Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "To Live Is To Die: The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton"/Joel McIver [Episode 130]

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"To Live Is To Die: The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton"/Joel McIver [Episode 130] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Oh well, I think I'll leave you do you're reading Little Hans's Time to
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Run and Roll. We are totally booked. Welcome to Booked on Rock,
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the podcast for those about to read and rock. Subscribe and follow on YouTube,
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Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, where you get videos weekly links
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to all the social media sites at booked on rock dot com. Joel McIver
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is our guest to talk about his book To Live Is to Die The Life
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and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton revised third edition, and the book Rob Flint
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of Machine Head calls one of the best biographies you'll ever read. McIver is
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back with the revised edition of the story behind Metallica's original bassist, Cliff Burton.
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Cliff led the band from garage thrash to sophisticated progressive heights, thanks in
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large part to his songwriting ability and phenomenal based skills on the band's first studio
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albums, including The Masterpiece Master of Puppets from nineteen eighty six. Sadly,
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Cliff's life came to an early end. He was just twenty four when he
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died in a tour bus crash in Sweden on September twenty seventh, nineteen eighty
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six. Following his passing, Metallica went on to massive global success, but
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even they admit they've never pushed their creative envelope as radically as they had during
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the first four years of their career. To coincide with the fortieth anniversary of
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Metallica's debut album Kill Them All. Mcaver's revised and updated edition, originally published
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in two thousand and nine, adds a new chapter that looks at Cliffburton's legacy
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from a fresh perspective and includes commentary from current Metallica bassist Robert Trehillo an Aquaman
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star Jason Momola, as well as an eyewitness account of the opening of the
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Cliff Burton Museum in Sweden in two and twenty two. Testament bassist Steve Digiorgio
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also adds his memories of meeting Cliff as a teen and then watching he and
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his band Metallica begin to take off. We'll talk about the life and career
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of Cliff Burton and some of what's in this brain new edition of To Live
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Is to Die in this episode with author Joel McIver, a playlist of Cliff
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Burton era Metallica in the show notes page. But first here is Joel McIver.
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Joel, Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me
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on. This is a phenomenal book originally came out in two thousand and nine,
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and since then the admiration and love for Cliff Burton's work with Metallica has
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only grown. According to your opening note in the book, that's what encouraged
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you and job will On Press to publish this third edition of what is still
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the only book about him, which is hard to believe. What inspired you
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to write the original version? Oh, it was just a dream of mine,
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Eric, I mean, when I started out as an author, you
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know, there are only a couple of books I wanted to do. I
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wanted to do a book about Slayer. I want to do a book about
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Metallica, you know, their whole career, and then I want to do
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a Cliff Burton book. Had been at based place since I was a kid
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and always admired as playing and particularly gravitated towards that era of Metallica's career as
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well, So it seemed high time. I remember in two thousand and eight
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when I was putting together the idea for the book and the pitch to draw
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by impress that someone did a sort of fully comprehensive picture of Cliff. And
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I always want to say, oh, it's a tribute to Cliff, and
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you know, and it is, but that diminishes its function. As I've
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said a couple of times in the past, when you do a book about
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someone who has died and died tragically young, it's very easy to put that
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person on a pedestal and kind of paint them as a saint, and which
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is fine. Often that can be a deserved, correct way to do it.
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But I thought Cliff and his family and his fans would be better served
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by just painting an accurate picture of the man, with all his flaws,
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the floors that we all have. Right. So it is a tribute,
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but it's also my attempt to do as objectively journalistic a job on portraying him
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as I could. So one of the fabulous things which which he might be
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going to ask me about was the number of people who just lined up to
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be interviewed. It was incredible, man, that the people who were very,
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very keen, because I think there's so much sadness about Cliff Stale and
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people wanted to talk about him, so that really made my job a lot
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easier and the book better as a result. And one of them is Steve
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Digeorgio, who is the basis for Testament. He's in the new book,
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part of the additional material in this latest edition, And we don't want to
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give away the whole story, but can you talk a little bit about what
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he writes in the book He met Cliff way back in nineteen eighty five,
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right right, Yeah, So he talks about a couple of sorry, the
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one occasion when he actually spoke to Cliff, and then a couple of occasions
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when he saw Metallica play, and he came across Cliff once or twice six
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gigs as well in the Bay Area, and really, as well as showing
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how affectionate he is towards Cliff and really giving us an expert view of cliffs
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bass playing as well, by the way, which is an important thing,
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he also evokes what the Bay area was like at that time, which is
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useful because I grew up in a small village in a remote area of England
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right as far away culturally and geographically is you can probably get from San Francisco
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at that time, so it was it was important to have him on board
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for several reasons. But his affection for Cliff's playing is it's a huge and
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shines through his words, which really made him a perfect candidate. And the
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previous edition, as you know, had Frank Burlo Anthrax doing an introduction and
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of course he knew Cliff well because they had toured together. And Frank,
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who I've subsequently worked with on his autobiography since since this book came out,
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it was also full of sadness and regret that Cliff's early death, so he
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was a great candidate. And then of course the original one, the original
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edition of the book came with a forward by Kirl Cammitt of Metallica, again
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a great friend and close confidant of Cliffs. So I like to think that
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those three guys, along with all the other people that who are interviewed in
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the book, really do provide you a deep, serious, but very affectionate
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picture of the man, you know, which I think is important. Of
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course, there was more to him than just playing bass, who was so
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important to the sound of Metallica. Yeah, I mean a lot of the
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songs on the first couple of Arms anyway, came from the very early days,
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even before Cliff was part of the band. But what he did was
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he came in and added not only his solo based parts, which define certain
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songs, you know, for whom Beltholes obviously is one, and on Puppets
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you've got a Ryan and Damage incorporated, and those sort of iconic based parts.
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I hate to use the word iconics. It's so cheesy and journalistic circles,
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but I think on this case, in this case it's merited. But
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over and above the songwriting contributions, what he brought to Metallica was I think
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professional focus. You know, as the story goes that most of us know
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Metallica actually moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco because Cliff was there, and
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Cliff wanted to join the band, but he didn't want to make the move.
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Now, I can't think of many similar circumstances where an entire band has
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moved that huge distance just for a bass player, And yet they did it
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because they understood that Cliff had a certain talent and a certain gravitas. I
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had a really interesting talk with Ross Halfind, the photographer who also supplies the
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image of Cliff for the cover, and he told me that nothing happened in
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Metallica without Cliffs say so so because he was maybe two years older than the
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rest of them and certainly more musically advanced. At the early stage, he
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had a kind of seniority about in which the other guys respected and would run
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decisions past him. So over and above the musical contribution, there's also that
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as well. He was a kind of a big brother figure in the band,
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almost like him authority, and of course Lars and James then took over
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the running of the band, you know, in later years. But that's
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something which I think people don't understand so much because the image of Cliff is
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that he was basically a sort of laid back stoner and because of that you
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might not think he had much professional drive and sort of natural authority. But
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he definitely did have those things. He contributed in many different ways, basically,
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not just musically. You've heard that phrase old soul in a young man's
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body. I always I think of that when I think of Cliff Burton,
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and that forward by Kerr Hamnett. He gets into the person Cliff Burton,
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and towards the end of the book you look back and the people you spoke
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with and the stories you took in. And you see the Cliff was a
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man of contradictions. Could you talk about that in the overall impression of Cliff
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that you got from writing this book. There were all people of contradictions,
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really, aren't we? We all want one thing and behave another way.
