Jason Newsted isn’t going country but he is leaning into American roots music. This month, he kicked off a tour with Southern rock greats Blackberry Smoke, opening shows with his Chophouse Band, which includes former Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit member Jimbo Hart on bass.
With that in mind, Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast asked Newsted which song by his former band — Metallica — would be well-suited for a rootsy, country version. He immediately discounted “Mama Said,” off 1996’s Load album (that album’s followup, ReLoad, just received a deluxe reissue), for being “too obvious” and gravitated toward a pair of songs from before he joined the band.
“If it was up to me to do it, I’d want to go for something super fast and challenging and make it still that way but not as distorted or amplified,” Newsted says. “So, if it was ‘Battery,’ or ‘Fight Fire with Fire,’ something that really moves…. That could be really cool.”
“Fight Fire with Fire” first appeared on 1984’s Ride the Lightning; “Battery” appeared on 1986’s Master of Puppets, Metallica’s last album with bassist Cliff Burton, who died that year. Newsted joined the group on bass soon after.
Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr, who joins Newsted on this week’s Nashville Now podcast, also chose something from Master of Puppets. “My thought was ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium),’” he says, done in a “spooky, sort of Johnny Cash.”
Newsted famously quit Metallica in 2001. Nevertheless, he’s intrigued by the band’s upcoming residency at Sphere in Las Vegas. Would he like to attend a show? “Yeah, I would like that,” he says. “That’d be interesting to see that in those types of surroundings for sure.”
Newsted and the Chophouse Band are touring with Starr and Blackberry Smoke through the end of the month. They’ll play a pair of shows at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on July 24 and 25.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Kings of Leon, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, the War and Treaty, Carly Pearce, Amy Grant, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Michaela Anne, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, Love on the Spectrum‘s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
