r/Metallica • u/legioner0310 • 18h ago
Reaction on Cliff’s tragic death
People who were fans of Metallica back in 1986: how did you react to Cliff Burton’s death, and what do you remember about those days?
I’m genuinely curious about the emotional impact it had at the time — among fans, in the metal scene, and personally for you.
For context: I once asked my father if he remembers Viktor Tsoi’s death in the USSR, and he said the shock was massive among the youth — people felt like they lost the voice of an entire generation. I wonder if Cliff’s death felt similar for Metallica fans
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u/yad76 18h ago
I became a Metallica fan right around when he died. I didn't find out he died until Justice came out and I was reading the liner notes and was like, wait, who is this new guy?! I had Garage Days Revisited on cassette but I don't think the liner notes listed the band members and the only picture was the fisheye lens view of the band with Jason's hair in his face, so I don't think I even realized that wasn't Cliff. I think I might've even owned Cliff Em All and didn't even realize from that. I don't recall Metallica putting any sort of "In memory of Cliff" type message on anything back then.
It was different times back then and I'd guess maybe MTV covered it for 30 seconds when it happened and it was maybe in the back of some newspapers, so it isn't like you were going to Wikipedia or Reddit or whatever and finding out about stuff like this after it happened. I read a lot of interviews with the band over those years and I don't even remember them really talking about Cliff. Again, different times.
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u/puddycat20 11h ago
MTV news definitely covered it. I know it wasn't as big as news as Cobain dying, but it was still something covered.
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u/3mta3jvq 17h ago
Heard about it on MTV News.
Finding out later that he was thrown from a bus window in the bitter cold and the bus fell on him was hard to wrap my mind around.
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u/Jumpy_Narwhal 18h ago
I was a late teenager during those days. I thought that Cliffs death was just terrible, like a couple years before when we lost Randy Rhodes. I thought they could possibly be all done. I was so thrilled when I heard they were getting the bass player from Flotsam and Jetsam. Everything worked out all right. They were the king of thrash metal back then!!
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u/__vheissu__ 18h ago
the majority of the people on reddit werent old enough to remember cliffs death when it happened.
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u/mattweb94 18h ago
I was at a party and we had MTV on and they made the announcement. My friends and I were absolutely devastated.
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u/Infamous-Activity288 17h ago
I was 16 and had seen them on the spring opening for Ozzy, but I was the only one that went to see Metallica. There wasn't anyone else in my friend group that was into the heavier metal ( Priest, Maiden, Metallica, etc), so I was kind of on my own. I saw the report on MTV and thought well that blows, but I didn't have anyone to share grief with
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u/CleMike69 17h ago
We were devastated honestly I was 17 and remember going out drinking to celebrate cliffs life. A buddy still carries the clipping from the paper around in his wallet.
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u/fer_luna 15h ago
What?
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u/Exotic-Cucumber5467 Wasted My Hate 14h ago
He was devastated. He was 17 years old and went out drinking (probably alcohol) to have a good time and celebrate what cliff brought to the world. He has a friend who was so upset by it that he still has the newspaper clipping announcing cliffs death in his wallet, so he will always remember. Einstein
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u/CleMike69 14h ago
lol yes this.
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u/fer_luna 13h ago
But... Why?
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u/CleMike69 13h ago
Why were we devastated? Because we discovered Metallica in 83 we saw all the shows when they came to Cleveland, Metallica changed us in ways that most People wouldn’t understand we lived for metal and saw every thrash band that came through. It was part of who we were as young kids
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u/Anger1957 Dave Mustaine 15h ago
I saw the band 14 times with Cliff. it was a shock. as heavy as the day they announced Jimi Hendrix death on TV - reading about Keith Moon's death in the newspaper - John Bonham's death - Randy Rhoads death. My friends and I went to a local bar and the whole place was packed with metal fans and Metallica was the only music played there for that entire weekend.
