle tensions, which he simply could not be expected to appreciate. Jason arrived in Metallica determined to do the right thing, to not blow it, to do things to the max. This was the earnest young guy, after all, who once tacked a set of ‘band rules’ to the wall of Flotsam’s rehearsal room. The others, however, especially Lars and James, were not only entering that new stage success brings, where the shine has worn off enough to let you mess around with things and make up your own rules, but were also still so fucked-up over Cliff’s death that they were easily irritated by Jason’s out-of-synch mewling. It was like Ron McGovney all over again. Jason, though good enough on bass, was never going to be as good as Cliff. Jason was a Metallica and thrash metal fan. Cliff was Cliff, into Kate Bush and Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Misfits and Lou Reed. Lars was especially outraged when Jason hinted he could use the extra practice, too. What the fuck? Jason was trying to do the ‘right’ thing at a time when the right thing no longer existed, had been left crushed under the bus with Cliff.
Above all, there was simply the enormous anger and resentment still growing inside all of them, James in particular. ‘There was a lot of grief that turned into spite towards Jason,’ admitted James in 2005. ‘That is…pretty human, I would say.’ Or as Lars put it, speaking with me in 2009, ‘It was difficult. I think certainly one could argue that maybe we didn’t give [Jason] a fair shot. 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. 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…we weren’t particularly embrasive [sic] and welcoming, you know.’ He gave a small self-deprecating chuckle. ‘So I think, certainly, you know, most of the fault lies with us.’
Lars, in fact, grew to dislike Jason so much during that Japanese tour that he went to Mensch and insisted they fire him, and that the whole thing was a big mistake. ‘I know for a fact,’ said Halfin, ‘Lars wanted to fire him. He wanted to replace him. But Peter Mensch said to him, “You’ve made your choice, now live with it.”’ He added, ‘He just didn’t get on with him as a person. It wasn’t because of Jason’s playing skills; it was purely because he didn’t get on with his personality.’ This was a view corroborated by Bobby Schneider: ‘I remember Mensch sitting down with them in some bar in Japan and saying, “You guys gotta fucking stop this. He’s in your band. You’ve made him a band member. So just get on with it. He’s the right choice.”’
The trouble was Metallica hadn’t just hired a bassist, they’d hired a fan. Where they had schemed and plotted to persuade Cliff to join their band, Jason had given up everything to be with them. They had replaced the one guy they all looked up to with the one guy they all looked down on – Jason Newkid, as they tauntingly nicknamed him. No wonder they felt so uncomfortable having him around all the time. He wasn’t one of them and never would be. They resented him – anyone – parachuting into their story. Fuck his bass. Turn it down.
Speaking just a couple of years after Jason had been hired, Lars was still staunchly repeating the party line although he was already starting to sound like he was trying more to convince himself. ‘Look, when Cliff died, we could have taken our time before deciding what to do,’ he conceded. ‘But we didn’t, and that felt like the right thing to do.’ Just a few nights after the funeral, ‘I sat and drank some beer and listened to the Master of Puppets album – all of it. And then it hit me. The next couple of weeks would have been shit but we started setting up auditions, spending hours on the phone, and then we got Jason Newsted and started jamming, and then we initiated Jason with some club gigs…It was good for us, the right thing for us to do. No time to dwell. From the accident to doing a gig was five weeks. The reason I talk about this is that what was right for us might not have been right for other bands…’ When the writer Ben Mitchell asked James in 2009 whether he thought they had toured again too quickly after Cliff died, the singer replied: ‘I think we did everything too quickly after that. Getting a bass player, touring. We went straight back out. That was management’s way of dealing with the grief: “Just play it out through your music.” Now it feels like there wasn’t enough grieving or enough respect paid, and enough of just dealing with each other and helping each other through. We went out on the road and took a lot of it out on Jason once he joined. It was more like: “Yeah, we have a bass player but he’s not Cliff.”’