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And he was so young when he died, you know, that's what were
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we like when we were, you know, twenty five twenty four years old.
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Really the things we said, the things we did, you know.
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And yet Cliff was able to step away from being a sort of a young
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headbanger, you know, the stoner. Like I said, you'd like to
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hang around at his house. He wasn't keen on going out unless he had
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to. He liked to hang out with his girlfriend, Karen, who I
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interviewed for the book. So there was that kind of sort of homely folks
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the attitude to Cliff. But at the same time, he was a demon
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of a musician and a headbanger like no other. When he went on stage,
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that was that side of the stage was his domain, and he carved
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out the space musically, which was huge. I alluded to a moment ago,
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but you have to remember there's that based solo on the first record,
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Anesthesia, which is again Steve Harris. Aside, I can't really think of
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too many bass players who dominate their band as much as Cliff did, especially
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at such an early age, especially with such other big personalities in the band.
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So if you're looking for a contradiction, that could be a good one.
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Actually that Cliff was a fairly sort of quiet person, but yet he
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occupied a big space. He carved out a huge niche for himself. It's
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so interesting to read about the bands that he followed too, really eclectic,
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I think that's the appropriate word. Can you talk about the bands will influenced
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him and how jazz fusion captured his interest too, which I've found fascinating,
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and progressive rock as well. I mean, so one of his heroes was
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Geddy Lee of Rush. I mean, anybody who came up at that time
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listening to listening to interesting heavy music would be into Geddy, especially if you're
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a bass player, and some of Geddy's stuff informed Cliffs playing. Steve Harris
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of Iron Maiden obviously was an influence Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, but he
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also went deep into classical theory, which he'd studied as a teenager. With
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this with his teacher, Steve Doctor, who so interviewed for the book,
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which I think was a first. I'm not sure Steve had spoken on the
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record about teaching Cliff as a teenager. They studied the work of Bark and
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a couple of the older the canon of European classical music, some of which
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informed Cliffs based playing. You can hear it clearly in the Anesthesia for example.
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But also hardcore punk was this thing, you know, British punk as
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well, like bands like Discharge and you know, and and all that complimented
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the sort of the standard new wave of British heavy metal stuff that Lars and
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James loved so much, and you had this kind of weird mishmash of music
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that came out in some you know, it's it's a miracle that it happened,
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Derek. Really, so many other bands were doing something broadly similar.
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You know, at the time. You could compare Slayer's first album with Metallica's
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first album and the similarities are there. You know, you had with the
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other bands coming up right after them, like Dark Angel and Death Angel from
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you know, La and San Francisco. It didn't have to be Metallica who
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came out. It's just that they had the songs and the name, and
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the drive and the image, you know, and they had something different about
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them. And it's part of what was different was Cliff. So the fact
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that they got started and god as high as they did when Cliff was in
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the band is completely ridiculous really when you think about it. The fact that
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they went on to be the biggest between the world from that general music as
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a whole other conversation, and that still blows my mind to this day.
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Yeah, it's amazing. I don't even think they expected it in those early
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days to take off as quickly as it did. And it's interesting when you
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say how quickly it happened for them, I'm not sure it felt like it
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was particularly quick from the inside. James, for example, was I think
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he was talking about this recently. He was asked about wealth and how it
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had affected him, and he said, well, fortunately, their wealth accrued
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itself fairly slowly. It didn't all arrive in one go. It took some
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years for them to sort of ascend to the levels of affluence where they now
11:48
are, which I think is healthy. And also you know the hours and
11:52
days and weeks and months of tour buses and whatever you had before tour buses,
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right, you know, band members car was those little gigs in the
12:01
middle of nowhere across Europe and across America. That must have felt like an
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exhausting few years. You know. Lars himself has said actually that they were
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living on the poverty line as late as Justice, right, so that's seven
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years after this. I was going to ask you, when does the money
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start to come in, so it's it's actually then Justice. Yeah, oh
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yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah, I think maybe the poverty
12:26
line is stretching it a little bit, right. I think they could make
12:28
a living and survive without doing day jobs when they were off tour by Puppets
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for sure. And then by the time Justice rolled around in eighty eight,
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then you had MTV support and so on and so on, the major label
12:39
deal obviously, so things probably looked up from that point. So again,
12:43
I was just trying to think a way of saying that. Actually, I
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don't think it felt that quick. It probably took six or seven years before
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before their lifestyles were affected. I think in that sense where in Cliff grow
12:52
up. What was his childhood? Like his mom says, he was always
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his own person. It seems that way. I wish had met him.
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I was only fifty when he died, so never got a chance to me.
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I would have loved to have hang out with him. I think what
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Joan Burton meant was that he had this sort of fiercely independent streak. He
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grew up in Castro Valley, as I understand it, a sort of a
13:13
quiet suburb of San Francisco, and he liked his sort of outdoorsy pursuits.
13:18
You know, he would go fishing. In fact, an interesting point that
13:22
I may have been on Earth before I discovered it. But if you look
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at his picking hand when he's playing bass, his ring finger is up and
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his pinky is hanging down, which is not typical for a bass player who
13:33
plucks with two fingers. And the reason why that was was that he got
13:35
a fish hook caught in his in his hand when he was fishing and injured
13:39
one of the tendons. So if you look at his right hand, you'll
13:41
see this hand, this finger sticking down whereas normally would be tucked up into
13:45
your plant. It's a small detail that's the kind of thing the book is
13:48
full of. Actually, we hear always the Tony Iomi story his finger gets
13:54
cut off, so he reached his own like a yeah yeah, and Jerry
14:01
Garcia the same thing that leads to his fingerpicking style. So I never never
14:05
knew that until the book. These little things are what build the picture of
14:11
the man. We know the big story, you know, we know about
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the base fills in the Call of Coutula, right, because a lot of
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people know that stuff, and we know the details of poor Cliff's tragic end.
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But the little details about how he lived, I think that's part of
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the author's job to try and include those. I did a book a few
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years ago with a guy called Woody Woodman's who was the drummer in The Spiders
14:35
from Mars with David Bowie. Right. The reason why I'm saying this is
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that I tried in that book. It was his autobiography, right, So
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I tried in that book to bring to the reader what it was like to
14:48
walk downstairs and David Bowie is making toast for your breakfast, right, not
14:52
necessarily to go on stage as ziggy startist and travel travel America. Although that
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stuff is in there too, But the tiny deeds was right, Like,
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so David and his wife Andy Bowie would cook dinner and they weren't very good
15:03
cooks, you know, and that and the food his cap was kind of
15:05
crap. So that kind of detail I think humanizes people and brings them to
15:11
the reader. And that was so that was so much the goal with Cliff.
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I think I did I don't know, seventy five interviews or something for
15:18
that book, and when people told me these really small details about you know,
15:22
oh god. Another one is, you know he wore these He wore
15:26
these bellbottom jeans at a time when they were uncool. Another example, another
15:30
example of him being his own man, right, that's his mother described him.
15:33
Right before he died, he showed up in a pair of tight jeans
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to his girlfriend Karin and said, what do you think it is? Right?
