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Metallica... the biggest Metal band in the world. In the eighteen years since the embryonic Metallica was formed by teenage 'erberts Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield, Metallica's remorseless climb to the very top has amazed those who pour scorn on all things Metal. You all know the rest of the story. Whatever your opinion of the band, its undeniable that they've helped to break down so many barriers for Metal.
Getting an interview with these guys isn't like the usual story of wandering down to the venue in the afternoon and bluffing your way in. The organisation surrounding this band is so huge that the only way through is serious perseverance. After days of calls to various record company Press and Promo folks, and finding our way through the vast machines that are Mercury and Q-Prime, Fitted Kitchens caught up with the affable Jason Newsted before their Dublin show for a natter about developments in the Metallicamp, the recent show with the San Fran Symphony Orchestra and all manner of extra-curricular Metal
tomfoolery. Read on, kiddies, for news n'views and details of the two Metallica new albums in the pipeline...
'bout ye, Jason! First off, can we embarrass you?
"You can do what you want, I don't know if you can embarrass me though!"
 Recognise this? (I hand him a copy of an old Metal Forces zine, with a review of Flotsam and Jetsam's first ever demo. Mr Newsted is sporting an excellent very metal hairdo, and his contact details are at the foot of the piece).
Jason laughs at this blast from his past, "I remember this like it was yesterday... I remember this cover, I remember it all like it was yesterday. I've a couple of these in plastic in my Flotsam box, this was from our first demo. Fucking beautiful, huh? I remember this so fucking plain, cos this was one of the first reviews we ever had. I mean, this was the big time for us and I remember copying this a whole bunch of times to send to people, and going 'Hey, we got a review, man, we got a review'!". The man's got an insane grin on his face as he recalls that first tentative step.
FISH WITH FEATHERS?
OK, big man, let's move to the serious stuff. You've just recently done two nights with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the famed conductor Michael Kamen. Playing Metallica songs. Surely this was a bit of a risk, bringing these two opposites together. Did it go well?
"Great. A lot of them were taken aback by the sheer volume of the whole thing. They'd never witnessed anything quite like it."
It does sound a tad preposterous, Metallica and a full symphony orchestra. I know that various other bands have tried this in the past, such as Deep Purple, but this strikes me as an entirely different kettle of fish.
"Well, people were trying to speculate about what may happen. It was often talked about as 'two worlds colliding' but when it came together it was more like 'two worlds gelling' everything came to life, the true colours came out. It was pretty fucking amazing; we did maybe 6 hours rehearsal for about 4 hours performance (over the two nights- Ed). Insane... 99 people together, 94 of them, 4 of us, and 1 conductor... 99 people on stage and everything had to come together. They'd never heard fucking 'Fight Fire with Fire', they'd no idea, their world was all Vivaldi and Stravinsky, things they were raised on from when they were about five years old. All these people are top-notch players, so when it came together it was grandiose, magnificent, like something from another world. Really crazy. And the songs, whether you've heard them three thousand times or played them five thousand times, every song was a new song that day because we hear '1-2-3-4 rock n'roll beat, and these guys are '5-7', shit everywhere, all these accenting instruments, they weren't all main melody instruments, so it was very strange. You could go up into the orchestra themselves and move around while they're playing and you're trying to keep your mind on like 'Wherever I May Roam', pounding that bass line out, and all this shit's all over the place and you're trying to figure out were you are. The concentration factor in all that was a great challenge. And we were all nervous as hell. There was so much anticipation leading up to it, so I mean, we really were walking on glass. By the second night, all the players including us were more comfortable and they made more room for us to get up into the orchestra and we were sweating on the violins, and they're diggin' it. The really cool thing that happened was that 85%-95% of the crowd were Metallica people and some were season tickets of the symphony, but just a few of them! Of the Metallica people, a lot of the girls got dressed up real nice for the show, like it was a special thing, special leathers! " he laughs
"It was cool to see that, we were really happy about the behaviour of the Metallica freaks because they can sometimes get well outta hand and fucking smash stuff up and everything... and we end up paying for it, it happens a lot! When the orchestra came on ten minutes before the gig and they all found their seats, and the lights went down, the crowd went 'wooaarrgggghhh' and you saw the symphony guys freaking out. They're used to a polite smattering applause so they were just smiling from ear to ear and going red and looking over at us, laughing, freaking out, and by the end of the first night the guys in the middle violin section were holding their bows and giving devil signs to the kids! The second night, they were wearing Metallica shirts under their tuxedos and we were all swapping autographs and some of the cats were really into Metallica, like the first cello guy, and had their Metallica records already, so it was a really cool experience."
