Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [141]
Lars took it well, he says. ‘He was very cool with it. I think he respected my decision at the time. He probably thought I was crazy later. But at the time, he just wanted to reach out to people he knew personally to come up and jam and take the load off of this cattle call. It must have been horrible, I can’t imagine it…I knew that him and I also had a kinship with a lot of other things. And it’s like, I wanted to help my friend out…I almost wanted to go up just to give them a fuckin’ hug. But I had to say, it was a time in my life where I wasn’t ready for that change.’ He adds with a sigh, ‘Of course, I get asked this question now by people that are much younger, and they have this look in their eyes, like “Are you fuckin’ crazy?” The question is always: do you regret it? And my answer is always: no, because I’ve had a wonderful life since then.’
Then, on the afternoon of Tuesday, 28 October – exactly three weeks to the day since Cliff’s funeral – Metallica found what they thought they were looking for when a twenty-three-year-old former farm boy from Michigan named Jason Newsted walked through the door at Hayward and plugged in his bass. ‘Jason had the spirit,’ says Bobby Schneider. ‘Jason could eat, shit and sleep Metallica. It was Jason’s dream.’ Bobby recalls picking up the wide-eyed hopeful from the airport and Jason realising halfway through the drive that he’d left his bass amp at the luggage collection. Going back to pick it up made Jason late for his audition, which made him only more nervous. ‘The kid must have had balls of steel, though,’ says Bobby, because as soon as he started playing, ‘I think they knew he was the one.’
It had been Brian Slagel – the very same guy who had first turned them onto Cliff – who first mentioned Jason to Lars. Just as with Trauma, the first release from Jason’s current band, Flotsam and Jetsam, had been a track on one of Slagel’s ongoing Metal Massacre compilations (MM VII in 1984). They had followed that with an album for Metal Blade, Doomsday for the Deceiver, released in July 1986, which Kerrang! had over-excitedly awarded six out of a maximum five stars to. ‘Lars said, “Okay, cool, send me some stuff,”’ Slagel recalls. He also spoke to Jason: ‘I don’t want to get you too excited [but] what would you think about possibly auditioning for the Metallica gig?’ Jason immediately began freaking out. ‘Are you kidding me? They’re like my favourite band of all time!’ A perfectionist by nature, Newsted had spent every waking moment since Slagel’s call learning the entire Metallica back catalogue. Friends clubbed together to help him pay for the $140 plane ticket to San Francisco. When James asked him which song he’d like to play, he answered: ‘Any one you like, I know them all.’
At that point there were three names on the mental shortlist: Mike Dean of Corrosion of Conformity, Willy Lange of Lääz Rockit and Kirk’s boyhood friend Les Claypool of Primus. Within minutes of Jason playing, his name was also added. Said Lars at the time, ‘We wanted to spend a whole day with each of the four because, for us, it’s about more than whether he can play a song well. The whole vibe and attitude of the person, how we would get on with him, the friendship, was just as important.’ Jason was second of the four. ‘We played all day and then went out for a meal. And then we went for the big test, which was obviously the drink test.’ For this, the band took Jason to one of their favourite local bars, Tommy’s Joint. ‘Somehow,’ said Lars, ‘and I swear it wasn’t planned, me and Kirk and James ended up in the toilet together, pissing. So we