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So he was about to change that trivial detail of his image, and
15:46
we never got to see it. So, you know, these funny,
15:50
almost meaningless details really, but if you have enough of them, they add
15:54
up to that person. Yeah. Yeah, So that was what I wanted
15:58
to do. I thought, all you can really do when someone has died
16:03
is served their memory. In the right way and pay tribute to their family
16:07
and so. And I think the job of presenting him as he really was
16:12
was the best thing I could do that and that meant introducing all those funny
16:15
little details that go to make up a life. He truly and read to
16:19
the end. I think it was the very last interview he did or a
16:22
press conference. That was an interview he did, and you have it in
16:25
the book. He was unaffected by the media, like he was unaffected by
16:29
critics that wasn't going to change their approach to the music in the future.
16:32
Just didn't matter, and I believe it. I mean some people will say
16:34
it, but it just he seemed like that type of guy who's just blocked
16:37
it all out. You know. He just had one mission, which was
16:41
to do well as a bass player. I think he had he had an
16:45
agreement with his parents, whether they had said, we will support you for
16:47
a couple of years while you try and make it as a musician. After
16:51
that you're on your own, which is great. I have the same agreement
16:53
with my son. So he had a goal. His parents gave him a
16:57
goal with a deadline, and he had achieved that many times over. Of
17:00
course, by the time he died. But he was driven for that reason,
17:03
you know, in many other reasons. He just wanted to do it
17:04
right. And the other thing we have to remember is that, and it's
17:08
it's another awful detail. His brother Scott died young of a brain hemorrge I
17:14
believe when Cliff was I think thirteen. So first the family has to go
17:18
through that. And you know, anybody who's a parent or a dad or
17:22
a mom will will understand how seismic that must be. That gave Cliff drive
17:26
as well. He's told his mother he wanted to master base for his brother,
17:32
So there was that as well. So there was Trauma and no pun
17:34
intended. That was the name of his band. There was trauma in his
17:37
background too, all of which does add up to a complex and interesting character,
17:41
I have to say. So as as a journalist, it was it
17:44
was not only a challenge, it was also very interesting to try and create
17:47
the full picture of the man. The book Do I Run podcast will return
17:51
after this was Trauma his first official bands, because he had various pickup bands
18:00
he did. He was close with Mike Bordin and Jim Martin, who went
18:04
on to be in Faith No more, and they did various little bands together.
18:07
You know, he had one called Agents of Misfortune, and you know
18:11
a few other little bands like that. So but Trauma was his first,
18:14
I guess, recording and performing band of any note. And I spoke to
18:18
a couple of those guys. They never really went anywhere. I think it's
18:22
in the book, but I can't remember. They had a track on one
18:25
of Metal Blades Metal Massacre albums, but I think that was about as far
18:29
as they went. They're still going actually with a different lineup, and their
18:32
story has not really been fully told on YouTube. There used to be there
18:36
probably still is an ePK of their band playing and the drummer has this kind
18:41
of flaming drumstick thing and and Cliff does the Anesthesia solo or a version of
18:45
it. I don't know if it's still there. It was not long ago,
18:48
and it's a great bit of video, so you can see Trauma had
18:51
a little bit of potential. But again, like so many bands, they
18:53
went nowhere, you know, and it could have been metallically who went nowhere.
18:56
It's very mysterious, really, and that's when James had Laras I'll discover
19:00
Cliff Run nineteen eighty two when he's in trauma was a songwriting process in those
19:04
early days when Cliff was in the band, and is it different from what
19:07
it would become after he passed more fundamentally, I mean Cliff played a part
19:12
in the songwriting definitely, But Lars and James have always been the engine room,
19:18
I guess, and they have that down, don't they, to a
19:21
fine art. James writes the lyrics, comes up with most of the riffs,
19:25
not all of them. Lars is the master arranger and does come up
19:30
with some riffs himself. I think it was Mustain Dave Mustaine. I think
19:33
it was him who recently said that the little chromatic riff from Master of Puppets,
19:38
you know, do Do Do Do Do Do? Do? Do?
19:40
Do? Do Do Do Do now famous through stranger things to a whole generation
19:45
of people who never heard of it before. He last came up with that,
19:48
And yeah, and James professionalized it, you know, he made it
19:52
a lot tighter, but so so no, I think no. Cliff definitely
19:55
had his parts that he put on. Like he said, you know that
19:59
there are three or four or five songs where you have an intro or a
20:02
bass solo or just a fantastic little interlude of bass that is all him.
20:06
But primarily the songwriting came from came from James, and actually also from Dave
20:11
Mustaine in the early days as well. And as you mentioned, he sided
20:12
Geeter Butler Steve Harris of Iron Maiden as his influences. And you've seen the
20:17
bug that if you're familiar in Geddy Lee and you're write that, if you're
20:21
familiar with cliffs playing, you will understand. Why can you expand on that
20:23
a little bit? And what stands out to you about his style of playing?
20:27
Well, this is really interesting. I don't know if you know,
20:30
but I was the editor off bass Player magazine but quite some years. Yes,
20:33
right, I spent a lot of time analyzing cliffs, his techniques and
20:37
his fills basically, which is what really defined a bass play, as well
20:41
as your groove, you in your attack, and all those sort of hard
20:44
to define things. The influence of Geddy I think is probably more of an
20:48
attitude thing. There are lots of elaborate fils in cliffs playing that are rather
20:52
Geddy Lee esque, not in the sense that he cloned anything to do with
20:56
Rush, more that there was a kind of an inventive, slightly progressive,
21:00
musically educated, harmonically advanced to wait to play. He's a butler. He's
21:07
primarily a blues influenced bass player, so you don't hear lots and lots of
21:11
blues in cliffs playing, because that wasn't his thing. And then with Steve
21:15
Harris as well, you have all this elaborate fingerstyle stuff. And again,
21:18
but you can hear much more of Steve Harris in the bass playing of Frank
21:21
Bellow actually than you cannot Cliff Burton. The punk thing was massive for Cliff.
21:26
And one way that you can understand that is if you seek of cliffs
21:30
isolated bass parts on YouTube, and there's quite a few there. Certainly up
21:33
until Puppets he had this, and certainly on Ride the Lightning, really he
21:37
had this incredibly distorted bass tone. And I would love to have asked a
21:41
couple of the mixers about this. Of those albums, the bass, apart
21:45
from the solo parts, is mixed quite low on those records, and I'm
21:48
wondering whether that's super aggressive, obnoxious tone that he had, which is really
21:52
really overdriven, required him to be fairly low in the mix, because otherwise
21:56
you wouldn't get the precision of James's rhythm parts, and the mix wouldn't sound
22:00
right. I want to ask about that first album now because it coincides.
22:03
The book coincides with the fortieth anniversary of Metallica's debut Kill Them All, and
22:07
that's released July eighty three, so we're coming up on the anniversary. Whip
22:11
Last, Jumping Fire, the Four Horsemen, Seeking Destroy, they're all classics.
22:15
Of course. What was your first impression of that album and how's it
22:18
stood up forty years later? Yeah, that's a great question. I love
22:22
this kind of stuff, so I because we all perceived them differently as the
22:26
years go on. You revisit something, you say, I absolutely I never
22:29
heard that party, and your perception of it changes as you change. See.
22:33
I was a big Puppets fan, right I was sixteen years old.
