This is the Articles page.  It contains articles about the great Cliff Burton.  The first is an article taken from a Metallica magazine that talks about Cliff, the brilliant bassist.  The second is part of a Guitar World article from July 1993, featuring an excerpt from the Metallica biography Metallica Unbound:  The Unofficial Story by K. J. Doughton.  My moronic brother cut up most of the article (when he was a metalhead and not a HiPPiE-NAZI), so I excerpted what I could.  It talks about what happened that morning the 27 of September 1986 when the bus accident occurred.
 
 
 

Cliff, We Hardly Knew Ye…
The Day Cliff Burton Died
 
 

Cliff, We Hardly Knew Ye…
(from Movie Screen Yearbook No. 43 The Complete History of Metallica and Up & Coming Contenders)
by Alicia Morgan

Cliff Burton may have died tragically on an icy stretch of road in Sweden in 1986, but his legacy as one of the greatest bass players in the history of metal will always be remembered.  As much an integral part of Metallica’s brutal, yet melodic, uncompromising sound as James Hetfield & Co., Burton was a wonderfully improvisational player, fusing the technical musicality of jazz greats like Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius with the 70s psychedelic/classical rock style of Geezer Butler and Geddy Lee as well as a heavy dose of the fuzzed out, unrelenting booming of Motorhead’s Lemmy and Venom’s Cronos.  His experimental/ improvisational nature greatly influenced the songwriting of James and Kirk Hammett and is what made early Metallica LP’s like Kill ’Em All, Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets the classics of metal they are today.  He proved that to be brutally heavy and “sick” does not mean clumsy, heavy-fisted bass bludgeoning; rather, an acute sense of finesse and restraint, of clever jazz timings mixed with the groovingly fuzzed pysch-out experimentation of his idols from the 70s.  His bass style was more like that of a lead guitarist yet with none of the pretentious, masturbatory “noodling” that so often accompanies your typical metal “solo.”  Check out the bass solo which intros “Whiplash” on Kill ’Em All or any of the solos featured on the 1987 Cliff tribute video Cliff ’Em All to truly appreciate the man’s talent and influence.  Without a doubt, Metallica wouldn’t be the multi-platinum selling monsters of metal they are today without taking some influence from the headbangin’, psychedelic, flare-wearin’ Cliff.

     It all began on October 28th, 1982, when Brian Slagel, president of Metal Blade Records and “Metalli-mentor,” saw Cliff at The Troubador in L.A., where Cliff’s Band, Trauma, was headlining.  Billed as the “Loudest, Brightest, Heaviest Show Ever,” the band was competent, but pretty much a slice of 80’s metal at its “finest”--carefully choreographed, twin guitar “axe attack,” all formula, no spontaneity.  What stood apart was the skinny, bell-bottomed freak wailing away on his bass, banging his head maniacally, yet laying down some seriously heavy grooves.  Cliff stood out like a sore thumb amongst all the flash and glitter--raw, earthy, focused, and wickedly talented.  Slagel immediately informed Lars and James about the phenomenal four-string wonder, insisting, “he is Metallica.”  The band had been unhappy with their original bass player, Ron McGovney, who, although adequate, lacked the necessary drive to contribute or expand as a musician.  An excited Lars went to check out Cliff about a month later at the Whiskey Au Go-Go and was amazed by his lead guitar-like bass playing.  It took Lars and James a while to get Cliff to jam with them, finally relocating to San Francisco to accommodate the young bass-genius.  The first jam with Cliff took place on Dec. 28th, 1982 in the living room of Mark Whittaker, who managed Exodus.  It only took a few hours of Cliff’s freestyle, spontaneous, twisted playing to cement the deal.  History, as they say, was made.

     Cliff’s distinctive style, which has been described as a mix of “psychedelia, metal and classical experimentation” probably had a lot to do with his influences, which he listed in a 1986 interview with Harold Oimoen as “Geddy Lee, Geezer Butler, Stanley Clarke, and Lemmy, for the way he uses distortion.”  Equally as impressive were the bands he listed as his “top 5”--“Everything by Glenn Danzig (Misfits, Samhain), Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, R.E.M., and Aerosmith.” Born in 1962, young Cliff studied piano but started concentrating on bass at the age of 14, in 1976.  “When I started, I decided to devote my life to it and not get sidetracked by all the other bullshit that life has to offer,” proclaimed Cliff in the same interview. He jammed around with friends, eventually turning up in a bar band called “Easy Street” which did mostly covers, “wimpy shit” as Cliff later termed it, for a few years.  He later saw Trauma and decided to join for the experience and “not having anything better to do.”  Cliff quickly became bored with Trauma as well, aching to get heavier, faster and more experimental than the commercial schlock he was playing.  Enter… Metallica and three exalted, ground breaking albums.

