James Hetfield Still Asks For Cliff Burton’s Help To Write Metallica Lyrics

During a recent episode of The Metallica Report, frontman James Hetfield was asked if he feels the influence of the band’s late bassist Cliff Burton in his writing.

“Absolutely. Cliff still lives in all of us,” the frontman responded. “The way he lives in me is I get to channel, you know, ‘Cliff, what would be really cool right here?’ And I do — I do hold him in such high regard that I ask for his help still. And I challenge myself, ‘Would Cliff like this?’ That, to me, is a pretty high standard. We already have high standards for ourselves, but you know, if I could impress Cliff, it was a good day.”

Burton’s first replacement was Jason Newsted. He stayed in the lineup until 2001. Robert Trujillo joined in 2003 and has been with Metallica ever since.

“Cliff was amazing for Metallica. His ideas, his presence, and where he was taking the bass and taking metal, were so special,” the current bassist said of Burton in a different interview. “And his stage presence – he was such a physical player. He played what he felt, and that was the bottom line. His approach was, ‘I’m gonna play what I feel, and if you don’t like it, screw you!’”

“He used to ask Kirk to show him Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar solos so he could play them on bass, and not many bass guitar players were doing that back then. I thought that was so cool. Cliff was a force on a lot of different levels,” Trujillo added.

Burton was asked to join Metallica in 1982 after the band saw him perform with his band at the time, Trauma. The bassist did not want to move to Los Angeles, as Metallica was based there, so the band moved to the San Francisco area to get him on board.

Burton played on Metallica’s first three studio albums — ‘Kill ‘Em All,’ ‘Ride the Lightning,’ and ‘Master of Puppets’ — and co-wrote classic songs like ‘Ride the Lightning,’ ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ ‘Fade to Black,’ ‘Creeping Death’, and ‘Master of Puppets’. His life ended at the age of 24 in a tour bus crash on September 27, 1986, in Sweden.