To Live Is To Die: The Life & Death Of Metallica's Cliff Burton: Revised Third Edition

By Joel McIver, Steve Di Giorgio, Kirk Hammett and Frank Bello

‘One of the best biographies you’ll ever read.’ – Robb Flynn, Machine Head

Today, Metallica are known as consummate musicians, but it wasn’t always that way. Their early career is marked by a gradual evolution from garage thrash to sophisticated, progressive heights – an evolution driven by their bass player, Cliff Burton, who pushed the band to new heights with his songwriting ability and phenomenal bass skills across the band’s first three albums, including their undisputed masterpiece, Master Of Puppets.

Cliff’s life was short but influential; his death at the age of 24 in a tour bus crash on a Swedish mountain road was sudden and shocking. Following his passing, Metallica went on to huge global success, but by their own admission they never pushed the creative envelope as radically as they had done during the first four years of their career.

The cult of Burton grows year on year, and so too the list of bassists acknowledging his influence in metal and beyond. Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Metallica’s debut album, Kill ’Em All, this revised and updated edition of To Live Is To Die adds a new chapter that looks at Burton's enduring legacy from a fresh perspective and includes commentary from current Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and Aquaman star Jason Momoa, as well as an eyewitness account of the opening of the Cliff Burton Museum in Ljungby, Sweden, in 2022. There is also a brand new preface by Testament bass master Steve Di Giorgio, who shares his memories of meeting Burton as a teenager and then watching on from close quarters as Metallica began to take off.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jawbone Press
• Release date: Apr 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781911036135

Book preview

"To Live Is To Die is, to me, the very best book about a rock band, artist, or topic that I have ever read. It’s better than The Dirt. It’s better than David Lee Roth’s Crazy From The Heat. This book is a grand slam home run, hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, to win your team’s first ever World Series. It’s that good." PITRIFF

Joel McIver is rapidly gaining a reputation for turning out well-heeled rock biographies ... diligently researched, musically insightful, and flecked with a nice array of original interviews. Particularly good on the enormous influence Burton had on the rest of Metallica. MICK WALL, CLASSIC ROCK

A superbly detailed account ... paints a picture, not just of Burton himself but also what it was like to be in ’Tallica back in the early days. KERRANG!

Essential ... will surely bring a tear to the eye of many an old-school fan of the band, and sheds some light on their troubled early years for the whipper-snappers. TERRORIZER

This book is easily a decade if not two overdue, so to finally have it available to read and absorb is something of a gift from the metal gods ... about the closest thing we’ll ever get to knowing or trying to understand Cliff Burton. NONE BUT MY OWN

Even if you’re not into rock biographies, this is one that I recommend picking up and getting to grips with. It’s a book that is meant to pay proper tribute to the man and does so in droves. BLOGCRITICS

If you’re a Metallica fan you NEED to read this book. COLPOP

Genuinely emotional. ROCK AND ROLL Army

"No one writing today is more capable than Joel McIver of interpreting and presenting this complex character. ... In 2004, the Englishman wrote Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica, the bible for Metallica-heads everywhere. Now, with this definitive portrait of the legendary bass player, he completes the picture." CURLED UP

McIver accurately notes that Burton’s influence has been the greatest in the realm of technical death metal, with bassists from Cynic, Atheist, and Suffocation having all cited Burton as an influence ... an immensely readable book. CHRONICLES OF CHAOS

Lovingly assembled  ... only adds to the legend. RECORD COLLECTOR

Engaging and informative ... an indispensable look at Metallica’s formative years and the headbanging bassist with a penchant for bellbottom jeans who helped create an entire genre of music. METALOCALYPSE

McIver has given us a reason to ... celebrate the short life of a gifted individual who was taken away from us way too soon. SEA OF TRANQUILITY

A well-rounded account ... detailed musical insight ... an excellent read. EVERLONG

A daring and much-needed tribute ... thank God someone took a chance at telling Cliff Burton’s story. RAY VAN HORN JR

McIver makes a strong case that it was Burton’s knowledge of composition and theory ... that gave Metallica the extra dimension. BLURT

Must read for any serious Metallica fan, as well as both aspiring and established rock bass players. METAL UNDERGROUND

All you ever need to know about an important member of the Metallica family who fell from us at an early age. MASS MOVEMENT

McIver’s book correctly credits Burton with helping elevate the band to another level. ANTIMUSIC

