Metallica Giving More Respect to New Bassist Rob Trujillo Than They Ever Gave to Jason Newsted
Unlike their last bassist, Jason Newsted, the been-around-the-block veteran bassist Rob Trujillo (Suicidal Tendencies, Infectious Grooves, Black Label Society, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell and Ozzy Osbourne) is getting to contribute songwriting efforts to the band’s new release Death Magnetic — and all this without any newbie hazing. To those who have followed Metallica this is weird and a break from their hold on the band’s creativity. James Hetfield explains it this way to MTV.com:
“… Rob has slipped in somehow easier. He has this respect about him. … We didn’t have to haze the fan out of him, or toughen him up somehow.”
Poor Jason Newsted. He was never really embraced or accepted by the band. And it’s tough not to recognize how talented a bassist he is. He had hard shoes to fill in with Cliff Burton, true, but personally, I think Jason deserved better. And the band still seems to disrespect him in their words, even though they deny that.
“In the studio — and no offense towards Jason — but Rob has already contributed more to this record than Jason did in 14 years,” Hetfield explains.
Ulrich agrees:
“It’s difficult to praise Rob without insinuating that there was something not great about his predecessor, and I’ve got nothing but respect and love for Jason. But Rob, he’s been with us five years now, and it’s completely effortless. … It’s never felt this complete.”
And guitarist Kirk Hammett:
“Sometimes I look over at him, and he’s playing his bass onstage, and it feels like he’s always been there — his chemistry, his personality, it just all fits in really, really well. He’s a godsend.”
But Hetfield comes down to say the band never really let Newsted in creatively:
“A lot of it did have to do with our fear of losing some kind of control, no doubt about that.”
I think letting Trujillo become involved had a lot to do with Kirk Hammet being absent from a lot of the recording of this new album, while attending the birth of his new children. This created a hole to fill. A opportunity Jason never had.
August 6, 2008 at 1:05 pm
It’s just an admission that they finally ran out of ideas.
August 12, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Jason Newsted is a god in his own right. And I agree that Metallica didn’t give him enough credit but Trujillo is awesome. And the fact that he’s helping bring the band back to a Burtonish sound is awesome.
In general, most bands disrespect and mistreat their bassists but, without these dudes, a lot of the groove would be lost forever!
December 7, 2008 at 9:36 pm
They haven’t run out of ideas at all, they’ve grown up– even since the filming of Some Kind of Monster, which really explored and dealt with this issue completely. The band that Jason Newsted joined– of grief stricken, shell-shocked kids, grappling with surviving a traumatic accident that killed their brother would have been difficult for mature adults with far more life experience to process– was a very different entity — as both a megalithic business and musical collaboration-0 than the one that welcomed a fellow pro and veteran musician, Rob Trujillo. Dave Mustaine ultimately did not play much more of a role in the evolution of the supergroup that is worthy of Rock Hall induction than Ron Govney, the dude who played bass on the compilation track that launched a phenomenal career which could have sputtered and died at any given point had not the core responsible for the hit records persevered through 1000s of nights that have destroyed far lesser bands. Go back and do your homework, gang, and get a grip.
December 9, 2008 at 7:08 pm
they’ve grown up…yeah right…it’s a metal band…i hope your not someones mother deborah…