On the final night of the 2013 installment of Gigantour (August 11 in Toronto) former METALLICA bassist and NEWSTED mainman Jason Newsted joined MEGADETH onstage for a rendition of METALLICA’s “Phantom Lord.” Video footage can be viewed below.
Newsted, who quit METALLICA in February 2001, is the frontman of a new band, called Newsted, which took part in this year’s edition of Gigantour, the critically acclaimed package festival founded in 2005 by Dave Mustaine.
Speaking to Artisan News at the August 6th Newsted signing session at Looney Tunes in West Babylon, New York, Jason stated about how the idea for the jam came about: “It was mostly created by kind of rumor and agents and managers and things like that early on when we were putting together the structure of this tour, that ‘maybe you and Jay can play a song.’ It was never something that I said or that Dave said, it was [something] that managers said to us.”
He continued: “I’m open to jam with anybody whenever anybody wants to jam — I think that’s not really a secret or nothing — so if the dude calls out ‘Phantom Lord’, I’ll sing or play bass guitar or whatever he wants; that’s all fine.”
“As a fan, jamming with Dave, coming from back here … ‘Cause I was a fan of Dave before we were brothers and peers and stuff like that. So, man, if he wants to jam, I’m open to that, of course.”