| Good day to you
strangers. We meet again. This is my third shot at making
a decent column on something Metallica-related. In it
I’m going to try and tackle some of the criticism
Jason Newsted, Metallica’s bassist for fifteen years
has had to put up with. On Metallica.com’s message
board, Free Speech For The Dumb, I over and over again
encounter topics entitled "Jason vs. Cliff",
"Cliff was the man", "Jason sucks"
and similar. I’m not gonna try to tell you who was
better or more talented. That’s up to you to decide.
I’m simply going to stick up for Jason.
The fact that Jason only wrote three songs over the
fifteen years he spent in Metallica has conceived
questions about his musical ability. Some say that he
simply doesn’t match Lars’, Jaymz’s and
Kirk’s ability. I disagree. Lars, Jaymz and Kirk
accepted him into the band and I doubt they’d have
chosen somebody that didn’t make the grade. And
after reading the Aardschok and Expressen interview with
Jason which uncovers the fact that Jaymz may not have
really fully respected
him it may well be that he gave Jason a hard time and
only accepted his best material and contributions, the
best example being My friend of misery, which
happens to have one of the best bass-lines ever written
by Metallica. But as always people tend to look at
numbers: Three songs in 15 years against Cliff’s 10
in three. I do not qualify to say why that is, only Jason
and the boyz know that, but the fact that Jason did most
of Floatsam & Jetsam’s writing confirms
he certainly could write whole songs. The drastic change
of Metallica’s music with The Black Album and
the LOADs has also been blamed on Jason. People
argue that it all "went sour" when Jason came
along. But having written only two songs during this era
must he can’t possibly be blamed for this, unless we
choose to forget logic and facts.
Jason has also taken a lot of sh*t for playing with a
pick. People say he’s not a good bass-player because
of this. Bassists choose pick or fingers depending on
what kinda sound they’re looking for. Jason must
prefer the pick sound since he is well able of playing
with his fingers (One, Nothing Else Matters,
Unforgiven II, Seek & Destroy on Cunning
Stunts and some parts of his bass solos) but still
chooses to pick. He obviosly has more confidence with a
pick since he plays almost only with pick during
live-performances. And talking of live performances…
nobody, that is NOBODY, can deny that Jason has
unbelievable stage-charisma. He lives the music. He
headbangs and headbangs and almost only stops to bark DIE,
FAMINE, HEY, LANDMINE, language
OF THE MAD and some other well-known phrases. He also
f*cks around (in a good way) with the songs; adding
scales, playing octaves and doing harmonizes. He kept the
stage alive.
NOTE: As most people I prefer Cliff’s style, but I
don’t think he was that much better than Jason. They
had very different influences and styles. Cliff had the
lead-bass approach and was into classical-music and soft
rock while Jason tends to give the song a full sound and
a solid background and is a Heavy-Metal head and a fan of
old blues-records. Apples and oranges.
NOTE II: I received an E-mail after my last LOTM where
the writer thanked me for my column and said he totally
agreed with me: That Metallica’s lyrics have gone
shit over the last decade. It’s all good he agrees,
except for the simple fact I think DON’T think
Metallica’s lyrics have gotten worse, although I
prefer Jaymz’s old approach.
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