The definitive Cliff Burton book. Any fan of Cliff, Metallica or bass guitar should pick up a copy of this truly great biography. ULTIMATE GUITAR

A fine volume ... Burton’s profound creative input is revealed in a series of interviews with those close to him. VINTAGE GUITAR

A definitive, uniquely genuine and well researched book. ALTSOUNDS

Grade A. CAMPUS CIRCLE

There are only a few times when a biography can be said to be ‘definitive’, and that certainly is the case here.  ... It is inspiring, it is exhaustive, it is informative, and most of all it is a damn good read that I found hard to put down. AMPLIFIED

Will leave a lasting impression ... required reading. GUITAR EDGE

"Avoids wasting time and ink rehashing the mountainous ‘Alcoholica’-era debauchery and typical rock star excesses that other rock authors tend to glorify. Instead, To Live Is To Die tells the story of a contradictory man, quiet, unassuming to many, but clearly a determined, focused musician who was a genuine force to be reckoned with. A wonderful tribute." HARD ROCK HAVEN

Provides real insight into the life of Cliff Burton, and the effect of his death on those he left behind. HEAVY METAL ABOUT

Joel is a writer I have a lot of respect for, I really enjoyed his fine book on Slayer ... McIver has done a fantastic job, talking to all the people who knew Cliff personally, covering his tenure in Metallica in great detail and with a great deal of compassion ... a fine book from a talented and passionate writer and one that deserves the widest audience possible. LIVE4METAL

A must for all you Metallicats out there. BULLETBELT

Probably the best book that could ever be written about Cliff. ... Highly recommended. MATT KEIL

Does a great job of bringing Cliff to life as a friend, bandmate, and all-around well-adjusted music-lover. BLASTITUDE

I pretty much inhaled the book ... McIver does a great job of getting quotes directly from the people that knew Cliff the best. BASS GUITAR ROCKS

Joel McIver’s book is long overdue and is a magnum opus of rock biographies ... it’s meticulously researched, discerning and illuminating in ways I never could have anticipated ... one of the best biographies of music I’ve ever read ... when you are done with it, you will feel as if you have lost a dear friend. With this book, Joel McIver has secured the legacy of Cliff Burton. THE SCREEN DOOR

This is an essential book for a lot of people. Everyone who is a fan of Cliff Burton, a fan of Metallica, a fan of thrash metal (or just metal in general), and most importantly, a fan of greatness that was snuffed out unfairly early, should buy this book. If you’re close enough to Burton’s music, who knows, you might just shed a silent tear as well. I know I did. THOUGHT PROCESSOR

A Jawbone book

Third edition 2023

Published in the UK and the USA by Jawbone Press

Office G1

141–157 Acre Lane

London SW2 5UA

England

Volume copyright © 2023 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Joel McIver. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.

This new edition is dedicated to Ollie McIver. He was the best, if also the stupidest, dog that ever lived.

CONTENTS

Author’s note

Preface by Steve Di Giorgio

Foreword by Kirk Hammett

Introduction

Chapter 1: 1962 to 1979

Chapter 2: 1980 to 1982

Chapter 3: January to March 1983

Chapter 4: April to July 1983

Chapter 5: Kill ’Em All

Chapter 6: August 1983 to July 1984

Chapter 7: Ride The Lightning

Chapter 8: January to December 1985

Chapter 9: January to March 1986

Chapter 10: Master Of Puppets

Chapter 11: April to September 1986

Chapter 12: September 27 1986

Chapter 13: The aftermath

Chapter 14: Metallica 1986 to 2009

Chapter 15: Metallica 2010 to 2016

Chapter 16: Unpacking Cliff 2016 to 2023

Chapter 17: Cliff’s Legacy

Afterword by Frank Bello

In others’ words

Who’s who

Musical terms

Notes and sources

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Welcome to the third edition of To Live Is To Die, first published in 2009 and now a venerable 14 years and counting in print. It’s a sad story in many ways, simply because its subject, Cliff Burton, has now been absent from our lives for such a long time. In other ways, though, it is a celebration: demonstrable proof that even death can’t stop us loving the work done by those no longer with us, and that if anything will give our lives meaning it is loud music, a close community, and a refusal to let fate make us miserable.

Without being cheesy about it, the continuing, and growing, love felt by Metallica’s fans for Cliff is what encouraged me and the team at Jawbone to publish this new edition of what is still the only book about him. Cliff’s name and music are still very much part of the conversation among musicians and music fans alike. He’s not going anywhere, it seems, as the additional chapter written for this edition reveals.