"We did 'Call of Kthulu' during the show, which I've never played with the band, so there was just a little pressure" he deadpans. "But it came off, it was moving, I get goosebumps just talking about it now. It's quite incredible. We did 'The Outlaw torn' also which we haven't done before live, and personally that's one of the best Metallica songs there has ever been, and it came off real well too"
I believe that the recordings of this show have been tentatively scheduled for release later this year
"Yes, we're planning on releasing a CD and DVD in November this year, if everything goes right with edits and so on; we still have to look at everything and pick the best from both nights. There'll also be two brand new songs on there, written just for that gig. One is just way fucking cool, really heavy, man, really slow (makes a huge chugging riff sound), cool tuned down Metal. So there you go, that's all coming, that'll be the next thing you see from Metallica, and we'll be working on a new record next year. Hey, that's just the first question!"
Yeah, and I'm looking at a list of fourteen more!! With your profile as a global Metal band, almost as THE Metal band, you could say that zine interviews have become unessential for Metallica. Yet here I am, chatting to you now. You're the guy who deals with the 'non-glossy' press side of things, why the conscious decision to keep in touch with the zine scene ?
"Everybody kinda has their role in this band and one of mine, something which I live for, is to keep in touch with the people who aren't afraid to tell me what they really think; it's not all 'hey, great' and all that shit, people will really tell you 'you guys really sucked last night!' or whatever. I also welcome all these things, comments good or bad. I kinda like to keep up on this sorta thing, also I'm the one that I guess probably listens to the heavier stuff than the rest of the guys these days. Kirk still listens to some heavy stuff, but for the most part I think I still have 'the metal edge'".
TO THE DEVIL HIS DUES
The recent Garage Inc album gives a good idea of where Metallica have cum from, in terms of inspiration and influence. In fact, Sweet Savage were interviewed in issue one of this very zine. What about your own personal Metal favourites, anything overlooked in you opinion on 'Garage' or are you happy that the disc has done justice to Metallica's musical genesis?
"I think that was a good representation. Even though the four of us grew up in different corners of the planet, we're all the same age, we all had an interest in the same music and the same bands and the same performers as we came up. Black Sabbath being number one, above everybody else. Black Sabbath was always top for all of us. I listened to a lot of Motorhead, Diamond Head, even though I was by myself in Michigan at the time before I really got 'hip' to what would be known later as the NWOBHM. In the place that I was, a farming community, the import bin in record store was about 1 inch deep and I'd always be right in there, getting whatever there was, Angelwitch, Motorhead, Diamond Head. Whatever there was, I'd take it, even Girlschool! I didn't really pay a lot of attention to the American stuff, other than Van Halen, that first album turned my head around. We all came up on the same music, it was easy to choose the bands to pay homage to. Picking the songs wasn't as easy! We'd list about 40 songs, maybe about 5 from Sabbath, 5 from the Cult... the Blue Oyster Cult that is!"
phew, we were just about to leave...
