Metallica Reflects on Newsted's Departure...Again

Australian rock radio station Triple M recently interviewed metal gods Metallica and one of the most asked and infamous questions was brought up yet again. What does Metallica think of bassist Jason Newsted and his replacement Rob Trujillo.

Front-man James Hetfield spoke on the situation back in 2008 to Norway's VG TV saying that Rob has already done more in terms of skill for the band than Jason ever did.

"He — and no disrespect to Jason — but Rob has already written more on this album than Jason had in his whole 14 years. A lot of that had to do with us not being willing, and I totally understand that, but just his material seemed to gel better. It feels as though we've known him forever, basically, is what it feels like. And there's still times when I see him in pictures with us, and I go, 'Oh, yeah! He's in our band. Dude, we kick ass even more now.' It's a good feeling," said Hetfield.

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, when speaking to Triple M, had more praise for Newsted's past history with the group and said that they probably under-used the bassist.

"When I think back on the Jason years, I look at an incredibly dedicated musician and an incredibly dedicated person to the cause; he was very, very engaged. He probably was never given an outlet to... I don't think we took advantage of... the band did not take advantage of everything that he had to give. That's how it played out, and we weren't in a place at that time where we were better dealing with it," said Ulrich.

When Newsted left the band, Metallica was going through some deep issues and the band nearly disintegrated and fell apart. See the documentary Some Kind of Monster and find out why. Ulrich spoke on the issue and introduction of Trujillo into the Tallica family.

"The ironic thing is that his (Newsted) departure kind of brought the band closer, because we realized that he was leaving because we weren't capable of really dealing with each other. Rob is... It just fits. His personality really just gels with the personalities of the rest of us and it just really somehow works in a very organic, unforced way now; we don't force things," said Ulrich.