I wrote a while back on how video games like Guitar Hero could be helping to inspire a whole new generation of kids and young adults to pick up the bass guitar (see – bass guitar gaining popularity from video games). In a weird twist, the game Rock Band is actually helping fans of Metallica and Jason Newsted in particular by allowing access to the master tracks of some of their songs. One such song is Blackened off the And Justice For All album released back in 1988.
One enterprising Youtube and Rock Band user with the handle Adimifus managed to isolate the master bass tracks used in the Rock Band video game for Blackened, boost the levels to make the non-existent bass track much more heavy in the mix and then blended it back in with the unblemished master tracks for the rest of the instruments. The result: a three dimensional mix that sounds more like And Justice For All collided with the Black album (bass mix wise at least) or more like what the bass sounded live on the And Justice For All tour. The video featuring this track has been titled Metallica – Blackened w/ enhanced ORIGINAL Bass; you can listen to it yourself below. Turn it up!
At the time that I write this post, the video has been viewed more than 196,300 times since December 11, 2007. There was some initial confusion between this track and a series of re-recorded Metallica tracks featuring enhanced bass lines that were not played by Newsted entitled “And Justice for Jason”. This particular version has been isolated from the master tracks, which are required for any of the video game versions of songs in Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The master tracks are required because the game allows anywhere from one to 5 players to perform at the same time on the game and needs to mute and un-mute the track based on the ability of the player to match the patterns on the screen at the right time.
Some bands have had to re-record their songs because they weren’t able to locate the original masters, but And Justice For All wasn’t one of them. Doubters can confirm the Blackened performance credits on the Rock Band version.
- Jason Newsted via last.fm
Newsted, the longest serving bassist in Metallica, walked away from the band in 2001 which was the start of a particularly rough patch for Metallica that was documented in the movie Some Kind of Monster. He replaced Cliff Burton when the popular bassist died tragically in a tour bus accident in 1986. Jason endured many “hazing” rituals for years after joining the band and some point to the lack of bass on And Justice For All as one such incident. However, Jason’s bass tracks were featured prominently in the mix on the album of covers called Garage Days Re-Revisited in 1987 (which are included on the 1998 release called Garage Inc.) and even Cliff Burton’s bass was very low in the mix on the first three Metallica albums.
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I absolutely love this post. As a fellow Metallica fan and as an ameature bassaist, I have always though that Justice lacked. Even though it was one of my favorites, Jason might as well not even have played on it. To hear this remixed track both makes my ears tingle with enjoyment and kinda annoys me… It’s just that it sounds so fantastic, why didn’t they release the album this way? I know they were hazing Jason, and maybe in some ways may have had a bit of resentment twoards him,being that they were still hurt from losing Cliff (still one of my all time favorite bassists, R.I.P.) but he had a phenominal sound there! I could rant for hours about this, if you can’t tell. No wonder Jason is one of the least often talked about bassists when the “who’s better?” conversations start up. You always hear about Cliff Burton, Robert Trujillo, Alex Webster, and so on and so forth, but rarely Jason. It seems to me that his best works may have just been chucked in a dark corner in the back of Metallicas bassment.
Also, I’m really loving your tips and Ideas on EQ settings and amp positioning (something I never thought of) to get the best sound from the bass amp. I’m just starting out (possibly a little later than most people would suggest) learning to play the bass. I currently only have a 4 string Ibanez SRX700 bass and a Fender 25B bass amp (possibly not the best combo). I’m trying to simply learn from just kinda playing around, looking at tips and learning as much as possible from material online, since I don’t have the money or luxury of having parental support to pay for me to get lessons. so consequently, I sometimes get lost in the terminology itself. Do you have any sites or maybe some articles you wrote that may be of assistance?
Thanks- Troy
Hey Troy,
Thanks for leaving the comment and I’m glad that you enjoyed those posts. I actually think Jason got a lot more respect after he left the band (unfortunately) and have heard Rob get a lot more disses than I ever would have expected (given that he is extremely talented). In my opinion, Cliff, Rob and Jason are all great bassists in their own way and each bring something a little different to the table – which is awesome because if all bass players were exactly the same, music would be boring!
