Joseph Hudak
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Jason Newsted onstage in 2014. The former Metallica bassist is back on the road with his Chophouse Band, opening a string of dates for Blackberry Smoke. Mairo Cinquetti/NurPhoto via Getty Images When Jason Newsted was in Metallica, he says he can remember only a handful of times when the band ever stopped a show. One was in Canada, during a period where the thrash-metal titans were still building the massive fan base they maintain today.
During an appearance on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, the bassist recalls one specific gig in remote Canada where he and singer James Heftfield found themselves under fire — from darts.
In those days, Newsted says, the band wasn’t always selling out hockey arenas north of the border, and the promoter would split the venue in half with a rubber curtain. That pushed fans close to the stage, and also up alongside the band in the seats.
“The kids are up above you,” Newsted says. “So, we’re playing, playing, playing, all of a sudden … a dart! I look over at James, like, ‘Dude!’ The no-words communication thing.” Soon, another dart hit the stage, not far from Hetfield’s tennis shoe, and Metallica halted the gig.
“It was maybe the fourth time we ever stopped a show. When we saw too much blood or somebody’s arm getting pulled out, we’d stop the show for a second,” Newsted says, recalling how Hetfield picked up the projectile and shouted, “What the fuck?”
Metallica fans quickly identified the culprit, with the help of laser pointers, which were popular at the time. “The security guys and the kids and whoever had the laser pointers at the moment … the kids all jumped on him and the sheriffs carried that fucker out. The self-policing nature of the Army, the reason that is what it is, is because they feel a part of something so much larger than themselves. And when you’re singing, ‘Die, die!’ with a 100,000 people, that’s a thing.”
Newsted is currently on tour with his Chophouse Band, opening a string of shows on Blackberry Smoke’s 25th anniversary tour. The Southern rock band’s lead singer, Charlie Starr, joins Newsted on this week’s Nashville Now to talk about how the two musicians joined up. He also shares a second-hand story from the Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson about that “Die! Die!” chant, a refrain in Metallica’s “Creeping Death.”
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According to Starr, Robinson told him it was one of the most profound moments he had ever witnessed in a live setting. “He said the two most powerful things he had seen in all his experience on the road, was the ‘Die!’ chant, and Bob Dylan, alone with the same amount of people, 400,000, playing acoustic guitar. That sheer power of the four of you guys, and the power of one man with a song.”