My heartfelt thanks go to Metallica, to Steve Di Giorgio for the new preface, to Frank Bello and Kirk Hammett for their previous contributions, to Nigel and Tom at Jawbone, and to you.

JOEL McIVER, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, 2023

PREFACE

by STEVE DI GIORGIO of TESTAMENT

I only met Cliff Burton once, but it’s quite a story. The Metallica guys used to frequent all the metal shows in the Bay Area, even when their second album, Ride The Lightning, was out and they had become a pretty big band. They would still come out and hang out at all the local shows in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.

I was at the release show for Megadeth’s first album, which took place on May 31 1985 in San Francisco, where they were supporting Exodus, who were also releasing their debut album, Bonded By Blood. All four of the Metallica guys were there. James Hetfield was in the main hall, in a booth with his posse of followers, and Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich were hanging out, causing some good-natured chaos.

And there was Cliff – all grandiose and regal, standing in the lobby near the merch table, with a crowd around him who were very excited to meet him. As always, he was wearing his signature uniform of light blue denim.

I was only 17 and still in high school. I wanted to meet Cliff, but I was really nervous. My buddy Rick kept nudging me and saying, Go say hi!

I kept saying, I can’t – I don’t know what to say.

Rick said, Just do it like this. Watch! and walks over to Cliff. He says, Hey Cliff, it’s great to meet you. I just wanted to say, you’re King God bass player.

Cliff says, Well, thank you bro! and shakes his hand, and Rick comes back to me and says, See? It’s easy.

So I thought to myself, Okay, okay. I can do this. I can do this! and I remembered what Rick said, so I went up to Cliff.

He looked at me and I said, Hi. You’re King Kong bass player.

He said, Uh . . . okay! and shook my hand.

I walked away, thinking, Goddamnit! Fuck! What did I just say?

There were other times when Cliff and I were in the same room together, but I just used to watch him rather than go up and talk to him. My first band, Sadus, was just a baby band at the time, so I had no status, and I’ve never been the kind of guy who goes up and bothers his heroes, so we never spoke again.

I remember another show, also in 1985, with Whiplash headlining and Possessed and Death Angel supporting, and there were maybe 40 or 50 people there. All three bands were brand new, just starting up, and selling their own tickets, so the crowd was very sparse.

Death Angel were even younger than me – they were kids, maybe 15 years old – and there were only five or six people watching them, so I went up to the front, just to support them a little.

I looked over and saw that one of the other people at the front was Cliff. He was totally in the moment, banging his head and punching his fist in the air. Just watching him enjoying Death Angel was a show in itself.

At the end of the night, I was in a group of people, just talking, and all of a sudden we heard this thud. I looked around to see what it was, and I saw Cliff on the ground. Apparently some dude had clocked him in the face. I didn’t see who did it, but the crowd soon picked Cliff up and gave his attacker quite the pummelling.

Of course, I’d seen Metallica play by then. The first time I saw them was back in 1984 at the Mabuhay Gardens. The room was pretty small but it was barely half full, which is funny to think of, now they’re one of the biggest bands in the world. Back then, heavy metal stage attire was completely different than normal clothes: everybody had a stage costume, whether it was spandex or leather or whatever, and the first thing I noticed about Metallica was that they were wearing regular T-shirts and faded jeans with holes in the knees. They looked like they unloaded the van right before they went on stage.

This was great, because we were all part of the ‘Death To Posers’ wave that was going on at the time. We didn’t like that you had to do shit to your hair before you went on stage, or wear makeup on your face or wear particularly colourful clothes. These guys looked like totally normal dudes. Cliff was wearing a flannel shirt, and James had a cut-off T-shirt, and they just looked cool. They were very personable, too: between the songs James would talk to people in a way that made it clear how connected they were to us.

At one point, one of the guys in the audience was thrashing around and he hit the speaker stack on the side of the stage. All the speakers toppled over, and Metallica stopped playing, right in the middle of ‘Seek And Destroy’ or something. James put his Flying V on the drum riser and jumped down off the stage to start stacking up the speakers again. A bunch of people helped him, and the sound guy ran over to check the connections: it felt like a garage gig, or a backyard party. I had no idea I was witnessing history in the making.