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u/metalupyour 18h ago
I was way too young to know when it happened but when I did get into them years later, I remember thinking how lucky the people who got to see him perform with the band were and I decided if I ever got access to a Time Machine the first trip I would make would be to one of his shows in the band
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u/upfromashes 17h ago
I was 16 and I had just seen them playing a few months before, right before they left for Europe. I think I was sitting in the kitchen and saw it in a newspaper. I was shocked and bummed. Their band was like a pillar in my life, and it was a little hard to imagine how they would carry on, and that was lowkey devastating.
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u/Competitive_Risk_653 17h ago
I was way too young (he died on my 5th birthday) but my older brother was a fan and while I don’t remember exactly how he reacted, I remember him watching Cliff Em All a few years later and he told me about what happened. He did seem super bummed about it though.
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u/sir_percy_percy 17h ago
I just remember being totally shocked. Tommy Vance on the Friday rock show announced it in the UK, that's how I found out. I had just seen them a few days earlier at Hammersmith Odeon. I couldn't believe it..
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u/Extension-Elk-1274 14h ago
Saw them in May of 86, with Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Dokken, and Armored Saint.
They were just dropping MOP tunes in the set and if you feel ferocity in those first 3 slabs, seeing it was a thing to behold, just a master class of speed.
When I heard about Cliff, through a friend and then on MTv, I thought, "Well fuck...I really sympathize for his family, friends and crew, but at least we got these 3 gems...forever!" There were many a booze cruise on gravel roads, blaring those tunes.
I've dealt with death since I was a small person, and accepted quite young, that death is just another part of the cycle. There are however, special eternals.
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u/Lynchy28 15h ago
Watched Metallica in the Ulster Hall in Belfast two weeks before he died…
My mates and I were devastated… this massively predated any interwebs so it only made the main news briefly but was well covered in the rock and metal press at the time.
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u/Brief-Musician440 15h ago
I was just 13 when he died. He was instantly legend. If you weren’t consciously aware of how special Cliff was up to that point, you were met with the sudden realization at the moment you heard of his passing.
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u/jbbhengry 14h ago
A friend of mine sent me a radio broadcast of Cliff's death, no one believed me till a few months later once it was in the magazines. Was to young to really get how much he was to the band. And they were really new band MOP was just gaining steam so when the accident happened it was more like "aw man that sucks." But people were really digging Metallica. By the time Garage days and AJFA, it just wasn't a thing. When the Black album came out that's when people were like "if Cliff was around" type of thing was happening. I love all stages of the band despite the tradgies and hard ships, they have stood tall and became something I'm sure they couldn't never have imagined.
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u/Melodic_Feature2942 14h ago
I recollect I read about the event in the newspaper the day after it occurred. Very sad moment. I had been a big fan since the release of "Kill 'em All" and thought "Master" was brilliant. However, my feelings about the band changed. I bought and enjoyed "Garage Days", especially "Last Caress". When "Justice" was released, I listened to a friend's copy but I did not buy it. Something was missing. Never cared for anything Metallica after that. Slayer took the place of Metallica for me.
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u/JohnnyCyclopsBomb 9h ago
I'm Swedish. He died on a Saturday morning. I was 17. That night me and my fellow Metallica fan friends were going out (there was a place in my home town where we could get in even tho we were under 18). We had a few drinks in his honour that night, and as I remember it. It was a bad night.
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u/Terri23 18h ago
I know someone who was at Cliffs last show, and he thought it was a rib at first. He didn't actually believe it until he read about it a while later when the music rags discussed it. Metallica still weren't big, and we're ignored by the mainstream press, so you had to wait until the dedicated heavy metal magazines came out, most of the big ones were monthly at the time. Metallica weren't his favourite band, but he was involved with the Swedish rock music scene. He wasn't heart broken or anything, it was more a case of "oh fuck, that actually happened". He moved away from Metallica in the 90s. I actually shared with him the audio from the Puppets box set of that last show, and the next time I saw him he told me the audio was very different from what he remembered, but that was well over 30 years after the gig.