Jason laughs and re-emphasises "The BLUE-OYSTER-CULT. And, y'know, 10 from the Misfits and we had to decide which would be the coolest ones to cover. Of all the songs, I think there are two which maybe don't belong, Bob Seiger and Nick Cave. The reason that Nick Cave was included was because around 5 or 6 years ago when James began to try to sing a bit more instead of shouting all the time, he didn't go for the cool, smooth singers, but for the evil, darker guys. Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Johnny Cash, those kind of cats. I think it was important for him to give a shout to someone who had influenced him. The Bob Seger thing was something that we'd talked about doing at least 10 years ago, when we were still travelling around on buses. We could relate to every single word he had to say... it wasn't about the music really, it's about the lyrical content. We said 'Ok, some day we're going to do that' and as the years went by, into the nineties, we were 'should we put it on the b-side of this single, that single', but it never happened, so on Garage we finally included it... and it ends up being the biggest radio song that we've ever had in our career! Fucking whacky, I don't want to be known for that!" He rolls his eyes in mock disgust before continuing "But its ok, I'm not going to scoff at it, it's a cool song, I listened to that song 25 years ago when it first came out. I'm from Michigan, Bob's from Michigan, man, my older brothers had that the first day it came out, so that song is actually closer to me probably than for any of the other guys, they don't know that really, but I listened to that so many thousand times on Michigan Radio, man!"
'NEWKID' NO MORE
You've been in Metallica for well over a decade now...
"13 years. Lucky 13!"
How many different 'Metallicas' have you seen in that time? I'm not talking about superficial stuff like number of albums or anything like that, but in terms of the band's development, I mean the jump from 1990-91 was enormous. That's one example. I'd say that there have probably been 4 or 5 distinct 'Metallicas' over the last 13 years.
"You're right. And that's to do most with the personal lives of the people that are in the band. Things change, priorities shift and that kinda changes the whole band. One guy does one thing, that changes the whole look or vibe of the band, another guy does that and so on, it kinda moves on, which in itself is a great healthy thing"
Yet you still have to deal with the constant pressures put on you by fans that simply can't understand why, or don't want to accept that, Metallica will change.
 "Because you're not flesh and bone to these people, you're a glossy picture. You're a video. You're 'larger than life', you're not really a person. 'This is my Metallica, this is how they should look, should be, I can turn them on, turn them off, click click click.' Whatever. There's a lot more to the people that make up Metallica than that. And so, as time goes on, your image changes a little bit, your music takes different turns. But no matter how 'weird' the sound starts getting or how 'twisty' and 'turny' songs become I don't think that Metallica has ever gone away from the core. That 'kun-chung' guitar sound has always been there, no matter what, and the 'uu-yah!' of James' voice is always in there, even when he sings something like 'Mama Said'. It still has an attitude, still has that determination, and still has that whole integrity, man. I'd say to people, if you don't like the band anymore, don't like the music we play, it doesn't really fucking bother me... I'm glad you have enough of a brain to make your own decision and know what you want, I'd rather have you do that than follow us like a sheep. But don't disrespect us. We broke down so many doors and so much shit happened and we've taken the music so many fucking places. That's something that the kids don't see. They're twenty years old, they've put bands together, just learning how to put songs together, and they look down on things that are melodic or that are played on the radio. Guys, if these dudes that that are being played on the radio right now hadn't done what they did when you were nine years old, your ass wouldn't be playing distorted metal now, you wouldn't even be in a band. Think about that."
The man's on a roll here...
"No matter how much they may want to deny it, most guitar players in this time that play heavy music are somehow influenced by Hetfield and Hammett. That's the only thing that bugs me; if people could just be a little bit bigger within themselves and see that whole picture. I do not care if they don't buy the fucking records, it does not bother me. But just realise the process of things, realise the evolution of things. There's five or six Metallicas within the same four people because of evolution, of growth of our accelerated lifestyles, 200 shows a year, 300 shows a year, so far. And today, I'll meet between 50 and 200 people, and I will tomorrow and the same the next day. I'll read more books, hear more music, be exposed to more culture, all these things, that all goes along with it. So when you see evolution in a band and you see pages turning, that's why. It's because there's a lot to it. All the guys in Metallica are very perceptive, they put a lot of shit into it and are very focussed individuals. We're very different from each other, man; we're not always going to like each others friends or girlfriends or wives or any of that shit, just like in any job in the world anywhere, but the fact is that we do see the big picture together and so we keep doing what we do no matter who says its shit or good. It doesn't matter. That shit bounces off, we will continue to do what we want to do no matter what".
