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Metallica · S1 E4
Cliff 'Em All
Cliff Burton joins from the band Trauma, and Metallica moves from LA to San Francisco
A club in San Francisco, 1982. Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield watch a bassist from a band called Trauma take a solo, and by the time he's done, they know they'll do whatever it takes to get him.
"Wherever I May Roam" (Metallica, 1991). A song about belonging nowhere and everywhere at once. Cliff Burton told Metallica he'd join on one condition: the entire band had to leave LA and move to San Francisco. They did. This is what happens when you uproot everything for the right person.
“Cliff was the most musically educated of all of us. He studied music theory, classical, Bach. He was on another level.”
— James Hetfield, VH1 Behind the Music, 1998
The Bassist
Cliff Burton plays bass like nobody in thrash metal. He runs the instrument through a wah pedal and a distortion box, creating a sound so aggressive and melodic that the bass becomes a lead instrument. He's from Castro Valley, east of San Francisco, and he's been playing with a ferocious intensity ever since his older brother Scott died when Cliff was 13.
Sources
Joel McIver, "Justice for All"
VH1 Behind the Music
Cliff Burton biography
El Cerrito, California
The house on Carlson Boulevard in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley, where Metallica set up after Cliff Burton's ultimatum forced the entire band to leave Los Angeles.
TAP TO REVEAL: What was Cliff Burton's one condition for joining Metallica?
Wherever I May Roam, Metallica (1991)
The song opens with a sitar-like drone before the heaviest riff on the Black Album crashes in. James built the lyrics around the idea of having no fixed home, no roots, just the road. Listen for how the arrangement keeps shifting between quiet passages and crushing downtuned sections. The song was designed to make you feel physically displaced, which is exactly what Cliff made the entire band feel when he said "move or I'm out."
Sources
Rolling Stone
Classic Albums documentary
Cliff Burton
(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth, Metallica
From Kill 'Em All (1983). A solo bass piece by Cliff Burton, unaccompanied for the first two minutes, using wah and distortion to make a bass guitar sound like a symphony of feedback. No other thrash band put a bass solo on their debut album. This is four minutes of proof that Cliff Burton was not a normal bassist.
(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth, Metallica (1983)
This is an instrumental, so the "lyrics" are really just a bass speaking. Cliff's wah pedal becomes a voice, and the piece builds from solo exploration into full-band thrash. No words needed.
What band was Cliff Burton playing in when Metallica first saw him perform?
Cliff is in, the band is in San Francisco, and there's only one problem left: Dave Mustaine. Next: a Greyhound bus to New York, a firing nobody sees coming, and a phone call to a guitarist in Exodus named Kirk Hammett.
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