     It’s strange, but most stories/articles you read about the widely successful Metallica today only mention Cliff as a tragic footnote in the band's history, not the innovative, master player that he was, which is depressing when you consider how his influence helped shape and mold Metallica into what they are today, a well oiled, heavy, melodic metal machine.  Not only was he restrained to settle down and “not do any crazy shit” on Kill ’Em All (producer Jon Zazula locked the boys out of the mixing of the album), but one gets the feeling his talent was never fully captured on any of the three recordings he did before his untimely death.  If only…

     Cliff’s solid, improvisatory, jazzy style has, to this day, never been duplicated.  “We do what we wanna do--if they consider that selling out… Whatever,” said a disgusted Cliff in an interview featured in Cliff ’Em All.  “We’re not tryin’ to be fancy, just keep doin’ what we’re doin’.”
Cliff, we hardly knew ye.

“When a man lies he murders
  Some part of the world
These are the pale deaths which
  Men miscall their lives
All this I cannot bear
  To witness any longer
Cannot the kingdom of salvation
  Take me home?”
--“To Live Is To Die”
by Cliff Burton

Thanks to Gina Rivera for research assistance.
 

The Day Cliff Burton Died
(excerpt from Metallica Unbound: The Unofficial Story excerpted in Guitar World July 1993)
from the book by K.J. Doughton

…AFTER THE STOCKHOLM show, the band hopped on the tour bus and into their bunks for the long drive to Copenhagen.  On board were the four band members, along with drum tech Flemming Larsen, guitar assistants John Marshall and Aidan Mullen, and road manager Bobby Schneider.  The driver, an Englishman who had been hired for the duration of the multi-country tour, was behind the wheel.  About 6:30 a.m., the band members were awakened by a violent jolt.  The vehicle had been in an accident, and was now lying on its side.

     How did it happen?  Marshall recaps the horror, and sheds some light on the question of what, exactly, occurred:  “We were on a two-lane road.  The bus went off to the right, and I think the driver overcorrected, cranking the wheel to the left to get us back on the road.  The wheel grabbed, and the bus swung completely around.  During this time, the tail of the bus was sliding, kind of fishtailing around and bouncing on its wheels.  That was right when we all started to wake up.  I think I bounced right out of my bunk.  The bunks were like trays with foam in them.  The foam was held in place by a wooden lip. When the bus started rocking, my back bounced across that lip.  Afterwards, I could barely walk, it hurt so bad.  The bus eventually slid to the dirt alongside the road.  When the wheels caught, the bus rolled over on its side.”

     Schneider had shattered two ribs.  Lars had broken a toe.  Kirk’s eye was blackened.  Hammett, who’d blacked out after being thrown from his bunk, snapped to consciousness and made his way through a side emergency hatch.  Outside, his eyes widened at the sight of Cliff, his body limp and lifeless, pinned under the bus.  Cliff Burton, master bass player, composer, rager, and bandmate, was dead.

     “Cliff was on the top level of the right rear bunk, and I think that as the bus was bouncing around, he was sort of pushed through the window,” speculates Marshall.  “Then when the vehicle fell over on its right side, he was halfway out the window and it fell on him.”

     Meanwhile, the bunks had toppled like matchsticks, teetering into one another and collapsing into what resembled a pile of kindling.  Mullen and Larsen, who’d also slept in right-side bunks, were pinned under the rubble for nearly three hours before the fire department jacked up the debris and rescued them.

     “When the bus first stopped on its side,” continues Marshall, “I remember hearing this noise that sounded like water.  I was afraid we’d landed in a creek and were halfway underwater.  But the noise was only that of the motor still running.”

