Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [143]
What Jason later characterised as ‘hazing and a lot of emotional tests’ included such stunts as telling everyone they introduced him to that he was gay; signing meals and drinks to his room; and invading his hotel room at four in the morning. ‘Get up, fucker! It’s time to drink, pussy!’ Pounding on his door until it almost came off the hinges. ‘You should have answered the door, bitch!’ Grabbing hold of his mattress and yanking it off the bed with Jason still lying on it, then piling everything in the room – TV, chairs, desk – on top of him. Fifteen years later, Newsted still recoiled at the memory as he told Playboy, ‘They threw my clothes, my cassette tapes, my shoes out the window. Shaving cream all over the mirrors, toothpaste everywhere. Just devastation. They go running out the door, “Welcome to the band, dude!”’ The only reason he put up with it, he said, ‘Because it was Metallica, it was my dream come true, man. I was definitely frustrated, fed up and kind of feeling unliked.’ More recently, he said: ‘I didn’t sleep properly for three months after I joined Metallica. They’d charged thousands of dollars to my table at a restaurant. I had no idea about it. I was a hired musician at that point, earning $500 a week. Before I joined, I was still rubbing nickels together.’ As if to add insult to injury, Lars recalled how in Tokyo, ‘all these kids gave us gifts. Jason didn’t get any, though – they thought he was part of the road crew. So he had a temper tantrum. Poor guy. Maybe we should have got him a T-shirt with the statement: “I’m Jason, dammit, gimme a gift!”’
Clearly there was something more going on here than the normal high jinks associated with a touring rock band. The problem was twofold. First there was Newsted’s generally diffident personality; on the one hand so awed by his plunge into the deep end – not just joining his dream band but trying to replace its most important figurehead – that he tried to cover up his nervousness and lack of experience by putting on a front that more than one observer mistook as arrogance; on the other, having to find a way to come to terms with his newfound role, no longer as leader of the band but as the newbie, do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do hired hand – an incredibly precarious balancing act that almost inevitably left him flat on his face.
Then there were the more subtle tensions, which he simply could not be expected to appreciate. Jason arrived in Metallica determined to do the right thing, to not blow it, to do things to the max. This was the earnest young guy, after all, who once tacked a set of ‘band rules’ to the wall of Flotsam’s rehearsal room. The others, however, especially Lars and James, were not only entering that new stage success brings, where the shine has worn off enough to let you mess around with things and make up your own rules, but were also still so fucked-up over Cliff’s death that they were easily irritated by Jason’s out-of-synch mewling. It was like Ron McGovney all over again. Jason, though good enough on bass, was never going to be as good as Cliff. Jason