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About Clifford Lee Burton |
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 Cliff Burton was born in february 10th 1962, to Jan and Ray Burton. He also had two siblings, his brother Scott and an
older sister Connie. He grew up and went to highschool and junior collage in San Fransisco (Castro Valley), where he
also had a job at an equipment rental yard.
Cliff started playing in 1976, and used to jam around with some local friends, when he got together with some guys who called themselves EZ Street, named after a strip joint in San Mateo. They played all kinds of weird stuff and a lot of covers, or as Cliff himself put it "It was pretty silly, actually. We did a lot of covers, just wimpy shit.". Cliff was with them for a while, for a few years. And that slowly but surely disintegrated. As he graduated from high school in 1980, he saw Trauma and he thought that he might as well do that since he didn't have anything better to do. Back Then Cliff was the Front Man constantly headbanging with his red hair flying.
Metallica got wind of this upcoming bass player during one of Trauma's gigs in the SF area. Lars and James went to see him and his band, and all of a sudden thay hear some crazy guitar solo from the stage from this really red headed wild guy. As they take a closer look, James is like "Dude, that is a BASS!!".
Lars Ulrich: He had this stage precense and this visual thing about him that was just incredible.
James Hetfield: You couldn’t tell what he was playing but when you looked at it a little closer it was a bass guitar. He had all these wild noises coming out of it, and his head wouldn’t stop, it was incredable. We pretty much knew he was our kinda guy.
James and Lars agreed that Cliff
was the man that they wanted to play the bass for Metallica. Lars started calling Cliff almost after a schedule to plead him to join Metallica. Meanwhile, Trauma was starting to annoy Cliff in a couple of different ways such as getting commercial and changing their musical attitude and direction, so Cliff was about to say 'Cya' and to start looking for next project anyway. Cliff wanted to get heavier, so Metallica was an ideal choice at the time. So, after many months of pleading and phone calls Cliff agreed
to join Metallica, however on one condition, that they would have to move to San Fransisco Bay area, and luckily Metallica agreed.
Cliff and Metallica released three albums (Kill 'Em All, Ride The Lightning and Master Of Puppets) and made six major
tours.His first gig was on the "Kill em all for one tour" back on march 5th 1983.
Cliff Burton during ozzy tour 1986 :
We’re not trying to be something big and fancy, you know, it’s just us doing what we do. Let’s keep it that way.
James Hetfield (on recording and writing Master Of Puppets): Trying to create a little more mood swings into things. Incorporate more acoustic work to, you know, make the heavier stuff heavier, the dynamics and things like that. We started learning harmonies, which Cliff was really good at, he took music theory, he was basically teaching at least myself a lot about harmonies and how they entwine, how they work together.
Cliff Burton (on bass stuff on Master Of Puppets): On this album it's the intro to a song called "Damage", done all on bass. It's about eight or 12 tracks of bass, a lot of harmonies and volume swells and effects and stuff. I would hesitate to call it a bass solo, it's more just an intro, but it is all bass. There's also a little bass solo in Orion, it's right next to a little guitar solo. No one will probably be able to tell that it's bass, but it is.
 On the 26th September 1986, Metallica was headlining with support Anthrax in front of 2700 fans in Solnahallen in Stockholm. This was the first show since James broke his arm in an skateboarding accident earlier in the summer that he was back on guitar. All in the group was in a great mood and they played a really good gig. As John Marshal remembers "They slaughtered", and as they were having a real good time they added one extra number to the setlist - Blitzkrieg, since they just didn't want to stop playing. Cliff also added a snippet of Star Spangled Banner for his solo that evening, which left the crown cheering even more.
The setlist from Solnahallen
Ecstacy Of Gold
Battery
Master Of Puppets
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
Ride The Lightning
Bass Solo
Whiplash
Fade To Black
Seek And Destroy
Creeping Death
The Four Horsemen
Guitar Solo
Am I Evil?
Damage Inc.
Blitzkrieg
Next stop of the tour was Saga in Copenhagen, Denmark, so in order to save some time the band, crew and euipment was packed quickly into the Metalli-caravan of two buses and two trucks. The caravan had one 30 minute stop in Ödeshög before they rolled on with destination Copenhagen. All in the bus were asleep when the bus was close to Värnamo.
 Just outside of Dörarp, the bus with the band and some of the crew, slid to the right side of the road into the ditch, and the driver tried to get the bus back up on the road, but failed his first attempt. The second attempt succeded, however he had over corrected to the left so when the wheels caught on the road the back of the bus swung 180 degrees around in the middle of the road, causing the bus to bounce heavliy and finally shatter the bus windows and tilting the bus into the ditch on the left side of the road. In all of this Cliff was half way out of the window as the glass shattered and he fell out as the bus tilted, and sadly the bus landed on top of him, crushing him and causing him to die instantly.
Qoutes on the accident:
James Hetfield: I couldn’t sleep on the bus in this top bunk it was too drafty and my throat, you know, was getting screwed up so I’d always go sleep in the back lounge.
