Jason Newsted (ex-Metallica) previously revealed that he laid his Newsted project to rest after losing a manager, having issues with the Soundwave Festival, and dealing with his mother’s sickness. Now, during a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar, he offered some more insight into his decision to put a stop to the band.

He said the following:

“There was a couple things that were very good and then a couple things were very bad. When it came down to the money stuff and just having to wear all the hats and doing the writing, singing, playing and paying for everything, it was just too much of a load.”

He continued:

“The good things that happened were the shows came off very well and was received very well. The European stuff was fantastic and I got a couple good opportunities opening for Iron Maiden at Sonisphere and the Download Festivals. Those were wonderful — the respect being shown that I couldn’t have maybe predicted. We got respect from the generations of bands that followed Metallica and Voivod and people we taught without knowing it.”

He added the following about the negatives of being in the group:

“It cost me an awful lot of money — hundreds of thousands of dollars to take the Newsted band around to the 22 countries we played. But it was worth it for the lessons I learned and the respect that was shown to us and the camaraderie of the band. But I couldn’t continue because the business is such a harsh thing now and so different than what I had known.”

He also shared the following regarding his decision to start the project in the first place:

“I did the Newsted band thing at my 50th birthday to prove that I still had the guts and I could still go and show those guys half my age and run ’em around the stage. I knew I could still take it to ’em and I had to prove that to myself. As we started going, we got people like [Mike] Mushok to play and having that kind of talent around you inspired you to do better and inspired me to want to take it around and show off to people.”

Jason Newsted (ex-Metallica) was recently interviewed by Eddie Trunk, and offered a more in depth explanation regarding his decision to stop working on his Newsted project. The biggest factors involved losing the band manager, dealing with issues involving promoter AJ Maddah and his Soundwave Festival, and his mother’s illness, and eventual death.

Newsted said the following about the band’s manager leaving them:

“The manager that had taken us on to take the Newsted band around the world, help us get all those gigs and everything, he had gotten on the ground floor with a band called Florida Georgia Line, who became gigantic in the country music world — beyond gigantic; like Grammys and holy business. I think they actually beat Elvis Presley’s record for a single being on the charts for the longest of all time. So things like this. He came to us honestly and said, ‘I’m not gonna be able to be in your corner anymore, because I have to go with these guys and do this. You understand?’ I said, ‘Yes, I understand.’ So that came into play — a little bit of a wobbly situation there in the handling.'”

He added the following about AJ Maddah and his promises of putting the band on main stage at Soundwave, which ended up becoming a hectic situation that resulted in him losing money:

“So as the shows grew closer in February, all the logistics from their side started going quite haywire, and the promise, or the word, of a handshake, of him saying [we would get to play] the main stage and all these different things, that was changing rapidly, and I couldn’t get straight answers from across the world. So getting those answers from that place a day and a half behind or ahead, all this communication became pretty much a headache. And I could not get any real answers of where I was gonna take my boys, when I was gonna take them, and who I was gonna be playing with and what time and on what stage. And I’ve been in this for long enough that I’m not gonna do that.”

He also said the following about his mother’s passing and his decision to fade away for awhile:

“I was not interested in letting anybody know about anything. It was nobody’s business, really, about any kind of social media things or what was going on within my people or any of that, and so I just didn’t really wanna bother with any of that until I had the energy and presence of mind to be able to talk to you today about it and let people know that I always appreciated their encouragement and their positive vibrations they sent to me. People just have to understand that when these type of things come in your life that you really do get some heavy, heavy perspective. And so that’s what changed for me.”

[Transcribed By Blabbermouth}