Everything by Glen Danzig, which is The Misfits or Samhain, all of his shit. Q: How about your top five albums? This is kind of lame.ĬLIFF: Uhhh. well, everything Thin Lizzy did has had an influence.ĬLIFF: Jimi Hendrix, Ulrich Roth, Schenker to a degree, Tony Iommi-they also had an influence. Also, certain guitar players had an influence. Lemmy also had an influence in the way he uses distortion. Q: Till you'd already developed your own style?ĬLIFF: Yeah. well, first off, with bass playing it would be Geddy Lee, Geezer Butler, Stanley Clarke.ĬLIFF: Um, no, I never really heard him until it was like.

Then I saw Trauma and I thought, 'Well, I might as well do that.' Didn't have anything better to do.ĬLIFF: My influences would be. And that slowly but surely disintegrated. But I was with them for a while, for a few years. I used to jam around with some local friends, then I got together with these guys who called themselves EZ Street, named after a strip joint in San Mateo.ĬLIFF: Oh, it was all kinds of weird shit. This interview was conducted in February of '86 in James and Lars' old pad, the 'Metallimansion,' preceding a typically drunken night at the tiny Ruthie's Inn in Berkeley, California, and was later transcribed by Cliff's girlfriend, Corinne Lynn.ĬLIFF: I started playing in 1976. Cliff rarely did interviews, preferring to let James and Lars handle them. If you never met Cliff, the following hopefully will give you an insight into the kind of person he was.

Cliff was also very modest and fiercely loyal to his pals, fans and family. His easygoing, laid-back offstage demeanor contrasted greatly with his wild on stage persona. Cliff's awesome musical ability is well known, but his great personality was what made him such a uniquely genuine individual. He is still a major influence on aspiring musicians and metal fans today, as shown by his Top 10 showing in the recent Thrash Metal magazine's 1990 Bassist of the Year poll. Unlike most metal mavens, Cliff had come up with his own bass lines rather than just follow along with the rhythm. Thank God that James, Kirk and Lars were open minded enough to let him go off totally on stuff he wanted to play. He helped bring the bass guitar out of the closet with his unique lead bass playing, which incorporated harmonics, classical fills, heavy distortion and thick wahwah effects: 'Anaesthesia' and 'Orion' are a couple of the best examples of his incredible technique. He had been an important element in Metallica's success by contributing his virtuoso musicianship, streetwise attitude and totally over-the-top stage presence. The heavy metal world was shaken by the tragic loss of Metallica bassist Cliff Burton when their tour bus skidded on ice while the band was on tour in Scandinavia, and Cliff was thrown out the window and killed in 1987.

Published in Thrash Metal (U.S.) and Rock Hard (Germany)Ī rare interview with Metallica's legendary bassist

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