Jason Newsted wrote the main riff that began as an instrumental idea for Metallica’s “My Friend of Misery.”
Newsted joined Metallica after the death of bassist Cliff Burton and was the band’s bassist during the recording of The Black Album. For this song, he developed the principal riff and initially imagined the piece as an instrumental, continuing a tradition of instrumentals that had appeared on the band’s previous albums.
The final version became a vocal song rather than an instrumental. James Hetfield wrote the lyrics, and the songwriting credit was shared by Newsted, Hetfield, and Lars Ulrich. The track appears late in the album’s sequence and has a darker, more reflective character than several of the record’s radio-oriented songs.
This fact is often misremembered because Metallica’s central songwriting partnership was generally Hetfield and Ulrich. Newsted did contribute ideas to the band’s material, but “My Friend of Misery” is particularly notable as the Black Album track whose starting riff came from him.