During a conversation with the Palm Beach Florida Weekly, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted talked about the physical damage caused by playing metal music and onstage antics that come with it.
The musician also touched on his 2003 stint as...
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During a conversation with the Palm Beach Florida Weekly, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted talked about the physical damage caused by playing metal music and onstage antics that come with it.
The musician also touched on his 2003 stint as Ozzy Osbourne's live bassist, which included the Black Sabbath singer's longest show ever. You can check out a part of the interview below.
You've been outspoken about the physical damage that playing metal music, and head-banging all these years, has caused. What's been the reaction to that?
"I haven't had a direct interaction with anybody other than doctors about that kind of stuff. It's mostly my family and wife and people who have known me for a long, long time.
"About 1992 in New York, I was in a real bad way. It was about eight or 10 months into a tour, with very little rest. I had herniated these C discs. It was just an occupational hazard. It came with the territory. The reason I said anything about it is because it happened to me.
"Over time, what happened was, they told me I was giving myself whiplash every night.
"You're doing it thousands of times a day - how many in a week, in a month? Literally millions of times. It's flesh and bone, and it breaks down. Now I've let myself heal, and I haven't done it in 19 years.
"When I play in this band, I play guitar - lighter instruments and acoustic instruments. It's not this maple five-string bass that weighs 20 pounds. All that ergonomics is nutty."
It looked like a workout every show - like you were sweating out all of your calories.
"No doubt. I stayed the exact same weight for 27 years. We always knew that was going to happen. You can weigh yourself before the show, and it was at least a three-pound difference, sometimes more.
"We'd rate the power and energy of the show by how many T-shirts we went through. You could wring 'em out and fill up a bottle. Four was a pretty good show. Everybody had their way of keeping fit. I took my bicycle on tour with me for years."
How long were the shows in those days?
"Two and a half hours, no intermission. The longest show I've ever performed was with Ozzy - three hours and one minute, in Montreal, in 2003."
Did he keep extending the encores; is that how it happened?
"I don't know if the right combination of pills had hit, or he got off of them or was only halfway into them, but he was in a mood that night. We played 28 songs. In any kind of set, 20 is pushing it.
"To listen to the same guy sing 20 songs, you're asking a lot. Unless it's Gaga or Adele or something. There's so many songs to choose from with Ozzy. He could tap into the whole Sabbath catalog.
"I was playing with him in 2003, so he had already done all of the 'Blizzard' stuff, all the cool shit.
"He had a couple of hundred songs. I had been in the band for a couple of months, and there would be the same 30 songs we'd push around. He'd call stuff out, and expect everybody to know it. There's 22,000 people in Montreal, and he'd go, 'The Wizard!'
"I fuckin' never played 'The Wizard,' let alone with him! I played it in my bedroom when I was 14, but never even got all the way through it. We barely made it through. He called out three to five songs that night that I had never played with anybody before."
Knowing Ozzy, he wouldn't even know if you weren't perfect.
"That's the thing, he didn't. The people didn't, either!"
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