Kirk Hammet: We couldn’t get it all together and we would argue with each other, and say, well you know: “I want your bunk”, “while I want your bunk”, bla, bla, bla. I haven’t told anyone this by the way, but um, I’m actually saying: “Why don’t we just draw our cards”, they said “Sure”, so. We shuffled the cards and said highest card he gets first choice of bunks. So, you know, I reach for a card and I pick two of hearts, Cliff reaches for a card – he gets Ace of Spades, you know, James gets a card, Lars gets a card. So Cliff has first choice of bunks, so he says “I want your bunk… Kirk”, I go “Fine, fine”. So he gets my bunk. I end up with a bunk in the front of the bus ,which is, like, not as good. And that night the accident happened and, it was a horrible thing because, you know, Cliff was in my former bunk.
What happened that night was that, um, that the driver supposedly hit a patch of ice and the bus skidded. It shattered the windows and Cliff got thrown out of the bus and the bus landed on top of him. And when it actually happened I got thrown out of my bunk and knocked unconscious for like three or four seconds. And when I got, when I came to, I heard everyone screaming, but I didn’t hear Cliff, and I instantly knew something was wrong, because I didn’t hear him. And I got out of the top of the bus, ‘cause it was an emergency hatch at the top, very top of the bus, and I turned around and there was Cliff. And I just said “Oh my God”. And I walked away, but I was, um, I was in absolute chock. And, um, I was delirious, I was in chock, I was hysterical, everyone’s screaming and crying.
John Marshall (on the accident): “We were on a two-lane road,” recalls John. “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 to the point where it was facing back the way it came. 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, with a little wooden lip around the foam that stood up about four inches. My back bounced across that lip, and by the end of the day, I could barely walk, it hurt so bad.
The bus eventually slid to the dirt alongside the road, where the wheels caught, and it rolled over on its side. Cliff was on the top level of the right tear bunk, and I think that as the bus was bouncing around, he sort of pushed through the window; when the vehicle fell over on its right side, he was halfway out the window and it fell on him.
Meanwhile, the bunks toppled like matchsticks, teetering into one another and collapsing into 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 the motor still running.”
Within minutes, Marshall and the band had pulled themselves from the bus and huddled 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 the road a bit to see if there was ice on the road, after the driver had claimed he’d slid over a sheet of ice. Kirk was crying”.
After being routed to the emergency room of a nearby hospital, John remembers coming to the realization that something was very, very wrong. “I remember Bobby Schneider 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 had 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 familiar with, drinking. James broke two hotel windows and screamed, venting his rage. John remembers that he and Kirk were so shaken up that they left the light on in their room that night. Two days later, Metallica minus one, returned to America.
- Metallica Unbound
James Hetfield: "I saw the bus lying right on him. I saw his legs sticking out. I freaked. The bus driver, I recall, was trying to yank the blanket out from under him to use for other people. I just went, 'Don't fucking do that!' I already wanted to kill the guy. I don't know if he was drunk or if he hit some ice. All I knew was, he was driving and Cliff wasn't alive anymore."
Lars Ulrich: It was too unreal to just deal with, it was like, you know, this doctor came in to the room I was in at this hospital and told me that our bass player died. And that was… it was just too unreal.
 James Hetfield: As I remember, our tour manager at the time, Bobby Schneider, said, you know, after everyone has gotten taken care of there, he said “Let’s get the band and go to the hotel”, and just let, you know, when he said “band”, it was like… ummm – it’s not really a band right now. We couldn’t really grasp it for a while.
Arne Petterson (Inspector with the Swedish police who was at the accident site that morning)
"In those days we inspectors were called out to severer accidents for investigation. I remember that I came to the site early in the morning, when the big bus was still on the side" To begin with it was suspected that the deach accident was caused by that the driver had fallen asleep but according to what Petterson remembers, the investigation concluded that a patch of ice had caused the accident.
"When the first cold comes it becomes icy in the area during mornings and evenings" says Arne Petersson.
"What I remember mostly is the first sight, that there were a lot of people by the accident site looking. Since it was a death accident with a rock group involved, there were a lot of newspapers being heard from."
- Swedish Newspaper Göteborgs-Posten 2004 September 29
Kirk Hammet: "Each time we come to Sweden I think about it, get nostalgic and think of those days, and the accident. It is both good and bad, bad to remember the accident but good to remember Cliff. He is still a big part of my history and in one way or another I actually think of him almost every day."
"We drew cards for the bunks. And Cliff dreq ace of spades... pretty heavy" says Kirk shaking his head.
"I think that I feel a lot of guilt... When it happened I felt that it should have been me. Recently a friend of mine took his life and then all these thoughts came back. Why wasn't it me instead? Why didn't I help him? All those thoughts... I am still very confused within about what happened"
- Swedish Newspaper Aftonbladet 1996 May 18
Lars Ulrich (On the accident, Stockholm Nov 1997):
- Do you often think about it?
- Mostly when people ask about it. I gotta tell you, that, as a person, generally, I’m not much… I don’t live much in the past. I don’t think much about the past. I don’t have no many regrets and so on. I find myself talking mostly about the past mostly in interviews. It doesn’t mean that I don’t respect it, it doesn’t mean that I don’t miss Cliff, and of course I whish with every ounce of power that I have that it never happened. It’s not something that I walk around and sort of… I mean it is eleven years. Cliff was in the band in three years, Jason has been in the band eleven.
Cliffs last gig was on the
"Damage Inc.-Tour" on september 26th 1986. That's close to 200 gigs before tragedy struck.
The Major Rager On The Four String Motherfucker, was gone. The date was september 27th 1986. He was only 24. We miss you. Rest In Peace.
Cliff was cremated and his ashes were scattered at the Maxwell ranch to the sounds of Orion.
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