22:37
Listened to Master Puppets all day, every day, and I also listened to
22:40
Slayer, Raindom Blowed was my thing. So those two thrash albums, as
22:42
well as all the other stuff that I listened to you back then, right,
22:45
But if it was metal, it was those two records, and with
22:48
both bands. They were the first albums that I had come across by those
22:52
groups, right their third records. So when I went back and revisited the
22:57
earlier stuff, I remember being quite surprise that Kill Them All by how raw
23:00
it was. I mean, it's almost an unproduced that record, right,
23:04
everything's different about it. Larsa's drums are pretty primitive, the guitar tones are
23:10
really sort of they're they're heavy, but they're kind of squeaky, you know,
23:15
there's not an awful lot of sophistication to them, you know, which
23:18
all went away by the second album of course, right, that's a really
23:21
slick sounding record for the kids in nineteen eighty four, you know, on
23:25
a very small budget in Denmark. So the first album I think is it's
23:30
a lot of fun and there's a couple of bigg adrenaline moments that make you
23:34
want to bang your head if you're not too old to do so, which
23:37
I think I think I probably am at this point. I love some of
23:41
the underrated tracks. No Remorse is a big one for me. I remember
23:45
I remember playing that the back end of No Remorse is is a really brutal,
23:49
fast part. In fact, later it was covered by the death metal
23:52
band Accnnibal Corpse for good reason, because it's it's it's an insanely heavy song.
23:57
I remember playing it really, really loud and one I was a kid
24:00
and my parents being pissed off, which is a funny, funny memory.
24:03
You know, how does it stand up? It? Sure does? You
24:07
know? I mean the lyrics, the lyrics are just so bad. They're
24:10
good? You know what is it? Bang your head against the stage that
24:14
you never did before, make it ring, make it be, make it
24:17
really sore. I mean, I love that so much that those are the
24:19
words of a pissed off seventeen year old first metal song you dreaming, dreaming
24:25
of stardom and so but I wouldn't change them, you know. I mean
24:29
that they're they're a snapshot of where they were. Metal itself was so naive,
24:33
right, you know it was it was still very much Ronnie Dio slaying
24:36
dragons, right, and that was what was so fun about it and so
24:40
unserious. So no, I like it. Do I ever listen to it
24:42
for pleasure? Probably not? I like I think I think for the early
24:48
Metallica songs, I prefer to hear them live, to hear a live recording
24:52
or a video of them doing them, because I think they've stune it better
24:56
now, you know, but it's fun. I'm nostalgic about it. The
25:00
anesthesia pulling teeth, it's kind of like that's kind of like his Eddie Van
25:03
Hill in Eruption moment, right. It's a track on the album where he's
25:07
he takes center stage. As you put it in the book. To include
25:10
this on a heavy metal album at the time was enormously audacious, that's how
25:14
you write it. What are the origins of this instrumental? Can you break
25:17
down what we're hearing on this, because there's some blues, some classical,
25:19
there's some trippy Hendrick stuff going on here. Yeah, almost sort of weird
25:23
shuffly, almost folky stuff as well. You know, if Cliff were here,
25:27
he would not say that was derived from folk. But there's this kind
25:30
of lu lude which is almost thin Lizzy esque, you know, almost like
25:36
a little bit of the sort of Celtic sound. But it's primarily sort of
25:40
these these triads you know, doo doo doo, dooo doo, which are
25:42
influenced by very much by by J. S. Bach, you know,
25:47
without that sophistication. Okay, we shouldn't well, and that leads me to
25:49
an important point. Actually, if you're we're here now right listening to us
25:55
talk about anesthesia, I have no doubt whatsoever that he would laugh and say
26:00
and thanks guys. But that was the work of a very very young musician.
26:03
Right. What I'm doing now is one hundred times better than a hundred
26:07
times more sophisticated. So just as you and I when we think about what
26:11
we did when we were that young, you know, it doesn't even doesn't
26:14
compare to what we can do professionally now, right, So I want to
26:18
I tried to bear that in mind, you know, I don't want it.
26:21
I don't want people to think of it as a peak of Cliff Burton's
26:23
powers. It's the peak of Cliff Burton's powers when he was a kid,
26:27
right, which makes it all the more remarkable that it got done. And
26:32
the fact that Metallica allowed it on the record is really an indicator of the
26:37
regard that they held Cliff in I think, you know, it's I mean,
26:41
okay, I don't want to say it takes up the entirety of the
26:42
record. It's what is it a four minute solo? It goes straight into
26:45
whiplash, you know, And I think live it was one of those great
26:48
moments where the band could go off and take a moment James gonna have a
26:51
beer or whatever. It was, so yeah, and then it sor the
26:55
back end of the of the solo anesthesia basically is this giant overdriven work out
27:00
for his war pedal. It's really quite something. And I think nowadays if
27:03
he if he, I bet you by now actually, if he was still
27:06
alive, they would have done a professional re recording of that and it would
27:08
have been and it would have been cleaned up, and I'm sure people like
27:12
me would pretty complain. And so it's taken all the fun out of it,
27:15
and it's thinking the raw edges and the shop bits and the slightlingess,
27:18
you know, the feedback and all that stuff. So what it really is
27:21
is an expression of cliffs character at that point in his life. You know,
27:25
it's a bit jerky, it's it's not perfect, but the spirit and
27:27
the attitude is completely there. The book Done Rod podcast will return after this.
27:34
Joe mcciver is here to talk about the revised third edition of his book,
27:37
originally released two thousand and nine, To Live Us to Die the Life
27:41
and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton. I want to ask you about my personal
27:45
favorite Metallica album, which is right the Lightning because the first time I heard
27:48
it, my older brother had the cassette and the cover pulled me and I'll
27:51
admit, it's old school. It's like the old vinyl days. The cover,
27:55
it's great. I mean, I knew about him because at that time
27:57
there was the video for one. It was on all the time, and
28:03
sat there and I listened to it and I just I loved it, start
28:06
to finish five, Fire with Fire and the title track for Whom the Belt
28:08
Tolls Fade to Black. You're write in chapter seven, it's beyond belief that
28:11
these guys, barely into their twenties took such a gigantic leap forward from the
28:15
first album in terms of musical and lyrical sophistication. And you see much of
28:21
this comes down to Cleff. Can you talk about his influence on this album?
28:25
So this day, I can't really think easily of a band that made
28:29
such a huge leaping quality from the first to the second record. You know,
28:32
they were still kids. So if that album come out in eighteen four,
28:37
released probably record at eighty four, I mean they were at Best twenty
28:41
twenty one years old, which blows my mind. It's something to do with
28:44
the production as well. They had a professional producer, so the late Paul
28:47
Cusio, who produced first record, according to what the band said, didn't
28:52
really do much Fleming. Rasmussen, the Danish producer at Sweet Silence, who
28:56
also did Puppets and Justice, was a master. He understood exactly what they
29:02
needed. I did a long interview with him for this book, and he
29:07
knew how to get the best out of them in difficult conditions because even though
29:10
the album sounds great, it wasn't recorded on a huge budget. Right,
29:12
So cliffs are all a Cliff is all over it in the sense that compositionally,
29:17
there's quite a lot of interesting Cliff stuff. But he is mixed quite
29:19
low. He's mixed quite high on killing them all to the extent you can
29:23
hear some of the little fields that he does that are not that consequentially,
29:26
but you can still hear them. It must be that he stepped right up
29:32
compositionally, I think. So he has that solo at the beginning of Whom
29:37
the Bell Tolls. It's not even a solo, really, is it.
