Birth School Metallica Death - Vol I (10 page)

Metallica’s first invitation to play the city by the Bay came courtesy of Brian Slagel, who had spent the weeks since the release of
Metal Massacre
putting plans in place for an LA metal showcase at the Stone nightclub on Broadway. The band were actually a last-minute addition to the September 18 gig, with Slagel only calling on his friends after Cirith Ungol were forced to drop off the bill, but Ulrich deemed the opportunity to reconnect with old friends in Northern California worthy of the five-hour drive up Interstate 5.

The metal scene in San Francisco had taken on an irresistible momentum since the launch of
Metal Mania
fanzine in August 1981. The city got its own specialist hard rock/heavy metal shop with the opening of the Record Vault on Polk Street at the beginning of 1982. That March, Ron Quintana and his friends Ian Kallen and Howie Klein were granted their own Saturday night metal show,
Rampage Radio
, on the University of San Francisco’s KUSF college radio station; the following month city-centre nightclub the Old Waldorf on 444 Battery Street announced the launch of a new weekly metal night, Metal Mondays. In the weeks that followed, Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Scorpions and Saxon made stops in the city and the number of denim-
and-leather
-clad
adolescents on Broadway began to multiply. It was into this fecund environment that Metallica came on September 18. They arrived at The Stone to find local glam-rockers Hans Naughty onstage … and more than half the audience sitting on the floor with their backs to the band.

San Francisco’s ‘Trues’ had an unambiguous attitude to live shows in their parish. The message for both audiences and local bands such as Exodus, Violation and Blind Illusion alike was simple: go hard or go home. Gigs were violent, chaotic affairs, punctuated by vicious acts of aggression visited upon those whose commitment to the scene was considered by ‘Trues’ such as Rich Burch and Toby Rage to be less than total.

‘A lot of those shows were patrolled by people who were in – for want of a better word – gangs,’ reveals Machine Head front man, and life-long Bay Area resident, Robb Flynn. ‘Exodus had the STB, which stood for Slay Team Berkeley. These were the guys that would walk over people’s heads. They would line up stools at the back of the pit and use these to launch themselves on to the stage. They would run from the back of the room and end up taking out half of the band. Honestly, some of the shows were absolutely crazy. They were terrifying.’

Having been arrested that afternoon on Broadway for drinking alcohol out of open containers, the members of Metallica had a little frustration of their own to work off as they walked on to the stage of The Stone at 10.30 p.m. that evening. But nothing in their short career had prepared the band for the reaction that would greet their set-opener ‘Hit the Lights’. Instantly the room erupted into frenzy, with fans screaming every word of Hetfield’s escapist anthem back into the singer’s face.

‘The sheer intensity was incredible!’ wrote Brian Lew in his review for
Northwest Metal
. ‘Fusing the pile-driving madness of Motörhead and Venom with their own insanity, the band devastated with a non-stop, fast and ultra-furious set of heavy metal.’

‘It was our first encounter with real fans,’ said Hetfield. ‘It was like, these people are here for us, and they like us, and they hate the other bands – and we like that ’cause we hate ’em too.’

‘As soon as we went up there we noticed [that] people [were] there for the music, not for the chicks that were hanging out, not for the scene, not for the bar, it was for the music! They weren’t hanging out at the bar they were at the edge of the stage waiting, for Metallica.’

‘Everyone in San Francisco was wearing Motörhead and Iron Maiden T-shirts,’ recalls Ulrich, ‘where in LA it was about hair and posing. So that was exciting to us. We had maybe 300 kids there, where in LA we couldn’t
give
300 tickets away.’

‘First real great gig,’ the drummer noted in his diary. ‘Real bangers, real fans, real encores. Had a great fuckin’ weekend.’

Exactly one month later, Metallica returned to San Francisco for a Metal Monday show at the Old Waldorf. Also in the city that evening was English music journalist Xavier Russell, in town to file an article for
Kerrang!
on Mötley Crüe, who were supporting local heroes Y&T at the Concord Pavilion. Russell had stopped off at the Record Vault earlier in the week and had fallen into conversation with Ron Quintana, who had handed him a copy of Metallica’s
No Life ’Til Leather
demo.

‘That night, in a drunken haze, I played the tape over and over again, my Sony Walkman literally shaking with my excitement,’ Russell recalls. ‘My first reaction was total shock – this was new; it was like crossing Ted Nugent with Motörhead and then putting it through a blender at 120 mph.’

As Russell arrived at the Old Waldorf on October 18 he was met by Ulrich, who recognised the writer from his byline photograph in the pages of
Kerrang!
As Metallica’s stage time neared, Russell asked his new friend what the gig would be like.

‘Wait and see,’ the Dane replied with a laugh.

‘They were in the middle of the bill, a band called Laaz Rockit
was headlining, and a band called Overdrive was opening, and they were
fantastic
,’ Russell recalls. ‘Mustaine and Hetfield were like two brothers that didn’t get on, each pushing the other out of the way, but it was so exciting. There’s certain bands where the minute you see them, you just know they’re going to go all the way.’

In the early hours of October 19, Russell placed a phone call to his bosses at
Kerrang!

‘In ten years’ time,’ he told them, ‘this will be the biggest band on the planet.’

At the tail end of November, Metallica journeyed up Interstate 5 for their third and fourth Bay Area shows. When they left Los Angeles on the afternoon of November 29, none of the four knew that the weekend would mark the final appearances of their original line-up.

