San Francisco, CA -- "You didn't really think we were taking a whole year off, did you?" says Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, laughing. In the midst of a Metallica vacation and the recent Napster controversy, Newsted has found a little calm away from the publicity storm by booking a Marin County studio for the entire month of May. While the group was taking an unofficial "year off," Newsted has been spreading his creative wings.

"Lars may have said it at the time, but he certainly didn't believe it -- at least I didn't," Newsted says of the band's intention to rest for a year. "We had a good clean three months off. Nobody messing with us. I think the other guys were pretty happy with the vacations, but I couldn't take it. I'm good for a few weeks, but after that I have to be doing something. I really did try for a couple of weeks. I sat down and had a few beers by the pool, but that's not for me."

Instead, Newsted has been filing up his time recording in his home studio with twenty-year-old guitarist Dylan Dokin and twenty-two year old drummer Brian Sagrafena. "I met Brian at a Superbowl party about six years ago," Newsted says. "During the commercial breaks, everyone would take turns at a drum set he had set up in his living room. And Brian gets on, and he's only sixteen, and he jammed. I asked him what his favorite band was, he told me Tower of Power. I was so impressed I had him in my home studio the next week." Newsted and Sagrafena continued to play together over the years, adding Dokin on guitar, finally completing their sound.

So what is that sound? "To me it's tomorrow music. It's real fresh, real contemporary," explains Newsted. "If you were going to mix it up in a bowl, it'd be Chris Cornell, Jeff Buckley, Jane's Addiction and something like Status Quo. Dylan is a great singer and that's our weapon. My girlfriend and I truly believe that he has a piece of Jeff Buckley in him. Dylan has never heard Jeff Buckley. Still, if you closed your eyes you'd swear it's Jeff's brother. It just melts you, man. I've done a lot of stuff with other people over the years, but I've always wanted to do something on my own, and when I heard what Dylan was coming up with I thought I couldn't turn this down. Jeff Buckley is so close to my own art, I could not pass this up, I wanted to share this with everyone."

While Newsted doesn't have a label deal yet, he's not worried. "It's not something that is my big concern. I'd like to do it on my own label and have somebody cool distribute it. I imagine Elektra will probably want it, they have the right to refuse it. I'd like to keep it in the family. I'd either go with the guy with Metal Blade records, from back in the day, or I'll go with Elektra. They're cool with us. It's hard for me to think they'd turn down a project from a member of their biggest band."

Newsted didn't say whether any of his bandmates would make an appearance on the disc, but did reveal that the principal violinist and the principal cellist from the S & M gigs will be on the record.

On an unrelated matter, when asked to address the heat Metallica has received in the wake of filing its lawsuit against Napster earlier this month, the bassist says he thinks the resulting backlash has been good for the issue.

"I think the backlash is healthy," he says. "The more [attention] that's churned up, the more questions that are asked and the more awareness that's brought around is all for our benefit. The more the ignorance is quashed, the more people are gonna realize that we are right. It's not a free speech issue; it has nothing to do with that at all. If you're dad is a doctor or a bricklayer, is he going to get up at 6 a.m. and work ten hours a day and come home with nothing to show for it? I don't think he would. We have to be the ones to step up. It's for everyone, and it's for the future of music on the computer. Period."