     Within minutes, Marshall and the band had pulled themselves from the bus and were huddling outside.  “We were all sitting out there in 35 degree weather, with me in my socks and underwear before someone gave me a blanket.  I remember Kirk and James yelling at the driver.  By then, everyone had begun to realize that something was wrong with Cliff.  I remember James walking up on the road a bit to see if there was ice on the road, because the driver had claimed he’d slid over a sheet of ice.  Kirk was crying.”

     When asked what he remembers of the rest of that nightmarish evening, Hetfield poignantly responds, “I just recall our tour manager, Bobbie Schneider, saying, ‘Okay, let’s get the band together and take them back to the hotel.’  The only thing I could think was, ‘The band?  No way!  There ain’t no band.  The band is not “the band” right now.  It’s just three guys.’”

     John, who was routed to the emergency room of a nearby hospital, remembers coming to the realization that something was very, very wrong.  “I remember Bobby lyin’ next to me, as they were taking our blood pressure and stuff, and saying, ‘Cliff’s gone, you know.’  All of a sudden, the reality of everything hit me.  Right then, I looked above, at the ceiling, and thanked whoever was up there that nobody else hadn’t been seriously hurt, and that it hadn’t turned out even worse than it was.”

     By afternoon, band and crew had checked into a hotel.  The dazed group dealt with their anxiety in the manner they were most accustomed to:  drinking.  James broke two hotel windows and screamed, venting his rage.  John remembers that he and Kirk were so shaken up that they slept with the lights on in their room that night.  Two days later, Metallica, minus one, returned to America.

AN UNCHARACTERISTIC SILENCE veiled the Metallica camp in the days that followed.  Flowers poured into the band’s fan club.  Radio stations that had always ignored Metallica’s music now broadcast over-the-air condolences.  The Bay Area newspapers were filled with downbeat articles announcing the death.  The music community--artists, road crew associates, record company executives, studio professionals and fans--mourned the loss of one of its own.

     What was the eccentric, earthy charisma that made Cliff Burton so special?  Brash and compassionate, twisted and studious--and scrupulously honest--Cliff cut a presence which few who met him ever forgot.  Shortly after the band completed their recording sessions for Master Of Puppets, Harold Oimoen, a Bay Area friend of the bassist, conducted a casual interview with Cliff.  Following are excerpts from that conversation:

HAROLD OIMOEN:  Cliff, tell us what you thought of The Day On The Green show.
CLIFF BURTON:  The crowd was real good--real big.  I guess we did okay.  It’s hard to tell when you’re onstage, you know.  You don’t really know what’s going on, you just do it and find out what happens later.
OIMOEN:  What about the Donnington show and the bottles?
BURTON:  Donnington was a day of targets and projectiles.  Shit was piling high on the stage, and freaks were flipping.  They just do that because they like to.
OIMOEN:  And the new album?
BURTON:  My favorite song is “Master Of Puppets.”  I think it’s the best Metallica song yet.
OIMOEN:  How did it go in the studio?
BURTON:  It took too long.  The songs were real good, but we could have managed our time a bit better.
OIMOEN:  What do you have to say about the early days?
BURTON:  It was fun then, it’s fun now.  I think you could safely say we’ve matured musically, if not any other way, over the past three years.
OIMOEN:  What was your most memorable show?  I imagine Day on the Green and New Year’s Eve were especially cool shows because you played for massive crowds in your hometown.
BURTON:  You see, that's the thing.  Different shows have different good points.  It’s really great to do a big show in front of the hometown, but there were other gigs where things were really, really happening.  I couldn’t pinpoint one as being my favorite.
OIMOEN:  How about naming your top five albums?
BURTON:  Well, let’s just say top five bands.  Everything by Glenn Danzig, which is The Misfits or Samhain.  All of Thin Lizzy’s stuff.  The old Black Sabbath stuff.  There’s a band called R.E.M. that I like a lot and Aerosmith.
OIMOEN:  Who are some of your influences?
BURTON:  My influences have been Geddy Lee [Rush], Geezer Butler [Black Sabbath], and [jazz bassist] Stanley Clarke. Lemmy [Kilmister of Mötörhead] also had an influence because of the way he uses distortion.
OIMOEN:  Do you have anything to say to aspiring musicians?
BURTON:  When I started, I decided to devote my life to it and not get sidetracked by all the other bullshit that life has to offer.