Which Metallica member wrote the main riff for the album track My Friend of Misery?

Jason Newsted wrote the main riff for Metallica's album track My Friend of Misery.

Newsted was the band's bassist during the recording of Metallica, and the song began with a riff he created. The piece was originally intended to be an instrumental, continuing a pattern in which every earlier Metallica studio album had included an instrumental track.

The finished song received lyrics and became a vocal composition rather than the instrumental Newsted first imagined. Its brooding arrangement and bass-centered writing give it a distinctive place within an album otherwise dominated by widely known singles.

The songwriting credit can cause confusion because Metallica's principal writing partnership at the time was James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. They remained central to the album's songwriting, but the specific main riff for My Friend of Misery came from Newsted. This makes the track an important example of the bassist's creative contribution.