29:38
It's the opening griff You know doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo,
29:42
which really makes it it's a it's a great little piece. And then
29:47
he's all over the call of Cutulu, and that's actually more interesting in a
29:49
sense because he's mixed so low. He has his war pedal and he steps
29:53
on it at the end of every couple of phrases and does this big sort
29:56
wow. But you can't really hear it unless you know it's there and you
30:00
make an effort to get in there and really really listen deeply to what he's
30:03
doing. But if you can do, or you can find an isolated bass
30:07
part for that song, then you're in for a treat, because he's all
30:10
over it. You know, he's really really playing a round riff, which
30:14
is what we as bass players always longed to be able to do, but
30:15
it's not always appropriate, right And in fact, Kirk told me that at
30:19
times Cliff would overplay, which is something that young virtuoso musicians with skills and
30:26
with something to prove often do, and the bass player's role is usually,
30:30
but not always, to be supportive. So the fact that Cliff did not
30:33
made him even more of an unusual bass player. Right. So having said
30:37
that, Joel, was he disappointed in the mix? It's a great question.
30:38
He never said that, but he didn't do an awful press, So
30:42
yeah, he Even back then, most of the press was done by Lars
30:47
and James, so Clift would do a little bit of talking here and there,
30:48
but he didn't. As you said earlier, that the opinions of the
30:52
press didn't really matter that much to him, and he didn't really contribute to
30:56
that dialogue either. He did what he did now as the years passed an
31:00
interest in Metallica crew. I am sure that had he been around for the
31:03
Justice and Black album times, then there would have been much more input and
31:07
much more on the record of what Cliffe actually said. So no, I
31:11
would he have been disappointed. I can't imagine he wasn't. I can't.
31:15
I haven't tracked down anybody who said, yeah, Cliff was. Cliff was
31:18
pissed off that he was mixed low on that record. There are solo parts.
31:22
He was more of a team player. He loved being in Metallica.
31:26
I mean, that's that's an absolute fact. All the people I've spoken to,
31:29
and there were many who were in Cliff's orbit and knew how much he
31:33
was passionate about then. Just wanted it to be successful, you know,
31:36
and he could see it was going somewhere. You know. He had he
31:38
had ambitions. He wanted to buy his parents, buy them a house.
31:41
He wanted to probably he was going to get married to court and settled out.
31:45
So he had life goals and he wanted the band to help him get
31:48
there, and he wanted the band to be successful. So no expressing annoyance
31:52
at being mixed love. I've never come across that. That would be interesting
31:55
what I find when I listened to that album. It does not sound at
31:59
all like he'd come from the year nineteen eighty four. It's none of its
32:01
time. You've probably read Slashes autobiography. He wrote in it something which really
32:07
stuck at me. He said to me, the most eighties year of the
32:12
eighties was nineteen eighty seven, And I totally got why. Right eighty seven
32:16
was White Snake, it was big Hair, it was big eighties events happened
32:21
to kind of then. So the reason why I mentioned that is that Right
32:24
the Lightning doesn't sound like an eighties album, you know, at all.
32:28
It's the production, isn't isn't old fashioned. The lyrics are really good.
32:34
You know, you're not thinking, oh, you know these are these are
32:36
cheesy old lyrics by some kid ha as we did with the first record.
32:38
Right. Yes, it's very metal and a lot of it's biblical and all
32:42
that stuff, but it's not None of it is embarrassing or youthful or kind
32:45
of cringe. There is that one song, Escape, you know, which
32:50
no one likes really even metallic. I don't like it. It was played
32:52
for the first time, wasn't it a couple of years ago, And it's
32:55
not terrible. It's just they're moving in a little bit of a sort of
32:59
a single on commercial direction, which didn't suit them. But I think we
33:01
can forgive them that, especially given the Masterpiece, which was the follow Master
33:06
of Puppets. Yeah, came out in March of eighty six, the band's
33:08
last with Cliff Burton. James Hetfield says in your book, the band was
33:12
peaking by this time. Battery, the title track, The Thing That Should
33:15
Not be Welcome Home, Sanitarium, Disposable Heroes, Leper Messiah, the Instrumental,
33:22
Ryan and Damn, and Jink eight tracks. Cliff said the title track
33:25
was his favorite from the album and the best the band did up until that
33:29
point. And there's an interesting observation from you in this book, and you've
33:31
read about Cliff playing unselfishly in the midsection of this song. We're just talking
33:37
about this team player. Can you expand on that in his overall approach to
33:39
playing within the band structure, right, So either he had gained a bit
33:44
of experience and maturity by this point or someone had had a word with him
33:47
about not overplaying, because he does play more supportively on this record, but
33:52
at the same time, he's also given more solos based than any other previous
33:55
MATTYA Crotin, So just to run through them, the parts were clear.
34:00
Is most audible because he's doing solo stuff is most first of all, in
34:04
the song O Ryan, where he does the intro, he does a little
34:09
bass break in the middle which is barely audible, but it's beautiful, and
34:14
then he does a solo at the end, a giant started solo, which
34:16
was a guitar solo originally that Kirk was going to play, but for some
34:21
reason, Kirk wasn't in the studio that day, so Cliff played it on
34:22
bass, right, And that was a little nugget that I didn't know about
34:25
before I did this book, although apparently it's that's kind of known. And
34:29
then of course he does the intro to Damage Incorporated, which is amazing to
34:32
me. That whole song. I mean that the two very very fast songs
34:36
Damage Incorporated and Disposable Heroes. Haircliff pulled that off with the fingerstyle playing.
34:39
I do not know a lot of bass players in the thrash bands were switching
34:43
over to picks at the time. No one who's not a bass player will
34:46
care about this, but you know, Tom raya Slayer, told me that
34:49
he started using a pick from Raining Blood. David Ellison and Megadeth was obviously
34:52
a pick player. Even Frank Below or Anthrax famously fingerstyle player used a pick
34:57
for one or two of their fastest songs. So he has his solo spots.
35:00
He is mixed fairly low, but he's also playing fairly supportively. Neither
35:05
specific point I made about Master of Puppets and the midsection of that song is
35:08
that that's the dual harmony solo between James and Kirk, the famous one,
35:14
And if Cliff were to overplay at that point, it would it would mess
35:17
things up and get in the way of what is a really beautiful melody and
35:22
a beautiful harmony. So you can hear him throwing in the odd, little
35:24
interesting sort of little phil but it's tasteful and it serves the song. So
35:30
all those years I edited bass Player magazine, and you know, bass players
35:34
told me about their approach serving the song was the phrase that I was always
35:38
always hearing, playing what the song needs, not what you feel you need
35:42
to say to show everybody how good you are. And I think Cliff was
35:45
at that point. Now he matured as a bass player. He had his
35:47
solo spots, but those solo parts are not frivolously extravagant, right. They're
35:53
complex and they're technically challenging, but there's no unnecessary showing off. So he
36:00
had become a bass player for the ages by this point, and yet he
36:02
was in this thrash metal world, which blows my mind because it's not traditionally
36:07
the home of virtuoso based players. Are the ones we just mentioned aside Puppet's,
36:12
I mean, it's to me, it's not just Metallica's best record.
