As a child Cliff attended Earl Warren Junior High, the school at which his mother Jan taught children with special needs. Jan Burton recalls her youngest child as ‘always [being] his own person, even when he was an little bitty kid’.
‘I used to say, “All the kids playing outside, why aren’t you out there playing with them?” And he would say, “They’re not playing, they’re just sitting around talking – that’s boring.” Then he’d go in the house and read his books and put on his own music. Even when he was a tiny little kid he would [prefer to] listen to his own music and read.” Indeed, such was the young Burton’s affinity with the printed word that when tested in the third grade the schoolboy registered a reading ability commensurate with students eight years his elder.
With time, however, it would be music that would emerge as the foremost passion in the life of the young Cliff Burton. Initially inspired by his parents’ collection of classical music, soon enough, like countless young men from Castro Valley to Cape Cod, Burton was held enraptured by the hard rock of Lynyrd Skynrd, Blue Oyster Cult, Ted Nugent and Aerosmith. In this, his formative years in the anonymous suburban sprawl of Northern California were entirely normal.
However, the Burtons’ pleasant if entirely quotidian suburban lives were soon to be punctured by tragedy. On May 19, 1975, Scott Burton was the victim of a cerebral aneurysm; the sixteen-year-old was taken to hospital but later died. Needless to say, the effect on the family unit was both searing and immediate; friends of Cliff, the insular and quietly defiant remaining son, observed that although the death of his elder brother affected him in a profound manner, this loss was something about which he rarely spoke. Instead, it seems that the enigmatic thirteen-year-old opted to give voice to his grief in the form of actions; actions which, as befits the cliché, spoke louder than words he chose rarely to utter.
Although Burton had begun playing bass guitar – and prior to that piano – before the tragedy that befell his family, it seems that the loss of a sibling served to focus his mind on the task at his fingers. He studied not only the popular bass players of the day – musicians such as Rush’s Geddy Lee and Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler – but also the scales and musical notations heard in Bach and Beethoven, as well as the disciplines of baroque music. As his talents grew, the young player would practise for up to six hours a day, his abilities sufficient to outgrow the tutelage of more than one music teacher.
‘Cliff didn’t take music lessons until he was thirteen, after his brother died,’ recalled his mother. ‘He said to a couple of people, “I’m going to be the best bassist [I can be] for my brother.” We didn’t think he had too much talent at all. We had no idea! We just thought he’d plunk, plunk along, which he did at [the beginning]. It really was not easy for him at first … [but] about six months in to the lessons, it started to come together. I thought, “This kid’s got real potential.” And I was totally amazed, because none of the kids in our family had any musical talent.’
As with all fledgling musicians, the point is soon reached when the young player wishes to develop his talents with others. Burton’s first band was named EZ Street, a union which also featured drummer Dave Donato and guitarist Jim Martin. Occasionally the drum stool was manned by Mike ‘Puffy’ Bordin, who alongside Martin would go on to find success with pioneering Bay Area oddballs Faith No More. EZ Street would practise in the hills of Northern California, discovering their sound through the playing of elongated instrumental pieces that owed more to the powerful and hypnotic rhythms of the English cult band Hawkwind than the snappy pop-played-loud anthems beloved of US stadium-botherers Kiss. Away from their instruments, the young musicians dabbled with experimental drugs such as LSD, while Burton himself savoured the flavour of marijuana. But despite such chemically enhanced excursions, elsewhere Burton remained a dependable American adolescent. If his band mates in EZ Street gathered to listen to music in the Burton family home, they did so at a volume considerate of Cliff’s sleeping family. As Jim Martin later recalled, ‘We’d rock out, but real quietly.’ At other times the group would return to the Burton family home from fishing trips at four in the morning, whereupon Cliff would prepare for the party a huge cooking pot of Mexican food, chiding Donato for a loud voice which occasionally rose to a pitch capable of waking the house’s sleeping residents.
