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Cliff Burton Hype

#21
You have to put the Cliff thing in context - at the time (with the possible exception of Billy Sheehan and Geddy Lee, who were more in the "hard rock" camp), he was the only metal bassist playing like that, with that level of chops, and with that degree of musicality. In 1984, 99.9% of all rock bassists pedalled the root and nothing more.

Cliff brought his NWOBHM and proto-punk influences, mixed them with a good dose of influence from his bass heroes - Geddy, Stanley Clarke, Lemmy and Jaco - and came up with his own thing that, at the time, hadn't been done before.

He also brought a considerable knowledge of classical harmony to the band - all the more orchestrated and harmonised stuff that started to appear on Ride The Lightning was all down to Cliff. I've heard Hetfield say in an interview that Cliff taught him and Hammett how to write harmony parts, and introduced them to classical music. Of course, this aspect of Metallica's style has been aped by many, many other bands over the years, and Cliff was the one who brought it into Metallica's repertoire.

Have there been better metal bassists since Cliff? Sure. But at the time, he was groundbreaking.
 
#25
I think his influence on the music of Metallica was enormous. As far as his solos, they are fun - heavy on the Baroque style with overdriven amps and a wah wah pedal. I've heard Yo Yo Ma do the same thing on a cello. As I grew up with that stuff (only classical music in my house, I had to listen to my rock and roll covertly), I was never that impressed. I love Cliff more for his musicality then his virtuosity. And I dare say that Metallica was never the same without him. He was a wonderful MUSICIAN.
 
#28
BELLATOR said:
Maybe they influenced some other thrash bands but I wouldn't say Metallica influenced death metal and black metal. I would say Slayer influenced death metal and Venom influenced black metal a lot more than Metallica.
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Sure, I guess you could make that argument.

I wasn't saying that Metallica was the "best" or "most" influential band of all time. Only that they are one of the most influential. Also, I don't think I did, but if I sounded like I was saying that they are the only influence in music for the last 20 years obviously this isn't the case. Lots of good bands influenced other good bands. Its a never ending process.
Sure Slayer and Venom might be more influential to bands following in their particular styles. However, I stand by the statement that you would be hard pressed to find a band in those styles today that was not either influenced somewhat by Metallica or a band Metallica had influenced. The same can be said of many if not all types of metal or hard rock today.

This just can't be said of Slayer or Venom. I'm not dissing them in any way, they just don't have the far reaching appeal.
 
#30
Why are you asking should be the main question, hell his playing is still above average then most metal and rock nowadays. Also consider the fact he died young (24 I think) if he lived on imagine how much his skill would improve, he didn't hit his prime yet.

I find it BS that over here people always BS about how great jazz fusion players are and never question their hype but people always seem to want to question rock and metal players "oh he's not that great" "I kinda grew out of him" etc..........

I mean I did the same exact thread about Jaco (yes Jaco and for the record I do think he's an awesome player but sometimes get boring) and I got my head blown off for it by other users.

Seriously just insert one of those widely hyped slap or jazz fusion artists in a thread like this and watch all the crap you'll get for it.
 
#31
It's funny - I just heard "Master of Puppets" on the radio, and was reminded of how interesting Cliff's lines were. He served the songs very well - doubling when called for, and providing dark/twisting counter melodies when called for. "Pulling teeth" - not my thing, but it's silly to deny that his contributions to early (and IMHO the best) Metallica were tremendous. It's sad that he died so young - who knows what else he could have done?

Cheers,

Edward
 
#32
im surprised nobody mentioned Orion, which was largely his composition, as compared to Ride the Lightning from when Dave Mustaine did most of the work.



it starts out all thrashy, distorted and somehwat slow but then it picks up after the little bass interlude at the 4 minute mark. theres a distorted bass solo near the end.

i agree with everything RustyChainsaw said, and i am not that much of a cliff burton fan, yea hes alright but hes not the best.
 
#35
AlphaMale said:
Someone please explain to me how he was a shredder.
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Metallica is a great band. Great songs, cutting edge, history-making, etc. And stuff. Cliff Burton was part of all that. For that, he was a very important artist.

