Last week, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted announced he will be returning to the live stage later this year for his first-ever North American headline tour with The Chophouse Band, a group he has played with sporadically since 1992.
Newsted appeared on comedian Dean Delray’s “Let There Be Talk” podcast recently where he detailed a huge health scare he is now thankfully on the other side of.
“I will talk about this a little bit,” Newsted said. “I decided that this week, as I’m beginning to roll out the promotion for the shows and stuff and let everybody know I’m gonna be back around, and you already know it — you’re, probably, in the 24 people that I told.”
He continued: “So, let’s see — in one week, it’s gonna be a year. So one week from today, it’ll be a year. May 8th of 2025, I underwent a procedure for throat cancer. And so they took a bunch of sh*t outta here and then they went in with lasers this way and took a bunch of sh*t out. So the cavern inside my head is different than it was, but we got it early. And I got my ‘free and clear’ about three weeks ago. So I beat it.”
“I promised myself I was going to rest, and that was the first time I’ve done that in my life. I’m usually just on or off. And so I promised myself I was gonna take the gravity off and lay down for the right amount of hours. And there’s no way, with my arrogant, spoiled ass that I would’ve stopped smoking weed, that I would’ve stopped drinking, that I would’ve stopped doing all the things. But the great spirit got my attention and said, ‘That’s not good right now, man.’ And so it pulled me off it. And so now I’m more clear-headed than I’ve been in my entire adult life. And so there’s blessings within everything. The lemonade I’m making this summer, bro — mm. Sweet. Ooh.”
Newsted previously detailed what fans can expect from The Chophouse saying: “The Chophouse is the continuation of my ambassadorship of American music. The Chophouse Band plays everything from bluegrass to f*cking slabs of metal. We’re covering a lot of ground. There could be country flavor to a song, but it’ll still have sharp teeth. We are looking forward to an exciting summer!”
