Steve Baltin from Rolling Stone spoke with NEWSTED bassist Jason Newsted (ex-METALLICA, VOIVOD, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM) recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Rolling Stone: How is the tour going?

Newsted: "This'll be our sixth show in the last eight days. The whole idea was do these 14 warm-up shows, just to try to bust the rust off. It's been 10 years since I was really in it all the way, full-blown, Ozzfest 2003. It's all culminating now with being the front guy, my name on it, my words – a lot going on.

Rolling Stone: Do you appreciate it more after the hiatus?

Newsted: "I think the deeper the challenge – I had a bunch of shoulder surgeries to get myself together – whatever that level of thing, you come back with that same level of matching appreciation. It's new eyes, new mind, new world to recognize and appreciate, there's no question about that. It did happen so fast. We wrote the songs in fall of last year, recorded 16 or 20 songs since that time, put the EP out in January. I've got an LP done already, a world tour at our feet in six months' time, so that's pretty quick for all that to be coming around and for me to fathom it. In a big band like Metallica, in Metallica in particular, it is such a machine, and especially when I was in, the same people working together for 25 years for us, same band, same crew guys working for us – it was such a fine-tuned thing, that's what I got conditioned to. And so many of the detail things were kept from me because they're not gonna bother you with all the bullshit. So I skipped over this part that I'm doing right now in the first 30 years of my career. October of 1986 on Halloween I played the last show with Flotsam and Jetsam – 10 days later onstage in Japan, sold out Budokan with Metallica. I didn't ever do the van around the countryside, slugging it out place to place, come to the Roxy to play or anything like that. I skipped over it. Now I'm doing it, and appreciate it."

Rolling Stone: Now you're doing it, though, with a different wisdom.

Newsted: "That's the thing. That was Lars in Metallica – I never recognized it. I used to give him grief because, 'Dude, how come you're not practicing more? How come you're not on time?' And he's like, 'If you only knew what I had to do.' I didn't realize, but he was so on top of that kind of stuff, and geographically aware and all these things. 'We gotta go here, they're letting Western music in here, now we're going here,'" that kind of thing. He was so on top of it, but I didn't realize it until now. I've gained so much respect for all those guys in the camp, but especially him in particular."

Read more at Rolling Stone.