A few months later, on March 13 1985, I saw them at the Keystone in Palo Alto, supporting Armored Saint. They were on the Ride The Lightning tour, and this time the room was absolutely packed. There were hundreds of people outside who couldn’t get in. It was the first time I ever saw a pit that huge at a thrash metal show: it was pure chaos, with people just jumping around and slamming into each other.

After their set, when Armored Saint were playing, Metallica were standing around, talking to fans, having a beer and signing stuff. It was very cool.

I’ve seen them play many times since then: I’m proud that I saw them at all stages of their career.

Here’s what I think of Cliff as a bass player. If you want to hear bass play a counterpoint, or a groovy, bouncy kind of style like Bob Daisley or Geezer Butler or Geddy Lee or Chris Squire – who were all big influences on Cliff – you won’t find those kinds of basslines on any of the three albums he recorded with Metallica. On the other hand, if you’re looking for basslines that strictly support the rhythm guitar, you can hear that Cliff was completely shadowing James’s parts, which became standard in that style of music.

Where Cliff shone most brightly was when he was playing alone. Obviously there’s ‘Anesthesia’, the bass solo off the first album, where he was tearing it up, and of course there’s the intro of ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’. I’ve seen an old video of Cliff in the band Agents Of Misfortune, with Jim Martin on guitar, and Cliff played that exact same solo in one of the songs. He had that one stored away in the bank until Metallica recorded their second album.

Later, he also took on the lead role on ‘Orion’, where he was harmonising and overdubbing, but the one song that I think gets passed over a little bit is another instrumental, ‘The Call Of Ktulu’, where there are amazing bass fills with a lot of wah pedal work. It’s super-creative, adventurous stuff. The way that those albums are mixed, you’ve really got to have some good headphones to hear those fills, and some good herb to help you focus on them. That’s when you realise that he’s really going for it. If the isolated bass part for ‘The Call Of Ktulu’ ever comes out, it’s going to be awesome, because he really tears it up on that track. He was the best solo bass player that I’ve ever seen.

Another important thing about Cliff was that he was a performer. If you ever saw Metallica play live back then, most of your attention would be over on stage right, because this dude commanded performances. He wasn’t just part of the band: he was a standout.

Remember, he did all of this by the age of 24. That is incredible. Cliff hasn’t recorded anything in the last 36 years, and he was still voted Number One in a ‘Top Metal Bassist’ poll in Bass Player magazine in 2022. His work is still influencing people to this day, even though his entire body of work is only three albums.

I saw Kurt Loder announce Cliff’s death on MTV in 1986, and it was just horrible. His bandmates lost their friend, and his parents lost their son, and it was awful. He died at 24 years old. As a father of children in their twenties, I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child so young. By today’s standards, you’re still pretty much a child at 24, and yet Cliff was a bona-fide rock star, playing arenas and setting standards so high, all at such a young age and over a period of just three years. That is legendary work.

People work their entire career to try to come close to what Cliff Burton achieved. He was a shining star from the beginning, and he’s still shining, because he’s still influencing people – over 35 years after his last note was put down.

STEVE DI GIORGIO, CALIFORNIA, 2023

FOREWORD

by KIRK HAMMETT of METALLICA

Cliff Burton was very outspoken and very outgoing, and he was very motivated when it came to going out and seeing music and listening to bands – and just doing whatever the fuck he wanted to do.

What did we have in common? Well, when I first joined Metallica in early ’83 and flew out from San Francisco to hook up with them at the Music Building in New York, I didn’t really know those guys very well at all. I didn’t know James and Lars, other than a brief conversation that I’d had with them a few weeks prior to that. I didn’t know Cliff at all – but we were hanging out, and I noticed that he had an H.P. Lovecraft book and a Dungeons And Dragons book. So I said I was really into Lovecraft too – and that was when we discovered that we had the whole gothic horror thing in common.

He was way into zombie movies, and I was way into horror movies in general – and so we bonded over that, right off the bat. Cliff ’s favorite movie of all time was Dawn Of The Dead: he always told me about how he would watch it recreationally – he’d turn down the sound and watch it, just to see the zombies!

Metallica was pretty democratic, but when Cliff had a great idea, he would definitely bring it to the attention of everyone and say hey man, can we do this so I can put this part in there, and I can stretch out a little bit? He was a guy that always had a lot of ideas, and he was always coming up with arrangements. He had a different perspective on the music, especially when it came to improvising.