As with many first bands, EZ Street did not so much disband as dissolve. The group, though, did afford Burton his first public appearances at such estimable gatherings as a church gala, local talent contests and, inevitably, numerous backyard parties beloved of Californian teenagers. The band could even lay claim to one performance for which they were paid, this being an appearance at the International Café in Berkeley, an establishment run by Greek Americans who were quite happy to have the band play and their friends arrive to watch and to drink the bar dry.
From the ashes of EZ Street Burton and Martin formed Agents of Misfortune, another short-lived, free-form, experimental trio, inspired by Rush, the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath. Interviewed in 1980, after a local Battle of the Bands competition, the bassist was asked to outline his group’s future ambitions: his answer was both succinct and lyrical: ‘To show [people] what’s on the other side of the fence.’
By the spring of 1980 music had positioned itself as the key component in the life of Cliff Burton. This was the season that he graduated from Castro Valley High School, and after he secured his High School Diploma he decided to continue his studies at Chabot College, a community institution in Hayward, California, which features among its alumni such figures as actor Tom Hanks, author Bruce Henderson, as well as Major League Baseball players such as Mark Davis and Ned Yost. Yet as Burton’s first semester at the college approached, the prospective student was already certain in his own mind that the vocation he desired for his life was that of a professional musician. But while the back stories of many young people who desire to embark upon a musical path they hope will lead to a destination of fame and glory – or even merely a living – come replete with a chorus from unhappy parents urging their offspring to concentrate on activities that loosely correlate under the banner of ‘proper jobs’, in the case of the Burton family the response to their son’s declaration was more supportive. Both Ray and Jan Burton had noted not only their son’s love of music, but also his willingness to apply himself to the business of playing music. In light of this, the parents struck a deal with their youngest child.
As Jan recalled, ‘We said, “Okay, we’ll give you four years. We’ll pay for your rent and your food. But after that four years is over, if we don’t see some slow progress or moderate progress, if you’re just not going any place and it’s obvious that you’re not going to make a living from it, then you’re going to have to get a job and do something else. That’s as far as we’re going to support you. It should be known by then whether or not you’re going to make it.” So he said, “Fine.”’
In order to begin making good on his end of this bargain, the next group Burton joined was Trauma. Then a regular presence on the Bay Area’s live club circuit, at the time of Burton’s arrival the group were propelled by singer Donny Hillier and guitarist Mike Overton and played a rather odd combination of straight-ahead power metal combined with the kind of glam-metal stylings that had begun to dominate the boulevards of West Hollywood. The band, though, did possess a solid work ethic, something that was no doubt attractive to a bass player whose own work ethic had afforded him the support of his mother and father. The insertion into Trauma’s ranks of a new member dressed in flared jeans and denim jacket – an ensemble often derided as ‘a Canadian tuxedo’ – only added to the band’s sense of musical and stylistic uncertainty. Critical opinion among those who covered the underground metal scene of both Northern and Southern California was mixed. By combining a traditional power rock sensibility with the whiff of a glam rock aesthetic – without fully committing to either – the group’s appeal stood some way behind the teeth of those chomping at metal
’s increasingly jagged cutting edge. After witnessing a performance at The Stone club, writing in Metal Mania Ron Quintana observed, ‘The guitarists had funny matching outfits, so they stood out more – whereas Cliff looked more like a regular guy.’ Hardly the kind of fulsome soundbite a band might choose to place on flyers and posters advertising future live performances.
A more positive recollection is held by Steve ‘Zetro’ Souza, the one-time singer with early day San Francisco thrashers the Legacy – who later became Testament – and after that front man for local heroes Exodus. Souza recalls seeing Trauma play when he was a high-school student, and hearing voices in the Northern Californian metal scene declaring, ‘Those guys are [gonna be] the next big thing.’ Asked to identify an outstanding feature of Trauma’s sound, Souza is quick to nominate the playing of Cliff Burton. ‘His style was just so awesome,’ he says, ‘so radical … I think people thought he was just too much for [that band] maybe.’
Despite this, Burton did realise a number of achievements with Trauma. In March 1982 the band supported Saxon at the Keystone Club in Palo Alto, the final date of the English group’s US tour in support of their defiantly dodgy Denim & Leather album. The San Francisco band also contributed the track ‘Such a Shame’ to Brian Slagel’s Metal Massacre II – with the group’s management desiring as well that the group sign to Slagel’s Metal Blade label, despite an acute lack of funds on the part of company. In the same year, Trauma travelled south on Interstate 5 in order to play three concerts in Los Angeles.
