Ex-MetallicaMeta bassist Jason Newsted talktalks about life on the road and life ata home in Jupiter.

JASON NEWSTED RETIRED AT 38. THAT’S WHEN HE left Metallica, capping a 15-year-run as the bassist for the biggest metal band on the planet. It would take him another 18 years to finalize what most active retirees do: The move to Florida. In 2019, Mr. Newsted sold his longtime recording studio in Walnut Creek, California, and resettled in Jupiter Inlet Colony, where Michael Jordan, Kid Rock and Alan Jackson own neighboring property. Crooner Perry Como once had a home there — so did Olivia Newton-John. He is perhaps the loudest resident of the 244-home community, which houses both his living space and his studio, where he rehearses with his latest endeavor, the Chophouse Band.

“I do benefit concerts for the whole neighborhood, and provide food and drinks,” he says. “The police come by to see if they can hang with us. Literally. That’s the vibe. People don’t go, ‘Turn that shit down!’ It’s exactly the opposite.”

In some ways, the music Mr. Newsted records with the Chophouse Band is the opposite, too, of his metal days. Heavily steeped in Americana, the group plays Johnny Cash and John Prine, Tom Petty and Jason Isbell, Neil Young and Tom Waits. Newsted has written a couple dozen newer songs, some with the same flavor, others reflective of his metalhead roots.

But the intimacy of Chophouse’s performance venues — he plays most frequently at Tequesta’s Lighthouse Art- Center, selling out its 287-person capacity — is a world away from the arenas he played as a member of Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne’s band and other highprofile projects. He’s scheduled to play a concert next season at Maltz Jupiter Theatre, too.

Mr. Newsted discusses his past, present and future in this wide-ranging conversation.

So you’ve been around the world before winding up in Jupiter.

Yep. I’ve been to 50 states and 55 countries.

Mostly with Metallica?

In that band we did a tour where we made sure we did all 50 states. They’ve been to six or seven since I left that weren’t available for rock to be played in, or didn’t have the infrastructure for us to be able to go there, the political vibe, the police, the security, the energy. Sometimes it became a heavy governmental thing. In Indonesia and in Israel and things like that. In Belfast, we would have the country’s secret service. Wherever we were, they would be with us. In Mexico City, we had a personal bodyguard at all times that slept outside our door.

I’m sure the fans there must have been absolutely rabid, because they’re not used to receiving acts like yours.

Yeah. A copy of a copy of a copy of a cassette in Moscow in 1991 would cost six weeks’ wages. They could get a poster, an image, a copy of a cassette all the way to Timbuktu. The music made it there. But we couldn’t physically make it there.

If they waited for us so long to get there, and they knew who we were and what we sounded like but we could never see them, when we finally did 20, 25, 30 years later, their sons were coming with them. It was generational by then. Moscow was eye-opening in the ’90s, when you see that kind of poverty and heaviness and coldness — cold sky, cold people. It was different levels of gray. You finally get off the bus, and you could be in Wichita, ’cause the kid’s standing there in his Metallica shirt, and he’s got his albums to be signed. You’ve just got to realize that that shirt cost him a month and half’s pay. And the cassette cost him two months’ pay. We played Germany when it was still East and West. Romania and the eastern bloc were still Communist nations that allowed us to go in and play, with the instruction that when you hear gunfire, you drop your guitar and run to that truck over there.

When they bring our schedule to us six to eight months ahead, you look down at the cities — Paris, London, of course. Chicago. Then, Bogota? Belfast? Delhi? Didn’t they just blow up the president yesterday? Some of them, like Lebanon, we never got to get there, even though we tried.

You mentioned Israel — it can be controversial just to accept a gig there these days, because of the Palestinian situation.

In ’93 or ’94, Tel Aviv, we went with Guns ’n’ Roses. Certainly nothing like that had ever happened there, even as developed and wealthy as that place is. They just hadn’t come to an arrangement where they could protect us until then. It was one of the places where they sent a dude up to meet us and said, “That’s your boy for the next two days. You don’t let him out of your sight.” I remember that we went in for a mid-day soundcheck, and through certain barriers and barricades we got to the King David Hotel. We came back out of there to go to soundcheck, and the barricades were already different. It couldn’t have been four hours. Between noon and 4, they had changed the roads. And the guy’s explaining to us in the car, that’s what had to happen for us to be safe, because if they figure out the trail too quickly, they’re going to bomb that. So we have to change it every few hours so they don’t get to the routes where the delegates and diplomats go. It would be an international incident if something went down.

Then the next week you’re playing in Paris where it’s no big thing, and a hundred bands have been there that week. It’s a different way to learn, from the safety of that cocoon, almost — because there’s so many people around you, protecting you, and the thousands of people counting on you to make that check. Because if you don’t make that check, they don’t make that check. It’s a hugely involved thing for a band; when they get that big, there’s an awful lot of people involved.

The older I get, the more I love the music you play now with the Chophouse Band. I liked Neil Young in college; I love Neil Young now.

