Jason Newsted called by Tony Iommi

While doing an interview with Jason Newsted about his latest record “Heavy Metal Music”, we took the opportunity to ask some questions about other projects he participated in in the past, one of them being a charity band WhoCares formed by Tony Iommi and Ian Gillan.

TopGuitar: Please tell us something more about the WhoCares project that raised funds for charity.

Jason Newsted: Let me tell you about that, dude. When you get a call from your number one hero in existence, whoever that happens to be… No matter if you are a musician or a writer, when a guy – this writer that you love – calls you up in the afternoon, and you’re sitting down with your girl, you’re having a glass of wine, you’re playing with your dog and stuff… And this writer calls you at your HOUSE and he says “hey man, I want you to do an intro for my book, and I want you to have a picture on the back, etc.”, then you’d be like [makes a 'blaaah’ sound] OK! It’s the same thing whoever you’re favorite guitar player is, and he calls you and says “hey man, you wanna jam?”. So, the Architect of Heavy Metal, our number one guitar teacher of our music, calls my house in the mountains of my ranch and says “hey Jason, this is Tony” and I go “what?!”. “It’s Tony, I like you to come play a song” and I’m like “who the f**k is this? Who’s playing a joke on me right now?”. “No, it’s really me! Ian Gillan and I are putting this thing together that we’ve been working on for these kids to rebuild the Gyumri music school that was destroyed twenty years ago, and we’re getting some people together to play these songs, would you pay bass on a track for us?” and I’m like “f**k, yeah dude, what time do you want me to start?”. So that’s all that was – he just asked me to play for five minutes, I played for five minutes. If he asked me to play for twenty more, I’d do it, and if he asked me to play for an hour, I’d be there for an hour! That was just a gift that fell from the skies from one of our heroes.

TopGuitar: Do you know about any plans to continue this initiative in the future?

Jason Newsted: I don’t know, because actually they’ve had it going for a while, I think they’ve had this organization running for about twenty years. So this is like the latest installment of trying to get some money for these kids.