The song that made Metallica choose Cliff Burton
From day one, the crux of any good Metallica song originated from James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Although each band member had put their own stamp on the music, Hetfield’s riffs combined with Ulrich’s view of the big picture helped shape modern metal into the heavy state it’s in these days. When the band were pumping out riffs in the metal underground, though, Cliff Burton was just as integral to the band.
During the first handful of Metallica shows, bass duties were traditionally carried by original bassist Ron McGovny. While McGovny had played on the band’s demo No Life Til Leather, it didn’t take him long to step away, not liking the constant rock and roll mentality the rest of the group brought to their live shows and partying.
In search of a new bass player, Ulrich got a tip from Metal Blade founder Brian Slagel to check out a band called Trauma playing in the LA area. Though the group already had a solid foundation, Burton’s massive bass solo in the middle of the set won Hetfield and Ulrich instantly.
When talking about first seeing him playing, Hetfield was shell-shocked to learn that Burton was even a bassist, saying, “We look onstage, and there’s this wild solo going on. There’s a mop of red hair going nuts. It was a wah sound, and I thought, ‘Man, that guitar is heavy’. Then I started looking closer and counting the strings on it and said, ‘Dude, that’s a bass’”.
What Burton played that night would become the instrumental ‘Anaesthesia (Pulling Teeth)’ on their first album, Kill Em All. Although Burton would have been happy to join the band at the time, he would only leave his original group under one condition.
Since the band was stationed in Los Angeles, Burton wanted them to move closer to his home in San Francisco, which the band welcomed with open arms. Having been competing with the various hair metal groups operating out of LA, Metallica’s brand of in-your-face heavy metal was miles above what everyone else was doing at the time.
Burton didn’t just bring technical chops to Metallica, either. Before joining the band, he had already started putting together riffs that would become essential to Metallica, dreaming up the bass figure to ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ while playing in his teenage metal band Agents of Misfortune.
Being an avid classical music fan, Burton also left his stamp on the band in terms of musical harmony, with Ulrich recalling, “The whole way that me and James write songs together, I mean, that was shaped when Cliff was in the band, and was very much shaped around Cliff’s musical input; the way he taught us about harmonies and melodies and that kind of stuff”.
While Burton’s love of harmony was blossoming during the making of Master of Puppets, everything grounded to a halt when he died on the road after a tragic bus accident in Sweden. Though there are only a handful of mainline Metallica songs that Burton played on, those tracks have left an indelible mark on how modern metal bassists approach the instrument.