'Cliff called it 'floppy-finger technique' and said he had it, too. 'Geezer Butler's right-hand technique involved just hitting the strings with your fingers,' Burton's Metallica bandmate Kirk Hammett remembered in 2010.

“Some Faith No More and Metallica songs you are familiar with were germinated during those sessions,” Martin recalled. He found inspiration in anyone from Bach to Stanley Clarke to Lemmy Kilmister, who inspired Burton to pick up a Rickenbacker, on which he installed a Stratocaster pickup to get his inimitable tone. Burton joined his first high school band, EZ Street, with longtime friend and guitarist Jim Martin, who'd go on to play with Faith No More. 'And that focus was to be the best musician he could be.'Ĭliff took lessons, but his parents said he quickly outgrew his teachers. 'He had a single focus from the time that my brother Scott died,' Connie added. And then it would be, 'Come into my bedroom and talk to me, I need to practice.' He'd come out, but he'd be carrying his bass. 'Cliff would practice anywhere from six to eight hours a day in his bedroom,' his sister Connie remembered in the 2018 film The Salvation Kingdom, a documentary she made about her brother. 'If you wanted to talk to him, you had to go into his room. 'He said to a couple of people, 'I'm gonna be the best bassist for my brother,'' his mother later remembered.īuilding on theory learned in childhood piano lessons and a newfound appreciation for heavier low-enders like Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler and Rush's Geddy Lee, Burton devoted himself to his new instrument. 'Probably three or four months after Scott died, Cliff came to Jan and me and said, 'Mom and Dad, I want to learn to play the bass,'' Ray Burton said in 2019, recalling that his son wanted to learn the Barney Miller theme. When Burton was 13, his 16-year-old brother Scott died of a cerebral aneurysm. He didn't discuss his sibling's death much, but friends and family noticed a focused interest in music shortly afterward. One day he damaged his right pinky while trying to cut a carp he'd caught, severing a tendon that eventually led to a distinct style of playing that would make him one of metal's most beloved bassists. Like his parents, Cliff loved classical music and was active outside of school, playing little league baseball and immersing himself in the outdoors, hunting and fishing with a homemade spear. 'He was a very kind, very gentle kid, but he was always his own person.' 'He was a big, big reader, and he was very bright,' his mother recalled. Cliff Burton attended the junior high school where his mother taught and was remembered as an introverted kid who preferred the company of a good book or record.

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