36:15
And really that's a generational question anyway. You know, you ask people under
36:19
thirty what their favorite record Metallica, isn't they probably won't be puppets. Ask
36:22
people, you know, of all generations now you know where they stand on
36:25
Metallic, you'll get different answer each time, quite riley. But I do
36:30
think that in terms of musical sophistication, that's where they peaked. Although and
36:36
at the same time those songs are catchy as hell as well. You don't
36:37
forget any of them. There's no escape on that record, right, There's
36:40
no slightly dodgy song that they really didn't need to record those eight songs that
36:45
they're all excellent, you know, beautifully put together, unmemorable, you know.
36:51
To me, that's the alternate compliment when an artist has something that's catchy
36:55
yet also musically sophisticated, to combine those two things, and it's you know,
37:00
the songwriting's not easy, you know, it's it's it's what is easy,
37:05
easier or relatively easy. Is writing super complicated jazz or prog right or
37:09
technical metal? Right? All you have to do is acquire the chops to
37:13
do those things, which is not easy, but it's doable. Writing sort
37:15
of simpler songs like Metallical deal in My Black Elm actually is the relevant example
37:21
is much more difficult, especially in well nowadays, at a different time.
37:23
You know, you're likely to replicate something that was recorded before much more readily
37:29
readily than you were. I was interviewing Kerry King of Slower about this a
37:31
few years ago, and he told me that back then, ay six eighty
37:35
seven, eighty eight, all the rifts were there for the taking, right,
37:37
So Sabbath had obviously built a career on great riffs that they weren't metallic
37:42
and Slagher style riffs. So the cupboard was full, you opened it and
37:45
the risks were there. So they did have an advantage in that sense,
37:49
which is probably one reason why you don't hear a Master of Puppets nowadays or
37:53
a Black Elm nowadays, because everything sounds slightly derivative, you know, two
37:59
listeners of a certain age. I mean I have a viewpoint about that as
38:00
well, which is that you know, if you and I, if you
38:04
and I were fifteen years old now, we'd be loving today's metal scene.
38:07
You know what I'm saying. This is also fresh, and it's also new.
38:09
But when you've been around a few years and you've heard a few things,
38:12
you've heard it all. If you're sure you know, yeah, just
38:15
like movies. You see a movie and it's a new movie, but you're
38:19
like, I feel like I've seen this before. So much culture. Right,
38:22
the question about the Black Album, it's so relevant to this book,
38:27
even though Cliff is nowhere near being on it, right, He's been gone
38:30
five years by the time that was released. But people asking me about that,
38:32
what would a Cliff have thought of the Black LM? Would there have
38:35
been a Black album? And that That is a long and interesting conversation.
38:39
But to sum it up, my view is that, yeah, probably they
38:43
would have been. Cliff, I think had had enough of the sort of
38:45
heads down flash stuff by the time Puppet. By the time the Puppet cycle
38:50
was done or nearly done, he didn't get to see all of it.
38:52
You know, they went prague on Justice for a while, and that was
38:54
partly to do at least with them wanting to shaft their chops and feeling insecure
39:00
about them, and quite rightly, then that led to them wanting to dial
39:02
it all down and do something simple and in fairness, build their fame and
39:07
make some money as MTV stars, you know what I mean. I think
39:09
Cliff would have been all over that. I think you would have been keen.
39:13
I think I'm really on that too. It seems like he had that
39:15
personality that they all had, which is, let's just let's try different things.
39:20
Let's not just do the same thing over and over again. Be as
39:22
big as we can be, right, Let's be as big as we can
39:24
be. Ye, after all these years, you know, stuck in the
39:28
back of a terrible tour bus with no money. If we have the opportunity
39:31
to make this thing a global phenomenon, take it. And you know,
39:35
when you put it like that, it doesn't sound unreasonable. September twenty seventh,
39:38
nineteen eighty six, all comes to an end, and he was twenty
39:42
four, twenty four years old, just a kid. There were rumors about
39:45
why Cliff took that bunk on the right hand side of the tour bus that
39:50
night, and this is in Sweden where the bush Craft it could have gone
39:53
to Kirk. They decided over a card game, and he confirmed to you
39:58
that's what happened, right, Is this the first Was this the first we
40:00
ever heard of? That confirmation back in oh nine when the first edition came
40:04
out. So I had read this story that neither of them wanted to take
40:07
a particular bunk. So they cut the deck of cards and the Ace of
40:13
Spades was pulled, and that was why the fatal bunk went to cliff.
40:17
So I'd heard this story. Had I heard it formally confirmed by a member
40:22
of Metallica. No, I don't think I had. That's not to say
40:24
it had been. The story must have come from somewhere, right, I'm
40:28
trying to call them behind the music VH one. Did they talk about it
40:30
on that one, which would have been I think late nineties, early two
40:32
thousands. I think I seem to remembering about it on CAMRA. Yeah,
40:37
yeah, I think I think My point might have been, come on,
40:40
was it really the Ace of Spades? That's almost too cheesy. You know,
40:45
I can get that you won the you know, you picked a higher
40:47
card, but was it actually the Ace of Spades? And he laughed and
40:51
said, I know it sounds you know, it sounds like bullshit. But
40:53
no, that that's a fact. So that certainly had not been confirmed.
40:57
And again it's a minor detail, but there's something quite sinister about that,
41:00
isn't it so weird? So yeah, Interestingly, last year the Swedish government
41:07
or the local government up in the town of young View, which is a
41:10
couple of hours drive north of Copenhagen as you head up Sweden. They opened
41:15
a museum, a Cliff Burton Museum, on the crash site. For the
41:17
last fifteen years or so, there has been a headstone there and that was
41:21
placed there not by Metallica or anyone to do with them, but by members
41:23
of their Swedish fan club, who all of whom I've met now and are
41:28
great people, and they got this incredible artist to design this beautiful thing.
41:32
If you ever find yourself Eric heading north up through Sweden, make sure you
41:36
stop at this spot. In fact, you have to you because there's only
41:37
one major road that goes up there all the way to Stockholm. So yeah,
41:40
I'm telling the story backward because I'm talking about the new museum as opposed
41:44
to the actual event. But essentially, over the years, the number of
41:47
people who come to pay their respects to Cliff has grown, right, It's
41:52
not diminished, it's grown over the years. Now, that says an awful
41:55
lot about a Metallica and be Cliff era Metallica, which is something that I
42:00
talk about a lot in the very new edition of the book, because that's
42:02
becoming more and more clear as years passed, right, that his profile is
42:07
growing. Now, no one would have spotted that, right, This was
42:09
a long time ago that he died, and yet his profile is growing,
42:14
which is really interesting to me and all sorts of cultural levels. Right.
42:16
So yeah, so they opened it last year as get into a bass player.
42:21
I was invited to come over and give a speech, but also as
42:24
the author of the Cliff Book as well. Again the only Cliff book there
42:27
is. So I went over there and it's amazing. Right in the middle
42:30
of nowhere, right, it's this like I don't know, countryside and middle
42:35
of Swede beautiful. And you go into this over here we call it a
42:38
service station. Like it's where you go to get gas for your vehicle and
42:43
get some food and keep going on a long journey. Right, So there's
42:46
that you're driving, there's a service station for you who get some gas.
