Metallica bassist Jason Newsted was infamously buried in the mix of his first album with the band, 1988’s “…And Justice For All“. The album’s producer Flemming Rasmussen has recently spoken out about that unfortunate snub as part of a chat he had with Rollingstone.com about “Master Of Puppets“—which he also produced—turning 30. He said of Newsted‘s work on the album:
“Jason is one hell of a bass player. I’m probably one of the only people in the world, including Jason and Toby Wright, the assistant engineer, who heard the bass tracks on ‘…And Justice for All‘, and they are fucking brilliant.”
He continued: “It was Lars [Ulrich] and James [Hetfield] who said to turn the bass down. I know that for a fact because I asked them.” Speaking of the treatment Newsted received from the band upon his replacement of the late Cliff Burton:
“He always more or less was the new kid. I actually had him practice bass when me and Lars would be doing drums. And I’d ask Toby [Wright] to do some bass sounds with Jason to run it through a few times, and we’d go, ‘This is great. This is not great. Do this, do that.’ And we’d let them bang it out after we’d left for the night. While we went to sleep, he was actually doing some of his bass tracks. We’d listen to them the next day. … I feel and I think the general feeling in the band is that he was never treated with the respect that he deserved.”