My advice for anyone starting out is to not worry too much about your gear, but get passionate about learning the instrument. If you’re still playing a year or two (or three later) and you know that playing bass is definitely for you, then you can start investing in superior gear. What’s a good way to do this? Play music that you love to play as much as possible! One of the reasons why I ‘stuck’ with the bass is because I had a friend show me how to play a song right off the bat; I was so excited about playing the music that it helped me get through the difficulty of strengthening my fingers, building up my endurance and dexterity.
How do you learn the songs that you like? Here’s a great site I discovered that has tons of bass guitar tabs (even a pile of Metallica songs), it’s called Songsterr.com. It has songs sorted based on difficulty so you should be able to find something that interests you at a level you can handle, and unlike printed tab books you can actually hear the isolated bass part (sounds like a midi file to my ears) so you can distinguish the rhythm of the bass line as well. If you upgrade you can get access to a tuner and the ability to slow down the tricky parts so you can nail them perfectly!
Aside from that, I also highly recommend the Bass Guitar For Dummies book – it’s a great one-stop reference for technique, theory and all around bass guitar advice that I wish was around when I started way back in 1990! Nothing is better than finding a great teacher, but these two resources can definitely take you far on your own. Stay patient and keep at it and you’ll make progress over time, don’t try to become Cliff Burton (or Jason, or Rob) overnight – that’ll just frustrate you and make you want to quit!
Thanks for checking out bass guitar rocks and I hope you’ll stick around for more! I also just discovered another ‘dummies’ book that’s all about effectively practicing bass guitar by the same author of the other book – so far the comments look very positive, you can check it out here: Bass Guitar Exercises For Dummies and see what you think.
As for FREE resources, Songsterr is free (unless you upgrade) and aside from continuing to check out Bass Guitar Rocks I recommend that you check out forums like Talkbass.com and The Lowdown Lowdown bass guitar forum which is put on by Bass Player Magazine (which also has a free newsletter and free content on their website).
Reading about this reminds me of an email I once received from a death metal fanzine editor. In the course of his email, he mentioned that when he interviewed Metallica years ago and asked them why they mixed the bass low on Justice, they explained that it was to pre-empt all the metalheads blasting the tape on car stereos tuned with too much bass bias (you know the sound I mean), implying that the mix would sound about right under those circumstances. Well, it sounded like a pretty dubious rationale to me, especially when half of Metallica’s fans in 1988 would’ve been too young to drive and would make do with regular hi-fis or walkmans.
Anyway, just last night I was at an Adelaide (South Australia) nightclub attending a George Kollias drum clinic, and the Justice CD was what they were using for the walk-in music. So here I am, listening to it for the first time in years on a big, sub-woofer PA system and I STILL couldn’t hear the bass guitar. It really does seem like they actually muted it, especially when you listen to this version of “Blackened” for comparison. The basswork really brings the song to life, doesn’t it?
Even accounting for the usual arguments in metal about how you can’t have the bass too loud lest it make the guitars sound thin, how on earth did they get it so wrong? I can think of plenty of other classic metal records that suffer the same affliction, but Justice would definately be No.1 on any rock journo’s “Top Ten Largely Bass-less Extreme Metal Albums Of All Time” list. Such a shame.
Next challenge: somebody figure out how to isolate Ulrich’s snare drum on St. Anger and switch the wires back on.
Hey Max, great comment! In the interviews I’ve seen, James and Lars were both pretty upfront about crankin’ the drums and the rhythm guitars and not really considering the sound of the entire band as a whole. I don’t think this was a deliberate ‘haze’ against Jason, but I do think it had a lot to do with missing Cliff. It is a very odd outcome considering the mix on the Garage Days Re-Revisited E.P. has perhaps some of the loudest bass tracks in the Metallica catalog and Jason Newsted was not only brand new but very hands-on in the recording process for that one. What happened between “Yeah, we got a new bass player” and recording And Justice For All… is still anyone’s guess. I’m not even sure if James and Lars can answer it now after all these years.
Troy, in case you haven’t already seen it – though I’ll bet you have – Mick Wall’s excellent recent biography of Metallica (“Enter Night”) deals with this issue at length and comes to much the same conclusions you have. Might I add – the book as a whole is well worth reading (as is the book he wrote about Led Zepplin; and the one he wrote about Iron Maiden, for that matter – one band where the bass’ll never get turned down, I’ll wager!). I’m actually not an avid Metallica fan but reading it has gotten me more interested in them recently, and that should be testimony enough for any rock-o-graphy.
Max, thanks for sharing that resource. I’ll have to check it out when I get the chance!