He played a lot of lead guitar. We roomed together, and a lot of times I’d be playing my guitar and he’d break out his guitar, which was a Les Paul, and he would plug it into this little amp. He’d put on some music and just solo along with it. A lot of times it would drive me crazy, because I’d be there trying to sleep, and he’d say hey man, can you help me figure out this Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar lick?

I can safely say that for Lars, James, and myself, it look a long time – over a decade – to get complete closure on Cliff ’s death. We weren’t really equipped to handle or digest what had happened, because we were all pretty young guys: we were still in our twenties. It took a great deal of maturity to really sit down and talk about it among ourselves. I wouldn’t say we reached that point until the late 90s, maybe somewhere around the time that Jason Newsted left the band – because it forced us to confront that situation again. In losing Jason, it felt as if we were back to where we were when we had lost Cliff.

It’s impossible to speculate about what Cliff would have done if he’d lived. You see, from a musical standpoint, Cliff was all over the map. He listened to a lot of different things, from Witchfinder General to Creedence Clearwater Revival to the Velvet Underground to the Misfits. He’s the one who turned Metallica on to the Misfits – so he really could have gone in any direction.

One of Cliff ’s famous quotes was: ‘I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I wanna do.’ That really kind of summed up his whole persona.

KIRK HAMMETT, 2009

INTRODUCTION

Cliff Burton was completely unique, and there’s never been anyone like him. That’s what Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich told me in the summer of 2008, adding: It was sad that we didn’t get a chance to find out what else was lurking inside that massive talent bank.

Lars was right on both counts. Cliff, who played bass in Metallica from early 1983 until his death in September 1986, achieved a vast amount in the unfairly short time allotted to him by whichever demons are in charge of thrash metal.

Although he was only 20 when he joined Metallica and 24 when he died, Cliff influenced the band profoundly and set them on a course that took them to a point a decade later where they could claim to be the biggest-selling heavy metal band in the world.

While the most commercially successful Metallica album didn’t appear until five years after Cliff ’s death, the three records that he made with the band are regarded to this day as their best. His role in making those albums so essential cannot be overstated.

Without Cliff – as the other members of Metallica have stated on many occasions – the band would probably have taken a rather different route, and one that might have reaped far fewer rewards. That’s how important he was to Metallica and, by extension, to the whole of heavy metal.

It’s strange that no one has written a book about Cliff until now. Thirty-seven years after his death, Metallica are still touring the planet and playing huge stadiums, showing no signs of slowing down. Crucially, Cliff Burton-era songs tend to account for a large proportion of any given Metallica setlist, a detail that has not escaped the fans and critics who constantly watch the band like hawks. There are many reasons for this. The songs that Metallica recorded then were generally faster and heavier than much of their post-Cliff material, because the band was younger and more energetic; Metallica’s fans have grown up with the band and want to hear songs from the old days; and, most pertinently, the old stuff is better.

Why the old songs are better than (most of) the new ones, and what Cliff ’s role was in making them that way, lies at the core of this book, the first ever biography of Cliff Burton. His demonic skills on the bass guitar, the almost unprecedented position of his bass parts at the front of the band, his expertise when it came to music theory, and the uncanny way in which he was able to inspire his band-mates to higher things – all these contribute to the story.

This book makes another important point, which is that Cliff was one of the good guys. He is described in glowing terms by everyone who met him – and that isn’t just nostalgia in action. Although many fallen musicians are posthumously sanctified by fans of their work or by those saddened by their passing, Cliff was a genuinely warm character whose desire to stay rooted in spite of Metallica’s success makes him unusual. I’ve interviewed as many of his friends and associates as possible for this book, and they all agree that he was one of a kind.

The book’s title, To Live Is To Die, is the title of the last song Cliff wrote for Metallica – and I’ve used it for this book for a reason. By the time he died, Cliff had evolved into a fully fledged songwriter and a bass player who could play at world-class levels in several genres of music. His grasp of what Metallica needed to do to get to the next stage of their career, and what to do when they got there, was understated, but apparent to those who worked with him. Could you keep your head during a four-year period in which your band went from garage punks to stadium act, all before you celebrated your first quarter of a century?