42:50
Then there's a moose reserve, right, and a hunting store and the Cliff
42:55
Burton Museum. In this kind of nowhere area of Sweden, there is the
43:01
town of young View, which is a kind of medium sized little place.
43:05
It's quite cute us like ten minutes away anyway, So there's this museum run
43:08
by this amazing couple who really helped me out with everything I was doing.
43:13
I was writing a report and, like I said, giving a speech and
43:15
Frank Bellow came in on his zoom pool talked to everyone, and there was
43:17
a tribute band. And it's it's heartbreaking because you drive ten minutes away and
43:22
there's this stone, you know, and you gather around and you know you
43:25
shared a tear the places you can't not. And then if you walk about
43:31
one hundred meters away from this stone, you see the curve in the road
43:36
where the bus crashed and you can stand right there and if you if you
43:39
have a photo of the event, which you can get online, they happen
43:43
to be in my book as well, but you can find them online.
43:45
If the bus fallen on its side, you're exactly there. So what happened
43:49
was for reasons unknown, and it possibly would it could have been an error
43:53
of the driver, although that was never proven despite the efforts of me and
43:58
people like me who've tried to find I know who he was and where he
44:00
is right if he's still alive. Bus was driving along and it's right hand
44:06
wheels drifted off the road right frankly like any of us could do actually,
44:10
And because of that, the right hand side of the bus started to drag
44:14
and the bus rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, came came to a stop
44:19
by the side of the road and sort of slowly tipped over on its side.
44:22
Right Cliff was sleeping on the side of the bus that was falling,
44:25
and he was ejected through the window, which is an interesting one because people
44:30
go, how could you, how could you fly through the window? But
44:32
this was not a professional quality bus really by today's standards. So he went
44:37
through the window, which broke and the bus landed on him and he was
44:40
crushed to death. And you know, you can read in great detail about
44:45
the aftermath of that. I managed to speak to the first journalist on the
44:52
scene, who was from the local newspaper, gave me a detailed interview.
44:54
In fact, how do you do it? I think he faxed me his
44:59
answers in Swedish, so I had to get a Swedish friends who translate for
45:02
me. Wow. And then with the Roddy was on the tour bus.
45:07
John Marshall. Yeah, So John Marshall had played guitar for James who had
45:12
injured his arm playing a broken skateboarding. So John was playing rhythm guitar on
45:17
that tour, but he he was he had also been a ROADI and uh
45:22
oh, it's the whole story. I mean, it's just horrendous. The
45:24
Cliff was just twenty four. It is I often think about the death of
45:28
Randy Rhodes when I think about the death of Cliff Burton. It was so
45:30
pointless and so avoidable, and so and cruel because it robbed every one of
45:38
his skill and his talent and everything that was waiting to be unleashed by him
45:44
and Randy. So those those two, those two events are sadly similar.
45:49
And the guys have to just see it, right. James is the one
45:52
who was the first witnessed. Yeah, yeah, James climbed out of the
45:55
bus and saw Cliff's legs sticking eye and current that card game. I mean,
46:00
does that harntum? I mean they had they had to. I mean,
46:05
did they talk to anybody about it? Did they they see any like
46:07
a therapist or something, because I would imagine something like that just the PTSD
46:13
from that. So well, this is a whole, a whole other conversation,
46:15
Eric, But they have talked at length over the years about how they
46:20
basically dived into the bottle and that was how they dealt with it. There
46:23
wasn't really any any serious attempt at what we would do nowadays. There would
46:29
be counseling and there would be therapy, and there would be all sorts of
46:31
help for them, but that just wasn't the environment back down for a band
46:36
of this stature, which which was not great in nineteen eighty six. So
46:39
no, and you know young people anyway, Well, it's different now,
46:44
isn't it. Today's generation of young kids, they understand importance and mental health
46:47
and maintaining it, and it would be a different scenario now, thank god.
46:52
But back then those tools weren't available. So they have often talked about
46:55
how Cliff's success, that Jason Newsted got an awful lot of hazing and kind
47:00
of abuses is too strong a word, but it was kind of like and
47:04
bullying is too strong a word, but it was. It was kind of
47:06
good natured versions of those things as a kind of a possibly a reaction to
47:10
the guilt they felt over Cliff not being there anymore. And it's just an
47:15
incredible seismic transition for for a band of that age to go through. I'm
47:20
sure it toughened them up and made them stronger. But your question about whether
47:23
how they dealt with the grief, if they ever did, I don't think
47:25
they ever really did, you know, not really. There was the period
47:30
of therapy they had around some kind of monster, which I think was useful
47:32
for them, even though it was filmed for public consumption, which is a
47:37
curious thing to do, you know, to this day. But I'm sure
47:39
that was a help for them. Much like ACDC after Bond scar passed,
47:43
get right back to work didn't take long from a talica to move forward.
47:46
I mean, they knew that's what Cliff would have wanted completely. You know,
47:51
there are nuancewers though, aren't there. I mean, like Bond essentially
47:54
drank himself to death, you know, well inadvertently. It wasn't you know,
48:00
a suicide attempt. It was an accident, and you could say cliff
48:02
death was an accident as well, but you know, somebody had to be
48:07
a fault in that accident. The driver was arrested as a matter as a
48:09
formality, not because he was charged with because it was arrested because there'd been
48:14
a fatality. And he was let go because no evidence could be found that
48:17
he had made that much of an error, that a fatal error that killed
48:21
Cliff. You know, black ice was mentioned. No black ice was was
48:28
you know, this was September. In theory, it could have been cold.
48:30
I really checked this. Actually, I spoke to a lot of people
48:31
who were there on the scene and said, and I've checked weather records for
48:36
that date in history as well, at that location. It seems to be
48:39
unlikely that on September the twenty seventh you would have black ice, right,
48:44
because the weather was fine, it wasn't raining, it wasn't even that cold.
48:46
It's not beyond the you know, the realms of imagination that it could
48:51
happen. All these theories are bound. But the fact is there was no
48:53
closure because because no one, no real reason for the crash was discovered.
48:58
So and I think that in itself is just as damaging the fact that there
49:02
was no explanation. The fact is that Bond Scott overdose. There was an
49:07
explanation, right, Randy Rhodes was in a plane crash. It was understood
49:10
why it happened. Dimebag Bless his heart, who I also met, was
49:15
murdered, and that's a whole other level of tragedy. But I think it
49:19
helps when you understand why something happened, and the fact that it is still
49:22
not fully understood all these years later. And I really really put my efforts
49:25
into this, into trying to figure out what the hell happened back then,
49:30
and there is now answer. I think that must be difficult for them to
49:32
live with even now. Well, there is something you write in the book
49:36
that stood out, and I wonder if you can expand on it, And
49:37
here's the quote. Without Cliff, as the other members of Metallica have stated
49:43
on many occasions, the band would have probably have taken a rather different route,
49:46
and one that might have reaped far fewer rewards. That's how important he
49:52
was to Metallica and by extension, to the whole of heavy metal. But
49:55
do you think that route would have been in how would it have changed the
50:00
course of Metallica and heavy matle history in your opinion? If not for Cliff
50:05
Burton, Well, had there been no Cliff right, they would have stayed
50:08
for a while at least with Ron mcgoverney. Ron mcgoverney, I'm sorry their
50:13
bass player who Cliff replaced me. Now as I understand it, I couldn't
50:17
get through to him. I think I did I speak to him. I
50:20
didn't talk to him for this book, but I think I've spoke to him
50:22
at some point or other. Decent guy, right, good guy took a
50:27
lot of a lot of shit off Metallic trying to run that band when they
50:30
were just young kids. He paid for everything, He drove them everywhere.
