Metallica admitted that they were “not equipped” to negotiate Jason Newsted on his exit from the band in 2001. The band opened up about Newsted’s departure in an extensive new interview, highlighting a decaying 40-year career to date.
This past August marked the 30th anniversary of “Black Album,” showing Newsted on bass. Despite his unfaithful exit from Metallica, he has played a key role in the band’s legacy and has returned to the spotlight while fans celebrated the classic LP.
At the time of his release, Newsted was frustrated by his lack of creative input at Metallica, and was looking for another music outlet for his project Echobrain.
When asked about Newsted leaving Metallica, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich both offered sad answers, implying that they were equipped with different thinking, Newsted may have remained in the band.
“Jason is the only member of Metallica who always leaves ready,” Ulrich said Apple Music. “And that’s exactly a statistic. And the resentment from James and me is exactly the same. You can’t do that. You can only leave if we want you to leave. And we haven’t had the time to do a deep dive into why that he will leave. So, now you can see 20 years later, it makes perfect sense. ”
The drummer continued, “We write the songs. We make decisions. We do everything. You don’t have an outlet to be creative with this band. You don’t have a creative voice. Then if you go and do something that will give you something. satisfaction in a way for you to reveal yourself to the whole world, then we get mad at you.After that anger goes to you to leave the band.I mean, that’s a kind of psychiatry 101 here.But we don’t be equipped to see the side of it. ”
In conclusion, Ulrich admits that “now it makes full sense,” with Hetfield’s second: “He’s at a point where he is and we’re at a point where we are.”
Ulrich goes on to say that the result of Newsted’s release, the documentary A Class of Monster “Not planned.” What the band thought could be an “information commercial” has become one of the worst all-access music documentaries of all time.
“First of all, it wasn’t planned,” Ulrich said. It’s not like, oh, we’re going to document what’s going to happen in the next two years in the next show. I mean, that’s not the plan. This, they come out, we set a new record. Joe Berlinger and Bruce will come out and document what we did. ”
Ulrich added: “Well, maybe make an infomercial. It’ll go on after the guy with the Ginsu knives and whatever at 2:00 in the morning. Metallica has a new album, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden the whole collapse started happening in front of the cameras.And then they ended up sticking to some sort of document, and getting the arch of it.But nobody saw, nobody did that there’s that kind of access to a rock and roll band. ”
Elsewhere in the conversation as far as career goes, Ulrich gave a brief update on Metallica’s upcoming album, saying, “Of course there’s new music, but nothing cohesive.” See the full Apple Music interview with Metallica below.