You can enjoy this book on multiple levels. If you’re a fan of Metallica, old or new, there’s a lot of information never published anywhere else. If you’ve never heard any of Metallica’s music but would like a way in, treat this book as your gateway drug. If you’re a bass player, this is the ultimate Burton guide – other than sitting down with headphones on, popping a beer, and listening to his albums, of course. I’ve aimed for a level of technical bass geekery that will clarify matters for those of you familiar with the instrument but won’t send everyone else to sleep.

This isn’t a biography of Metallica as such, although the band’s achievements inevitably influence the content. It’s an account of what Cliff Burton did while he was in the band, with analyses of his bass-playing in their songs that provide a different perspective to their music. Those albums leave me speechless to this day, and going back to re-examine them from the bass player’s point of view has been one of the most illuminating things I’ve ever done.

To Live Is To Die is a celebration of Cliff’s personality and achievements as well as his dexterity as a musician. In writing this book, I’m laying my own tribute on the Burton altar. I hope it meets the very high standards of excellence, personal and musical, that he established.

CHAPTER 1

1962 TO 1979

Heavy metal is strange sometimes. Many of the personality traits that drove Cliff Burton were formed not in the big city but in a semi-rural community where nothing much ever happened. Castro Valley is an unremarkable sector of Alameda County in California, about 25 miles from San Francisco. It is neither deep in the countryside nor close to the ocean; it isn’t particularly affluent or poor; and at about 60,000 residents it isn’t large and it isn’t small. In fact, it’s just like thousands of other mid-size settlements all over America and beyond, a place where life just . . . happens.

At about 9:30pm on February 10 1962, life just happened to Clifford Lee Burton, a baby boy born to Jan and Ray Burton. Jan was a California-born schoolteacher, Ray a highway engineer who had moved west from Tennessee. Cliff had two older siblings, Scott and Connie, and was the last of the Burton children.

Most people who knew Cliff later remember his laidback nature, but it was there from a very early age. At almost two years old, he still hadn’t learned to walk. As his father Ray recalled much later: Cliff was 22 months old before he started walking on his own, and we were quite concerned about it. But the doctor said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just smart enough to know that mom and dad will carry him around.’ When we look back on it, it’s quite humorous. He damn near broke Jan’s back!

Once the skinny red-haired kid finally started moving under his own steam, however, he couldn’t be stopped, embracing sports, books, and music in equal measure. Attending Earl Warren Junior High, the school where Jan worked with special-needs students, Cliff was permanently active, with a keen brain that required constant stimulation.

It’s easy – too easy – to draw parallels between the boy and the future man, but as his mother Jan explained, even in his childhood he showed signs of the stubborn streak that he became well known for later. He often flatly refused to do what others expected of him. As Jan put it: He was always his own person, even when he was a little bitty kid. I used to say all the kids are playing outside, why aren’t you out there playing with them? And he said they’re not playing, they’re just sitting around talking – that’s boring. Then he’d go in the house and read his books or put on his own music. Even when he was a tiny little kid he would listen to his music or read.

The person outside his immediate family who first got to know Cliff was Doug Teixeira, now drummer in the thrash metal band Blitzenhamer. Doug first met Cliff after he’d moved from Marshall Elementary School to Earl Warren Junior High. Then we were at high school together, he tells me. "Cliff was a year older than me. I was living in Hayward, the next city over from Castro Valley, and because I was born with blindness and hearing loss I went to Castro Valley High School, because they had a programme for the blind.

Cliff had a friend named Judd, a guitarist, who went to the same high school, Doug continues. We used to jam all night, it was really fun. We had a good camaraderie because Cliff was a bass player and I was a drummer. He was a very mellow, down-to-earth person. Everybody I talked to loved him.

Doug visited the Burtons’ house often. Cliff and his family lived in an apartment on Stanton Avenue in Castro Valley. They had a driveway where you parked, and then you walked up to their apartment, which was in the left-hand side, right at the front. Their living-room window and Cliff ’s bedroom window faced the front. They were a close-knit family. They were quiet and private: his sister Connie was a very down-to-earth person. They had people go bother them there after Metallica had made their name, and I’m sure they had to send them away.

From the very beginning, Cliff excelled at school, remembers Doug. He was a very good student. He wanted to make his parents proud, and I’m very sure he did. I’d see him between classes, and he’d be sitting on the little brick wall next to a tree reading his classical music books, just studying. I used to find him doing that a lot. He was very studious with music, because that was what he loved.

No one familiar with the highly literate spin that Cliff put on his later music with Metallica will be surprised to hear that reading was one of his early passions.