50:32
You know, Mustain was addicted him and he quit quite rightly. But he
50:37
wasn't really he wasn't really born to be on the stage, you know what
50:39
I mean. So had they stayed with him, it's quite possible that the
50:44
band would have just sort faltered and petered out. You know, what Cliff
50:46
gave them was a fire to get good and stay good because he was so
50:52
good, right, and so serious and so committed. And they made that
50:55
commitment. They moved to San Francisco. I've done that drive. It's like
51:01
eight hours or something, isn't that. I mean, it's quite a big
51:04
old like, right, you wouldn't, Yeah, you wouldn't. You wouldn't
51:07
do it, wouldn't leave your families and friends for no reason, right,
51:09
So those circumstances certainly solidified Metallica. Now they had a real reason to take
51:17
things seriously, and like I said before, the alternative would have been for
51:22
them to just peter out, you know, and just let's do something else,
51:25
you know. And you know, Last certainly had no need to be
51:29
in a band. You know, he was from a cultured, educated,
51:31
affluent family. James will no doubt have done something else. There comes a
51:36
point, doesn't they, in whatever we do, not just musicians, but
51:37
whatever we as people do, where we suddenly decide to take things a little
51:42
bit more seriously, don't we And if we don't do that, then we
51:45
risk never really fulfilling our potential doing you know, the many some of us
51:51
don't, you know, some of us don't. In Metallica's case, I
51:52
think it was Meet and Cliff and realizing that to to match Cliff they needed
51:58
to step up their game significantly. So the second part of the statement that
52:02
you just mentioned, where I said this has affected the whole of heavy metal,
52:07
I stand by that statement. But in fairness, it is the kind
52:09
of thing that we journalists like to do. You know, we kind of
52:12
draw big, big kind of implications and saying so the whole of history was
52:16
affected. But actually I stand by that because Metallica went on to be pioneers
52:22
in all the ways that we know about it that don't need explaining. And
52:27
had they not been there, because Cliff never happened, and because they never
52:30
became a serious force, things would have been different. You know, would
52:35
Slayer have been inspired to do what they did? You know, with the
52:37
whole wave of thrash metal that followed in Metallica and then the whole wave of
52:42
death and black metal that followed that have come to pass, Does it matter
52:45
on a global scale? Could we have good society and manage without extreme metal?
52:50
I suggest it could have done, right. But if you're into that
52:52
music and the culture that goes with it and the interesting sort of political implications
52:57
and nurses that come with it, it's important as well as being really entertaining
53:00
and fun, you know, and and a great interesting culture. And that's
53:05
ultimately borne out by the fact. And again I've mentioned this before that Metallica
53:07
are so huge. Now could the world have lived without the Food Fighters or
53:12
Green Day, all the Rolling Stones, or you two, or Adele or
53:15
Rihanna or any of those giant musical forces. Right, Yes, the world
53:19
would have been fine. But we are richer culturally, aren't we with those
53:22
people? And that's how I feel about Metallica as well. Yeah, they
53:27
just started their world tour, haven't they, So we're not going to be
53:29
able to escape them for the those couple of years. Yeah, I think
53:30
they brought a legitimacy to their genre thanks to Cliff that before Metallica, that
53:38
Jana was looked down on just it was greatly mocked. Yeah, and they
53:44
didn't help themselves, right, those lyrics we talked about, you know,
53:46
it wasn't like it was very difficult to take seriously. But then suddenly when
53:52
you had some when you had a song like Damage Incorporated or Ryan or the
53:55
Call of Cutula which was which was a symphonically fantastic piece of music, you
54:00
had to take it seriously. And as we've been saying so much of that
54:05
LUs music and his attitude. I spoke with an author who wrote an entire
54:07
book and just the lyrics and as you get into those the second and the
54:12
third album and moving forward, those are those are some pretty impressive lyrics for
54:17
a kid. James Yan that yes, a good friend of mine. Ah,
54:23
that's grit. William was phenomenal book. Bill is a professor of philosophy.
54:30
Now, I put it to you that there were no other philosophy professors
54:35
in nineteen eighty six writing books about how important philosophically the lyrics of Black Sabbath
54:43
or I made anyware, right, Honestly, I think Mattannica pioneered that partly
54:49
because of James's self confessional sort of style which resonates with so much of us,
54:52
you know, as well as the kind of you know, thrilling biblical
54:55
epic stuff as well, but that creative spirit of to push forward. Go
55:00
as far as you say, I don't want to say, I don't want
55:04
to say all of their successes down to Cliff, I think that right be
55:07
overstating it. But I think a large part of their forward motion in that
55:10
part of their careers was definitely down to Cliff. You know, he was
55:14
very, very important to that, to their success I mean, there's no
55:17
doubt about that. So yeah, I'll give you the final word on this
55:21
on Cliff Burton and set it up with which you're right in the latest edition
55:24
of the book, which people definitely need to go out and get. You
55:27
say, his achievements tend to be condensed over time in a couple of high
55:30
watermarks, and during your time as the editor of Bass Guitar Magazine, which
55:36
by the way, was from what twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two? I
55:38
get that right, So I was the editor based Guitar Magazine from twenty twelve
55:43
to twenty eighteen, and then the editor based Player Magazine eighteen to twenty twenty
55:47
two. Yeah, it's the nules you emphasize to readers. A Cliff could
55:52
not and should not be reduced to a simple meme of a headbanging hippie who
55:55
played three famous solo parts referring to the song is Anesthesia whom the beltles in
56:00
Orion? What if your people should know about Cliff Burton today and for years
56:04
from that, he was a whole person. There was much more to him
56:08
than just the heavy metal trope or meme or cliche. And that what you
56:15
can do as a as a sort of quietly spoken but determined person, it
56:20
can be huge, can have huge consequences, and when we are robbed of
56:24
that person through tragic circumstances, as we have been with Cliff, the best
56:30
thing you can do is acknowledge that that was a whole person who did wonderful
56:34
things. Think about those skills, think about what those achievements were, apply
56:38
them to your own life. I think, and pay tribute where it's deserved,
56:43
and try to be like like these people. That's what I think,
56:45
you know, and that means acknowledging people's strengths and their flaws and their weaknesses.
56:51
You know, great things can come from these tiny little moments. You
56:53
know the fact that Lars and James saw him headbanging like that and it changed
56:59
there and trajectory. These things can and do happen, and they ought to
57:04
be appreciated and cherished. To live is to die. The Life and Death
57:07
of Metallica's Cliff Burton revised third edition is out now through job On Press and
57:12
you can get it wherever books are sold. It's out there. Any websites
57:15
that you want to let people know about Joel. How about social media?
57:19
I think we are on Instagram. I think we're following each other on Instagram.
57:24
Yes I am, yeah, it's it's just Joel McIvor on Instagram,
57:28
Twitter and Facebook. Joel, thanks so much. This was great. Thank
57:31
you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you. That's it. It's
57:42
in the books,