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In May, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted revealed that he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2025, but thankfully beat it earlier this year. Heavy Consequence recently caught up with the veteran musician, who opened up about his cancer battle.
“I definitely want to be an advocate for this now, ’cause I know that no one that’s breathed has been unaffected by this, no matter how many degrees of separation that you are from it or you’ve had it yourself,” Newsted told us in the video interview above.
He continued, “Through my life, I lost grandparents, parents, and other friends… and Piggy from Voivod. It’s affected me… for a long, long, long time, and I always tried to be a caretaker for my mother… as she went through that stuff.”
As for his reaction to first learning of his cancer diagnosis, Newsted noted, “This horrible thing and the words that surround it, and the words the doctors repeat, we become very frightened of them, right? There’s some words you just say to somebody, they’re like, ‘Ooh!’ And that is definitely one of them. No matter what language it’s in, you say that word, everybody’s face is the same. And so when the doctor said that to me, yes, my face was the same, also.”
Newsted said that he immediately took action, noting, “That was my main thing, research. Just dove in to try to figure out what it was, where it came from… Fortunately, there’s enough data to explain it to me. I got lucky in that way that we could define it, and chase it, and kill it, so… I’m a lucky survivor that way.”
After getting the all-clear from his doctors, Newsted scheduled a summer tour with his group Jason Newsted & the Chophouse Band, who just completed a run of July dates.
Watch Jason Newsted talk about his cancer battle above, and see our previous segment with him discussing Metallica’s Load/Reload era here.