It has often been reported that James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich first encountered Cliff Burton at the Troubadour, at the third of the band’s three LA showcases. In truth, they already met and spoken to the man who would soon enough come to be known as ‘the Windmill’, at both that earlier appearance at the Whisky, as well as at a video shoot for the Trauma song ‘I Am the Warlock’, where they were introduced by Ulrich’s friend Patrick Scott.
‘Trauma’s manager – his name was Tony [Van Lit] – had contacted me through K. J. Doughton to come and watch them shoot a video,’ Scott recalls. ‘So they came down to Santa Ana, which is by Los Angeles, to shoot a video in a professional studio. I didn’t know much about the band other than hearing a tape of them, and I knew I’d be sitting there all day long by myself, so I called Lars just as a friendly thing to come and watch. He was excited about it and I wasn’t sure why, and he brought James with him, which I didn’t think much about then – it was something to do – and Lars and James were talking to Cliff a lot, the whole time. I didn’t really know where they were going with it at that time, but soon after that Lars told me, “Remember that guy, that bass player?” and I said, “Of course,” and he told me the whole thing about them trying to get him.’
Dave Mustaine recalls Burton being what he describes as a ‘star bass player’, before adding ‘that term alone – “star bass player” – should tell you something, because bass players are typically the bottom of the rock ’n’ roll food chain. Guitar players and singers are at the top, drummers in the middle, bass players at the bottom. I was once quoted as saying, “Playing bass is one step up from playing the kazoo,” which certainly pissed off a lot of bass players, but it’s essentially true. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and Cliff was certainly not a glorified kazoo player. He was brilliant. The first time I saw him play, I knew he was something special, and so did Lars and James, which is why they began surreptitiously courting Cliff while Ron McGovney was still in the band.’
While history has tended to portray the union between Cliff Burton and the Metallica camp as being one weighted heavily in favour of the Bay Area bassist, the truth is that Ulrich’s entreaties came at a time when Burton was beginning to feel in need of some kind of exit strategy from Trauma. Mike Overton also confirmed the presence of Ulrich and Hetfield at his band’s video shoot, describing the pair as being ‘cool to talk to’. Rather touchingly the guitarist also adds that he ‘did at the time wonder why they talked to Cliff for [so] long’. Overton admits that ‘Cliff was frustrated, Don Hillier and I both knew this. Cliff had always wanted to be a little heavier in sound and so did I … [Other members] wanted to be a lot more commercial. I was always an Iron Maiden and Judas Priest fan myself. So there was some infighting going on among Trauma as to what direction we needed to head …’
But whichever direction that was, it would be without their bass player. Following his meeting with Cliff Burton, and after seeing the musician onstage again with Trauma at the Troubadour, Lars Ulrich, that little engine that could, and did, marched up to Brian Slagel and delivered a direct injunction.
‘That guy’s gonna be in my band.’
After Metallica’s appearance at the Old Waldorf on November 29, the touring party and friends retired to a motel on Lombard Street to celebrate their first headline show in the city.
‘It was then,’ Lars Ulrich recalled, ‘that we began to fuck girls who came to the concerts. I remember me and Dave Mustaine scored a few chicks together. It was the first time I was in a pile of bodies, there was someone on the bed, someone on the other bed, someone in the corner and someone in the closet. It was one of those times we would have only one motel room, then woke up the next morning with twenty people sleeping on the floor. But it was just like a dream … it was just so cool. It was everything we’ve ever dreamed of and more.’
Adrift in this drunken, ecstatic state, however, Ulrich failed to realise that he had shown his hand when it came to his plot to unseat Ron McGovney as his partner in Metallica’s rhythm section.
