Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted will hit the road soon with The Chophouse Band, a group he put together back in 1992 that plays a wide variety of music including “everything from bluegrass to f*cking slabs of metal,” he told Dean Delray.
Newsted revealed he was just cleared from a recent throat cancer scare, but shockingly that wasn’t the most surprising thing that came from the “Let There Be Talk” podcast interview. Newsted went on to explain the real reason he left Metallica. The story previously was that he wanted to branch out into other projects including his alternative rock band at the time, Echobrain. But that’s not the full story.
“Sometimes you have to make harsh ass decisions that no f*cker understands,” he continued. “They’re not in my shoes, man. What the f*ck. I’m not in yours. You’re not in mine. There’s no way you can know.”
He continued: “One thing I want to straighten out, or just comment on, is the Echobrain thing. That was another project that I took to a certain level. I had 40 projects in the Chophouse to a level of recording, composition, rehearsal, that kind of thing. This one was just more promising, and I took it to a different place. But it’s not the reason I left Metallica.”
Newsted said he was suffering from addiction at the time and asked his Metallica bandmates if he could take time to recover and sort himself out. They denied his request. “The reason I left Metallica is because I was a horrible addict,” he said. “I was way up against myself and if I didn’t get some kind of help, I was gonna die. And so I just said, ‘You guys, can I have a minute? Please give me a minute.’ And they said, ‘No.’”
“I said, ‘I would rather live than be in your band. I love being in your band. I think it’s kind of obvious. I wear your shirt every f*cking night. I wear our shirt every night. I fly my colors every night. I meet every f*cking person that wants to meet and represent us for all the fans every f*cking night. Don’t tell me I’m not committed. Don’t tell me I’m not loyal. Don’t tell me. I’m always the first one in and last one out. I’m not saying the words. It’s f*cking history. It’s real.’ You can’t give me that minute to get my head straight again? Then I have to go. Not that I don’t love you, and certainly not that I’m not committed to this band. But it wasn’t because of Echobrain.”
Check out Newsted’s full interview below.
