Late METALLICA Bassist CLIFF BURTON: More Previously Unheard Interview Audio Released

June 17, 2010

A longer, never-before-heard edit of an interview with late METALLICA bassist Cliff Burton, conducted by Ken Kitt of Metal Fanzine on January 31, 1984 in Cortland, New York (after METALLICA's show at the Riverboat in Rochester, New York) can be streamed in the Vimeo clip below. (Note: The previously released clip was just over six minutes long.)

On September 27, 1986, METALLICA bassist Cliff Burton lost his life at the age of 24 in a coach crash near Ljungby, Sweden.

Burton's huge talent and achievements were chronicled in book form with the 2009 global publication of "To Live Is To Die: The Life And Death Of Metallica's Cliff Burton", written by U.K.-based author Joel McIver and published by Jawbone Press. The foreword has been provided by Cliff's close friend in METALLICA, Kirk Hammett. Other interviewees who spoke to McIver for this book, many for the first time on the public record, include Cliff's bass teacher Steve Doherty; legendary reporter and photographer Brian Lew; Bay Area headbanger Harald Oimoen, the subject of "The Ballad Of Harald O" by the infamous SPASTIK CHILDREN, in which Cliff played; that band's frontman Fred Cotton; EXODUS founder Gary Holt; the Metal Blade label founder Brian Slagel; photographer Ross Halfin; Cliff's first guitar tech Chuck Martin; METALLICA's first fanclub manager KJ Doughton; "Ride The Lightning" and "Master Of Puppets" producer Flemming Rasmussen; the last reporter to interview Cliff, Jörgen Holmstedt; roadie and ex-METAL CHURCH guitarist John Marshall, who was also in the bus crash which killed Burton; Lennart Wennberg, the photographer at the scene of the crash; and Cliff's girlfriend for the last year of his life, Corinne Lynn.

After Kirk Hammett's foreword, separate introductions are provided by a range of musicians influenced by Burton, including Mikael Åkerfeldt (OPETH),Alex Webster (CANNIBAL CORPSE),Alex Skolnick (TESTAMENT),Dave Ellefson (F5/ex-MEGADETH) and a host of other musicians and writers.

A two-minute video clip of the September 30, 2006 unveiling of the unveiling of a memorial stone dedicated to Cliff Burton at the Gyllene Rasten restaurant/bar in Dörarp (outside Ljungby),Sweden can be viewed below. It was on September 27, 1986 — more than 20 years earlier — that Burton died in a tragic bus accident in Sweden, just over the road from where Gyllene Rasten is located.

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