“Nothing happened unless Cliff said, ‘Yes’”: Master of Puppets producer on Cliff Burton’s influence on his Metallica bandmates
When Cliff Burton died as a result of Metallica’s 1986 bus crash, the band didn’t just lose a bassist – they lost their unofficial leader. Prior to frontman James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich becoming stepping up to the place to run the show, the young band looked to their eldest member as a guiding light.
In a new interview with Metal Hammer, producer Flemming Rasmussen recalls the influence Burton had on his younger bandmates. While working alongside the band between 1984 and 1988 for a trio of records, he reveals that Burton always had the final say on 1984’s Ride The Lightning and 1986’s Master Of Puppets. “Lars and James were the ones out there promoting the band, but Cliff was the oldest, and the one with a musical education, so they leaned on him to get shit done,” he explains.
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While Rasmussen acknowledges that Hetfield and Ulrich tend to take the reigns nowadays, he explains that that certainly wasn’t the case back then. “The thing about Lars and James being the leaders of the band didn’t emerge until later,” he says. “At that point it was a four-piece unit [and] Clifton was important to the structure of the band.”
“He took part in all of the decisive processes,” the producer adds. “Nothing really happened in Metallica unless Cliff nodded ‘yes.’”
Despite Rasmussen’s recollections, drummer Ulrich has gone on record admitting that him and Hetfield didn’t immediately gel with Clifton’s creative lead. When Burton joined Metallica in 1982, the band were dubious to follow his advice.
In an archival interview with Classic Rock magazine, Ulrich said: “Cliff had been in the band for a few years and he brought in a lot of harmonies and melodies [for Master of Puppets]. It took a little while for James and I to open up to some of Cliff’s ideas about harmony and melody, because we’d never played stuff like that before.”
Thanks to Burton, the band began to push themselves to try more intricate, exciting riffs and structures. “After a while we got it and that’s when we started experimenting more,” he explained.
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