Jason Newsted about his influences and favorite music

We conducted an interview with Jason Newsted to ask about the latest record of his new band called Newsted, the “Heavy Metal Music” LP. This is what he said about his influences and favorite music he would like to listen to on a desert island…

TopGuitar: There’s a lot of classic inspirations heard on your new album like Motorhead, Black Sabbath etc. Are there any contemporary bands that really are an inspiration to you?

Jason Newsted: A lot of the influence comes from my life experiences, first of all with the people that I’ve been playing with all the time for 15 years, Voivod, Echobrain – a combination of all those things I’ve taken into my brain and I’m spitting them back out. Some of them are more obvious than others and some of them you have to dig a little bit for. There’s no secret of the bands that I learned from and there’s no secret of the bands I was in, you can hear it all over the place. How can it be any other way? I am what I am, my experiences are what you hear.

TopGuitar: If you were to choose just one record to take with you on a desert island, what would it be?

Jason Newsted: Jesus, man, that’s tough… It has to be something joyful. I’m not going to pick something heavy, because I think I’d go “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” or so, but I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. So maybe a Bob Marley record, Earth Wind and Fire record, Al Green… Maybe something a little bit funky that has a lot of human factor to it. The human feeling stuff – it would have to be James Brown, Al Green, something like that. Nothing really too new, it has to be old and authentic to me. If it was going to be new, the only thing I would go for would be Muse or Radiohead, because the diversity of music they can achieve on one album is enough to keep you satisfied for a long time multi-dimensional wise. So those bands could go on those places.