Cliff Burton would have been 50 today (friday 10)

I wonder how Metallica would've turned out if he hadn't died?
I wasn't old enough/into music to know who he was or knew he died or anything at the time but i know some ilxors were. How did you find out and how did you feel?

I saw him play live, when Metallica was opening for Ozzy. (Ultimate Sin tour.) I remember they had to play right at the front of the fucking stage because Ozzy's stagecraft shit took up so much space behind them. Nevertheless, they killed Ozzy in every possible way, so that no one could have any respect left for that fool and his pyrotechnic thrones.

I remember some stoner at school telling me that Cliff died, but not believing him because MTV hadn't said anything about it. He was basically the older brother of everyone I knew.

One day after work at the local Shoney's where I toiled over a hot grill and breakfast bar, I went with a friend over to another friend's house. That guy was Bill.

Bill was an underground metal guy in the mid '80s but he was so very atypical - he wore Vans and preppy colorful shirts. He was an interesting dude who, while we were all working menial jobs in High School, would just stay at home and play with his computer. He had a BBS I dialed into a few times in the early '90s. Of course, after spending his HS years being a lazy shit (and once stabbing a friend because, as he put it, "I wanted to see what would happen") he wound up making a fortune working in computers...

Anyway, we go to Bill's house. For whatever reason, he doesn't let us in or come out to hang. He just speaks to us at like one in the morning from his window. He didn't even open it nor could we see him - we were tlking to the disembodied voice of Bill.

It was that disembodied voice that informed us that he just heard on MTV that Cliff Burton had died.

We were all more than a little bummed. I had never seen Metallica at that point live (I didn't start seeing shows until way later than I would have liked) and I knew that I missed something and someone special.

When Metallica started to suck, I used to wish that Cliff would come back and kick their asses. I still do wonder how different the band would have been had that bus never landed on him.

His birthday is always sign to me that it's International Dress Like Cliff Burton Day. The only metal I liked was Maiden for years until I saw footage of Cliff playing the bass hook to For Whom The Bell Tolls, which opened my ears to so much stuff.

SunnO))) have a song about Cliff Burton.

RIP

Mr Veg grew up a diehard Metallica fan, and has the story of him and his 2 friends hearing about Cliff & getting wasted. And he remembers at some point in the evening his crazy friend Sal blind stinking drunk, sitting in a corner with a bottle of Jack, beating himself on the head with a frying pan in some weird/stupid drunk approximation of self-flagellation.

All I know for me as a late-adopter, post Cliff fan is that, in going back & learning about him, and listening for his influence, his role was beyond just bass player. He was like some kind of maniacal engine. His songwriting, his playing...it was genius-level, to me. Anaesthesia still blows my mind for his playing. And when you think about what they would have been like without pieces like Orion, let alone without his playing... I mean, you only get one of him. By rights, just off Lightning alone, they should have collapsed without him when he died. That's the spinal cord, fuck, maybe the brain, of your band: gone. But much as I dislike what their music is now, in a way I do like that they were so driven, and so tenacious, as to just find ways to keep going. I like that they still like what they do, even if the newtallica ain't my thing.

tl; dr...sorry

ntl;r