The catalyst for change had been dropped into their already volatile mix one month earlier. Emboldened by the success of his debut
Metal Massacre
show in San Francisco, Brian Slagel had decided to return the compliment by staging a San Francisco metal night in his home town. James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich’s decision to show their faces at the Whisky a Go Go at midnight that evening stemmed purely from a wish to say hello to their old friend. The pair arrived as the band Violation were packing away their gear, and an act named Trauma were positioning their own backline on the stage. Within half an hour, one member of this band had made such an impression upon Hetfield and Ulrich, that the pair agreed that Ron McGovney’s days as Metallica’s four-stringer were numbered

‘We heard this wild solo going on,’ Hetfield recalled, ‘and thought, “I don’t see any guitar player up there.” It turned out it was the bass player … with a wah-wah pedal and this mop of hair … We met him after the show. We said, “We’re in this band,
and we’re looking for a bass player, and we think you’d really fit in. Because you’re a big psycho.”’

‘It literally was one of those Kodak moments where we both looked at one another and said, “Dude, we have to get this guy in Metallica,”’ recalls Ulrich. ‘I’d never seen anybody like him – his look, his mannerisms, his whole vibe. After we’d swapped numbers I started going to work on him immediately.’

Clifford Lee Burton was born in Castro Valley, a region of 60,000 people located in the inland Alameda County some
twenty-five
miles from the bridges and skyscrapers of San Francisco. The third and final child of Jan and Ray Burton – respectively a Californian-born school teacher and a highway engineer born in the state of Tennessee – the youngest member of the Burton family joined first child Scott and only daughter Connie at 21:30 hours on February 10, 1962.

As a child Cliff attended Earl Warren Junior High, the school at which his mother Jan taught children with special needs. Jan Burton recalls her youngest child as ‘always [being] his own person, even when he was an little bitty kid’.

‘I used to say, “All the kids playing outside, why aren’t you out there playing with them?” And he would say, “They’re not playing, they’re just sitting around talking – that’s boring.” Then he’d go in the house and read his books and put on his own music. Even when he was a tiny little kid he would [prefer to] listen to his own music and read.” Indeed, such was the young Burton’s affinity with the printed word that when tested in the third grade the schoolboy registered a reading ability commensurate with students eight years his elder.

With time, however, it would be music that would emerge as the foremost passion in the life of the young Cliff Burton. Initially inspired by his parents’ collection of classical music, soon
enough, like countless young men from Castro Valley to Cape Cod, Burton was held enraptured by the hard rock of Lynyrd Skynrd, Blue Oyster Cult, Ted Nugent and Aerosmith. In this, his formative years in the anonymous suburban sprawl of Northern California were entirely normal.

However, the Burtons’ pleasant if entirely quotidian suburban lives were soon to be punctured by tragedy. On May 19, 1975, Scott Burton was the victim of a cerebral aneurysm; the
sixteen-year
-old was taken to hospital but later died. Needless to say, the effect on the family unit was both searing and immediate; friends of Cliff, the insular and quietly defiant remaining son, observed that although the death of his elder brother affected him in a profound manner, this loss was something about which he rarely spoke. Instead, it seems that the enigmatic
thirteen-year
-old opted to give voice to his grief in the form of actions; actions which, as befits the cliché, spoke louder than words he chose rarely to utter.

Although Burton had begun playing bass guitar – and prior to that piano – before the tragedy that befell his family, it seems that the loss of a sibling served to focus his mind on the task at his fingers. He studied not only the popular bass players of the day – musicians such as Rush’s Geddy Lee and Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler – but also the scales and musical notations heard in Bach and Beethoven, as well as the disciplines of baroque music. As his talents grew, the young player would practise for up to six hours a day, his abilities sufficient to outgrow the tutelage of more than one music teacher.

‘Cliff didn’t take music lessons until he was thirteen, after his brother died,’ recalled his mother. ‘He said to a couple of people, “I’m going to be the best bassist [I can be] for my brother.” We didn’t think he had too much talent at all. We had no idea! We just thought he’d plunk, plunk along, which he did at [the beginning]. It really was not easy for him at first … [but] about six months in
to the lessons, it started to come together. I thought, “This kid’s got real potential.” And I was totally amazed, because none of the kids in our family had any musical talent.’

As with all fledgling musicians, the point is soon reached when the young player wishes to develop his talents with others. Burton’s first band was named EZ Street, a union which also
featured
drummer Dave Donato and guitarist Jim Martin.
Occasionally
the drum stool was manned by Mike ‘Puffy’ Bordin, who alongside Martin would go on to find success with pioneering Bay Area oddballs Faith No More. EZ Street would practise in the hills of Northern California, discovering their sound through the playing of elongated instrumental pieces that owed more to the powerful and hypnotic rhythms of the English cult band Hawkwind than the snappy pop-played-loud anthems beloved of US stadium-botherers Kiss. Away from their instruments, the young musicians dabbled with experimental drugs such as LSD, while Burton himself savoured the flavour of marijuana. But despite such chemically enhanced excursions, elsewhere Burton remained a dependable American adolescent. If his band mates in EZ Street gathered to listen to music in the Burton family home, they did so at a volume considerate of Cliff’s sleeping family. As Jim Martin later recalled, ‘We’d rock out, but real quietly.’ At other times the group would return to the Burton family home from fishing trips at four in the morning, whereupon Cliff would prepare for the party a huge cooking pot of Mexican food, chiding Donato for a loud voice which occasionally rose to a pitch capable of waking the house’s sleeping residents.