Fans and friends gather to celebrate Cliff Burton Day on what would have been Metallica bass icon’s 61st birthday
(Image credit: Photo by Ross Marino/Getty Images)
Late Metallica bassist Cliff Burton’s life was celebrated with a special event on what would have been his 61st birthday.
February 10 was first dubbed Cliff Burton Day in 2018 by Castro Valley and Alameda County in California, where Burton grew up, following a fan petition.
The sixth annual Cliff Burton Day celebration was held yesterday and the full three-hour event can now be viewed below.
The livestreamed event included guest appearances from Cliff’s sister Connie Burton, Lou Martin, Flemming Rasmussen of Sweet Silence Studios, Mike Overton of Trauma and Raven’s John Gallagher.
Guests shared their memories of Burton, who was tragically killed when Metallica’s tour bus crashed in Sweden on September 27, 1986. He was just 24.
Last year, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett recalled his fallen friend. He said: “I don’t know if he knew somehow that his time was limited, but he really lived it like it was his last day, because he just wouldn’t settle for anything other than what he believed in.
“And that taught me a lot. To this day there are situations that I’m going through, and I can just picture Cliff saying: ‘What’s real to you? What really matters?’ And he would go through a bunch of points that didn’t really matter.
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“He would name them off, and at the end of each one he’d say: ‘I don’t give a fuck!’ He was a very, very strong guy. Stubborn at times, and because of that he and I would clash sometimes. But we really were just bros, and he was a big influence on all of us.”
This week a new Cliff Burton action figure was announced by San Francisco pop-culture design house Super7 as part of its ‘Ultimates!’ range. A portion of the profits from the figure will be donated to the Cliff Burton Music Scholarship Fund.
Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock’n’roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.