HELL AWAITS?
Metallica have by and large escaped the Metal media's fickleness, and the backlashes which have fatally damaged so many other acts. You can't deny that you've been extremely fortunate here, but how have Metallica avoided the shit?
"Because we've worked so hard at it. If you work that hard at it and you're fucking determined then people are going to respect you, no matter whether they like your music or not, like your haircut or not." he laughs, pausing to stroke his head. "Integrity's been built by taking the music out there to wherever westernised rock n'roll music will be accepted. There's only one band that's played heavy music in more places than us and more times and that's AC/DC... they're Gods to me. They're like such a fine tuned efficient tank, rolling over anything in their path, fucking insane. We've played shows with them and there's only AC/DC and perhaps one other band in the whole world who could follow Metallica in my opinion on the live stage for heavy music... Slayer. I fucking love Slayer, they crush, the best heavy live show I've ever seen and I will continue to go to their concerts every time they come to my town. Even though we've been friends forever, I still look at them like 'woah!' this is fucking wicked! It's like turning on the fawcet all the way on, steaming hot for a fucking hour! No in-between, just (he mimics an Araya-esque howl) all the whole fucking time. To me, that relentless barrage is fucking beautiful. So Slayer could probably follow Metallica on a good day. AC/DC could follow Metallica. When you go play a show with AC/DC you recognise every song. Not everyone can do that!"
SINK OR SWIM
When you first joined Metallica, I believe you were given something of a hard time, and that it was a tough apprenticeship for the first few years at least...
"That's very true. It was testing, man, testing. You've got to think about the man whose shoes I try to fill, and continue to try to fill, and its impossible because of who he was. I mean, there's certain people, man, there's certain people in the world, artists, musicians, who are gifted, they have this fucking thing. Hetfield's one of them, none of the rest of us are I don't feel. Cliff was one of them and to have him and James in the same band, there's just no way that that chemistry could be more powerful, it was just fucking unbelievable. As soon as I heard about Cliff's death, I thought Metallica should quit. You know, go 'this the blueprint for Heavy Metal FOREVER, here take these and run with them' to the next generation of bands coming up. I obviously didn't know the band yet as people, and since I've met them I know there's no way that they're going to fucking stop! But Cliff was such a big part of their lives, as musicians first and then as a friend. He didn't talk a lot but when he did it was like an event, everyone paid attention, even Lars, cos Lars has the most selective hearing of anyone I've known. He picks and chooses when he decides to listen to shit, I'm not sure whether he does this out of arrogance or because his head's just going so fast all the time that he's not hearing. Cliff taught James how to play guitar harmonies and helped him with theory and helped him to become this really killer guitar player over a couple of years, really kicked him in the butt, cos Cliff was a good guitar player too. So that can't be replaced. I know that's something I would never try to do, cos he had the gift and its something that can't be replaced. But these guys had to know if I was going to be able to hang, that's all, and it took two or three years for them to make that decision whether I was going to be able to hang. After six months of being in the band I signed a contract to be 25% of Metallica. But it was still two or three years following that that was just hazing constantly, all sorts of crazy shit. Still to this day, I think the most difficult thing in any band in any situation where you have to hang with people for 200 days a year and be in really close quarters is the emotional stress. That human factor. That's the on thing that is universal- emotions. Everybody has the same ones and so that's the toughest thing to deal with no matter what. It really fucked me up for a while; because I'd looked up to Cliff so much before the accident, I didn't stop thinking about that for about three years, every day. Eventually, it started to subside, I started to come into my own, the guys started to give me some space and show me respect and that kinda thing, really accepting me for a bass player and all that shit. It took a long time, and it was all up to me. That was it basically, the bottom line, its up to me, if I could take it, if I could continue day after day and keep just taking the big steps then I was going to be the man for the job and could last 13 years, 15 years, 20 years, whatever its going to be".
FAR BEYOND DRIVEN
Beyond Metallica, you've got an increasing reputation for your extra-curricular activities in all manner of Metal tomfoolery. Going beyond your various album appearances and collaborations (on Sepultura's last offering or writing and singing 'Fatso's World' on Jim Martin's 'Milk and Blood' debut), tell us about your various side-projects of late.