You appreciate it that much more. There’s certain persons, like Johnny Cash, where it doesn’t matter what color or language you speak. I always ask it from the stage: “How many Johnny Cash fans do we have?” Everyone. This audience, we’re 3 years old to 93 years old every show. It’s always benefiting youth music programs. People are into it. It’s good vibrations. Good people gravitate to good vibrations. When it kicks in, it doesn’t matter what words I say. As long as it’s bopping like that, it’s American music. Everybody knows it even if they don’t know it. All of the quiet stuff we play acoustic, with violin and banjo and keyboard. But some of the newer stuff, we are throwing down full metal — heavy, scary shit. Ten or 12 minutes of that hour and a half are all the way on.

When you were playing that kind of heavy music full time, was Americana and roots music a part of your listening diet?

Not as deep on the Americana, but certainly George Jones. Always Johnny Cash. I don’t think there was even a time I didn’t listen to Johnny Cash.

He was sort of the first punk.

In a lot of ways — that rebellious thing, the drug use, the middle finger. As a kid, I was more open to different styles that my parents and brothers played. I soaked up all their stuff, and by osmosis I became a bass player, because they played a lot of funk music in the house. It was very bass-dominated. I got into learning bass and wanting to play as fast and heavy and better than everybody else. It was a big deal to metal guys to be really efficient, to be really in tune and have prowess — to be really quick but accurate. I ran Flotsam and Jetsam like a dictator. Six days a week, and don’t be f–king late! I’m a nice guy, but don’t f–k around.

I became more tunnel-visioned in the influences I took on to create the music, and the attitude that we were really after. Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. Rush was always there, and Ted Nugent early on, that prominent bass that just keeps going no matter what the guitar player does. Motörhead is the linchpin that put me over. Lemmy played bass with a pick, and I played bass with a pick. And I got made fun of for playing bass with a pick.

Back in the day, I wish I had the answers now when somebody talked shit like that. The most successful bassist of all time plays left-handed, and his name is Paul McCartney. He’s the only billionaire bassist that ever lived. He played with a pick. Gene Simmons is pushing a beat; 840 million. He plays with a pick. Metallica, 100 million records sold. “The Black Album” is one out of four all-time that’s been on the Billboard charts 500 weeks or more. So this guy played with a pick, too.

What kind of fulfillment does playing with your new bandmates in the Chophouse give you?

We all get along great because there’s not money involved. They’ve got their own bands, their own families, their own gigs. We do benefit gigs, six a year, and that’s it. I record and write and play songs the whole rest of the time.

They could all run circles around me musical theory-wise. They could tell you everything they’re playing, and all the relating chords.

I surround myself with the bad-asses, and they make me look really good. I’m playing cowboy chords the whole time, and they’re doing their fancy shit to make me look good. I just concentrate on singing, and getting across the things I want people to hear.

You’ve been outspoken about the physical damage that playing metal music, and head-banging all these years, has caused. What’s been the reaction to that?

I haven’t had a direct interaction with anybody other than doctors about that kind of stuff. It’s mostly my family and wife and people who have known me for a long, long time. About 1992 in New York, I was in a real bad way. It was about eight or 10 months into a tour, with very little rest. I had herniated these C discs. It was just an occupational hazard. It came with the territory. The reason I said anything about it is because it happened to me.

Over time, what happened was, they told me I was giving myself whiplash every night.

You’re doing it thousands of times a day — how many in a week, in a month? Literally millions of times. It’s flesh and bone, and it breaks down. Now I’ve let myself heal, and I haven’t done it in 19 years. When I play in this band, I play guitar — lighter instruments and acoustic instruments. It’s not this maple five-string bass that weighs 20 pounds. All that ergonomics is nutty.

It looked like a workout every show — like you were sweating out all of your calories.

No doubt. I stayed the exact same weight for 27 years. We always knew that was going to happen. You can weigh yourself before the show, and it was at least a 3-pound difference, sometimes more. We’d rate the power and energy of the show by how many T-shirts we went through. You could wring ’em out and fill up a bottle. Four was a pretty good show. Everybody had their way of keeping fit. I took my bicycle on tour with me for years.

How long were the shows in those days?

Two and half hours, no intermission. The longest show I’ve ever performed was with Ozzy — three hours and one minute, in Montreal, in 2003.

Did he keep extending the encores; is that how it happened?

I don’t know if the right combination of pills had hit, or he got off of them, or was only halfway into them, but he was in a mood that night. We played 28 songs. In any kind of set, 20 is pushing it. To listen to the same guy sing 20 songs, you’re asking a lot. Unless it’s Gaga or Adele or something. There’s so many songs to choose from with Ozzy. He could tap into the whole Sabbath catalog. I was playing with him in 2003, so he had already done all of the “Blizzard” stuff, all the cool shit.

He had a couple hundred songs. I had been in the band for a couple months, and there would be the same 30 songs we’d push around. He’d call stuff out, and expect everybody to know it. There’s 22,000 people in Montreal, and he’d go, “The Wizard!” I f–kin’ never played “The Wizard,” let alone with him! I played it in my bedroom when I was 14, but never even got all the way through it. We barely made it through. He called out three to five songs that night that I had never played with anybody before.

Knowing Ozzy, he wouldn’t even know if you weren’t perfect.

That’s the thing, he didn’t. The people didn’t, either! ¦