‘At the second Waldorf show Lars was already talking about replacing McGovney,’ reveals Bill Hale, then a photographer for the Metal Rendezvous fanzine. ‘I remember being back at the hotel with Cliff and a bunch of friends and Lars was drunk and saying, “When we get back to LA we’re getting rid of Ron,” … and Ron was right there in the room …’
‘After I heard them talk about Cliff, I had some idea [I was going to be replaced],’ admits McGovney. ‘I remember after that show it was raining like a motherfucker and I saw Cliff, all in denim, just standing there in the rain. And I said to him, “Hey dude, do you want a ride home?” I kind of felt sorry for the guy. I kind of saw the writing on the wall … We played at the Mabuhay Gardens the next day, it was a little hole in the wall. That was the last gig I did with Metallica.
‘On the way home we stopped at the liquor store, I was driving, and they got a whole gallon of whisky. James, Lars and Dave were completely smashed out of their minds. They would constantly bang on the window for me to pull over so they could take a piss, and all the sudden I look over and see Lars lying in the middle of Interstate 5 on the double yellow line. It was just unbelievable! And I just said, “Fuck this shit!” Then one of my friends told me that they witnessed Dave pour a beer right into the pickups of my Washburn bass as he said, “I fuckin’ hate Ron.” The next day my bass didn’t work. My girlfriend at the time also told me that she overheard that they wanted to bring Cliff in the band.
‘I never, ever heard them tell me, “You’re out of the band.” After Dave fucked my bass up, I confronted the band when they came over for practice and said, “Get the fuck out of my house!” I turned to James and said, “I’m sorry, James, but you have to go too.” And they were gone within the next couple of days.’
‘What bothered me the most was that James just kind of sat there and let it happen. He just kind of turned a blind eye to it.’
On December 10, 1982, Ron McGovney officially quit as Metallica’s bass player. While Hetfield moved down to Huntington Beach to crash on Mustaine’s couch, Ulrich redoubled his efforts to cajole Burton into joining his band. Shortly after his nineteenth birthday, he finally secured the present he had been coveting for the past two months, when Burton agreed to be in his band. His consent, however, came with one condition. If Metallica wanted Cliff Burton to be their bass player, the group would have to come to him.
3 – JUMP IN THE FIRE
As
the winter of 1982 surrendered to the spring of 1983, a rash of xeroxed yellow-and-black posters began appearing on the lamp posts casting long shadows outside the strip clubs and shebeens of San Francisco’s Broadway district. The posters served notice of a forthcoming show on March 5 at The Stone, a three-band line-up unified under the billing ‘The Night of the Banging Head’. In truth, the promoters could have saved themselves the effort of manufacturing hype. For the members of the Bay Area’s metal fraternity, this event had long since been pencilled into their diaries as the occasion of Cliff Burton’s keenly awaited debut outing as a member of Metallica.
As arcs of bucking feedback brought Metallica’s traditional set-opener, ‘Hit the Lights’, to its conclusion on that warm spring evening, James Hetfield peered through a fug of smoke and dry ice into a club packed tight with familiar faces. Brian Lew and Bill Hale stood stage front with their cameras, Ron Quintana held court at the bar, while Rich Burch, Toby Rage and Exodus’s faithful ‘Slay Team’ prowled the periphery of the pit cracking heads with impunity.
‘How you doing?’ enquired Hetfield with a smile. ‘We’re ready to fucking kill!’
Indifferent to the ways of the music scene of Los Angeles, onstage at an intimate club the logic behind Cliff Burton’s insistence on joining Metallica only if the group came to him rather than vice versa was clear for all to see, and at the closest quarters at that. Burton looked like a man not just born to appear onstage, but born to appear onstage as a member of Metallica; the bass player’s charismatic authority, even regality, beggaring belief that this was the first time he had stepped onstage with his new band mates. This sight was met with equal emphasis by the few hundred people gathered to see the band perform. As with the animalistic roar that greets the end of ‘Ace of Spades’ on No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith, the sound from the people gathered in The Stone that March evening was informed not so much by adulation as by an energy that was reckless and emphatic. In 1982 Lars Ulrich would tell interviewers that, in Los Angeles, Metallica were ‘the right band in the wrong city’: now ensconced in the City by the Bay this, evidently, was no longer the case.
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