Taking a break from their ongoing M72 World Tour, Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield recently joined a live stream interview on the vocalist’s official YouTube channel. During the chat, the Metallica members got asked about a memory they wished they had caught on camera. So, to answer the question, Hammett said:
“You know, I really wish that the first three or four years of Cliff Burton being in the band was documented more because there’s just not enough footage of him and not enough pictures of him. There’s just not enough of him for people who are coming into Metallica and finding out about Metallica. There’s just not enough information about him. If there’s one thing that I actually have a regret about is not documenting Cliff enough.”
Explaining what he specifically wanted to record, the guitarist went on:
“Cliff was hilarious all the time. Other than music, his other huge things in his life were beer and breakfast. And it was a funny thing, you know. I wish I would have had footage of him getting excited about going to a pub, or whenever he had a plate of food, he’d walk differently. [He’d] walk with a sense of urgency that I would just crack up because it was just so weird to me.”
Then, Hetfield shared more about the late bassist by adding:
“He loved fishing and hammers as well. He would take his Pocket Fisherman on tour and find any little lake, and he carried a hammer in his suitcase. It’s like, ‘What are you doing with that?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know. Just in case.’ He was quite a character, very himself. He was unapologetically Cliff. Yeah, we miss him to this day.”
Cliff Burton passed away when Metallica’s tour bus got into an accident during the ‘Damage, Inc. Tour’ in 1986. His death reportedly triggered Hetfield’s alcohol addiction, causing him to get into rehab around the time. The vocalist later reflected on this period in rehab and how it helped him cope with Burton’s loss.
In a 2016 interview, he said:
“When I was in rehab in 2001, they said, ‘You gotta hang out a couple more weeks because of the grieving. There’s your mom and Cliff, the two people that you have never been able to grieve around. You gotta do some work on it.’ So we did. And I think just by opening up to the memories, just by thinking about him, feeling his presence, that’s how grieving is happening for me over a longer period of time.”
In the video below, you can listen to James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s words about Cliff Burton.