"About ten months ago I did the Sepultura thing. We did that together in my studio in California. Uh, side project stuff... Andreas and I did one with this drummer who plays for a flamenco guitarist called Otmar Lebert, I don't know if you know him, he like sells millions of records of 'New Age' music. This drummer guy is into all these Brazilian rhythms and he came from a punk band but now plays all this crazy, incredible stuff. Andreas and I got together with this guy and that became pretty sick, that was one of the cool ones that have been happening. In March of this year, I did a project with Devin Townsend and Gene Hoglan and that was a little scary! Let's see, what else has been happening... did a project with DJ Shadow not that long ago for the UNCLE record, its like a trip-hop project, his second album. He's from California, he called me out to play a track on; I've never played with a 'turntable-ist' before and it was fucking great! I just gained such respect for those guys that day, it takes as much talent as being a good lead guitar player. It really is something amazing, dude, it really is. It's incredible, man, incredible. This guy had 300 records with him for that day and only two of them I'd ever heard of. Like, 'The Satanic verse' by Anton La Vey and Billy Squires. All kinds of records from Spanish garage bands, pull a bit of this, a little off that, and eventually he's got this sick symphony of samples playing. I was like, 'Jesus, this a new world, this is the future of music, its really something else'. I always try and keep the projects happening, I have literally hundreds and hundreds of tapes of all these projects with guys from Voivod, guys from the Melvins, guys from Kyuss and Machine Head, you know, tons of shit."
Does this ever get beyond the studio? I've heard reports that the rest of Metallica would be less than chuffed if it began circulating.
"A couple of the projects are available on the Internet. The IR8 project, which is the original project with Devin and Tom Hunting from Exodus, it really broke down the doors for me to do these kind of projects. We followed that with the Quartetta da Binga which was Rob Flynn, Andreas, myself and Tom Hunting. Pure evil! Andreas and Rob together in a tiny room battling it out with full stacks, really fucked up. Both of those are available on the internet- but not through my doing".
He continues "I would love to share this stuff with people, but I don't ever want to weaken that fist of Metallica. Everybody's become a lot cooler with it than they were in '94 with the IR8 project. But I also think at the same time that when people go off on solo projects, even if the band is allegedly intact, that the listeners and fans of the music look at the band differently and look at the solo person differently, as if some kind of weakness has entered and taken away from the band. There can only be a few exceptions to that, such as singer/guitar players of bands who are really outstanding and have to do a solo project, Chris Cornell or someone like that, that would be accepted. But for any of us to do that, because Metallica is seen as such a unit, such a team, for one of us to do a solo project would take away from the power of Metallica."
From the frantic watch-pointing gestures of the tour manager, I think he's trying to get us to wrap this baby up. Jason, many thanks for the interview, its certainly been an event! Just before we have to split, tell me what you make of peoples' often anal attitudes to Metal.
"I don't mind people being dedicated to their kind of music, like 'I love Death Metal, man!', that's cool and it has its place. But you can interbreed and cross all different kinds of music. Ok, a lot of its crap, some shit simply doesn't mix. But there's one band from Puerto Rica right now, Puya, and if you get a chance, check these fucking guys out- they are the future of music. Like three bands within one band, they will change five times during one song, from Salsa to distorted tribal with perfect sound, Latin percussion, then full Metal, all over the fucking shop, singing in English, singing in Spanish. Super cool, man. There are a few bands like that, but they are really outstanding. That kinda thing is what needs to happen, to prise people's heads open. Don't get me wrong, being true to Metal is a very righteous thing, but you should also be open-minded to other things because you can learn from it!"
Metallica are Jason Newsted (bass), James Hetfield (vocals/ guitar), Kirk Hammett (guitar) and Lars Ulrich (drums).
Interview and words by Spandex Oo-er. Many thanks to Sharon Dunn (Universal), Lesley Fraser (Mercury) and Dan (Metallica crew) for their help with arranging this interview
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