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Jason. I prefer his style of playing and I think he's a more talented musician since he actually writes songs. Rob just seems like a hired gun to me. Good player, stick him in any band and he gets the job done, but nothing stands out about him (other than his gorilla posture when he plays).
Look into some of his work with Infectious Grooves and maybe you'll have better appreciation of his playing
...Rob KNOWS he is not really a band member as much as a guy riding out the last years of a legendary band.
Okay well....yeah I am sure if you asked any of them if Rob is "in the band" they will reply of course he is. But is he "in the band" in the way Cliff was a member of the band, holding significant influence over their sound and an equal voting partner in band decisions? I highly doubt it.
CJ Ramone was in the Ramones after Dee Dee left, and he did a great job. But when you think of the legendary status of the Ramones, you don't think of CJ, you think of Dee Dee. And when you step back and consider the mighty Metallica and their huge impact on metal....you don't envision Rob. Because he wasn't there for their massively influential glory days. You see James and Lars and Kirk and a kinda blurry face behind them....to me that face looks like Jason...
Okay well....yeah I am sure if you asked any of them if Rob is "in the band" they will reply of course he is. But is he "in the band" in the way Cliff was a member of the band, holding significant influence over their sound and an equal voting partner in band decisions? I highly doubt it.
CJ Ramone was in the Ramones after Dee Dee left, and he did a great job. But when you think of the legendary status of the Ramones, you don't think of CJ, you think of Dee Dee. And when you step back and consider the mighty Metallica and their huge impact on metal....you don't envision Rob. Because he wasn't there for their massively influential glory days. You see James and Lars and Kirk and a kinda blurry face behind them....to me that face looks like Jason...
Cliff got music composition credit for 11 songs across 4 albums and Rob got musical contribution credit for 10 songs on 1 album. By comparison Jason got credit for 3 songs across 4 albums. So while we can sit here in the cheap seats and speculate about how little Rob is a member of the band, the proof is in the credits. Apparently they consider him to be a full member of the band if they (Hetfield and Ullrich) are willing to let him take that much credit.
Or, you know, we can keep thinking from the gut, as it feels like Rob isn't a full member, whatever that means.
Hey listen, I'm not arguing that Jason was the most "in the band" of all the bassists or my favorite bass player or the best player or anything like that. I'm just saying in my head when I picture "Metallica" I picture Jason because he was the bassist for most of the time I was a Metallifan.
What I will say, tho, is that total number of songwriting credits doesn't equate how important they are to the band. Certainly Jason played way more shows and did more press junkets and appeared on more albums than Rob has so far, those are just as relevant a metric if not more. I would also dare say that in recent years James and Lars have gotten no small ration of **** over the way they have treated bassists so it would be to their great benefit to appear to be much more "inclusive" with Rob....which would most easily be done by being generous with the songwriting credits....but I do not at all believe that if Rob came up with an original idea like "let's do a duet album with Lou Reed" they would have said "Great idea Rob!"
Really, none of us are Rob or Lars so who knows.
Songwriting credits speak directly to the above bold portion of the quote.But is he "in the band" in the way Cliff was a member of the band, holding significant influence over their sound and an equal voting partner in band decisions? I highly doubt it.

Mmmmm...just kinda assumed that he is familiar with the long-established, well-documented role that a bassist plays in Lars and James' band. He can't have gone into it thinking he is a full partner in the way Jason did.
Or was it the "last years" part? That was based on that Metallica has been putting out albums for 30 years already and are unlikely do be doing this into their 80s.
However, I'd still consider Hammet a fulltime band member.