But he was far from a "shredder."

I love everything off of "Kill 'Em All" except for "Pulling Teeth." I have always hated that, even when I was 14, trying to learn bass, playing in hard rock bands. Basically, all he did was plug his bass into the worst-sounding guitar distortion pedal that was available at the time, and proceed to play arpeggios, diatonically.

It was neither difficult nor creative.

As far as tightness, groove, and maturity goes, the best thing ever to happen to Metallica was Rob Trujillo.
 
#37
CounterpointFTW said:
im surprised nobody mentioned Orion, which was largely his composition, as compared to Ride the Lightning from when Dave Mustaine did most of the work.



it starts out all thrashy, distorted and somehwat slow but then it picks up after the little bass interlude at the 4 minute mark. theres a distorted bass solo near the end.

i agree with everything RustyChainsaw said, and i am not that much of a cliff burton fan, yea hes alright but hes not the best.
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Not to mention the bass intro on it is pretty cool. Or was that Damage Inc. Or both?

And I agree with you, I respect Cliff's work, but I'm not really that big of a fan. I'm more of a Newsted fan, he's the one who really got me into bass and all.
 
#38
Well, nobody lives up to their hype, since that is the nature of hype to be ********. But Cliff embodied the archetype of the metal bass god. Demonically inspired anti-hero. I find it similar to the kind of discussion you get about McCartney. You can always find more sophicsticated, proficient players, but for taste, style, and energy level, they are among the highest examples of what they do.
 
#39
MyUsernameHere said:
I wasn't saying that Metallica was the "best" or "most" influential band of all time. Only that they are one of the most influential. Also, I don't think I did, but if I sounded like I was saying that they are the only influence in music for the last 20 years obviously this isn't the case. Lots of good bands influenced other good bands. Its a never ending process.
Sure Slayer and Venom might be more influential to bands following in their particular styles. However, I stand by the statement that you would be hard pressed to find a band in those styles today that was not either influenced somewhat by Metallica or a band Metallica had influenced. The same can be said of many if not all types of metal or hard rock today.

This just can't be said of Slayer or Venom. I'm not dissing them in any way, they just don't have the far reaching appeal.
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You said that every thrash, black, and death metal band has been influenced by Metallica or a band influenced by Metallica though. That is not true. You could only say a statement like that about Black Sabbath. They have influenced all these styles of metal whereas Metallica has influenced more rock bands. I'm not a fan of Slayer or Venom but they are far more influential because they are the reason you have death metal and black metal in the first place. This cannot be said of Metallica. Metallica is only an influence in thrash, black, and death metal in that these bands produced more extreme music than Metallica because they decided to sell out. The bottom line is Metallica just did not and does not have an influence on a lot of black and death metal bands. That's what I was getting at. If you ask black or death metal bands, or read or listen to interviews, you'll find that Metallica is not on their list of influences.
 
#40
BELLATOR said:
You said that every thrash, black, and death metal band has been influenced by Metallica or a band influenced by Metallica though. That is not true. You could only say a statement like that about Black Sabbath. They have influenced all these styles of metal whereas Metallica has influenced more rock bands. I'm not a fan of Slayer or Venom but they are far more influential because they are the reason you have death metal and black metal in the first place. This cannot be said of Metallica. Metallica is only an influence in thrash, black, and death metal in that these bands produced more extreme music than Metallica because they decided to sell out. The bottom line is Metallica just did not and does not have an influence on a lot of black and death metal bands. That's what I was getting at. If you ask black or death metal bands, or read or listen to interviews, you'll find that Metallica is not on their list of influences.
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Arggg...When I said, "You could make this argument," in response to your statement I guess I should have been more specific and said, "I agree with you that this argument could be made and have some validity." Mine was a generalized statement about Metallica's influence on rock music as a whole. I used the examples of thrash metal, death metal, etc (never said anything about black metal specifically in my original post) as illustrations of this point. However, your statement that "these bands produced more extreme music than Metallica because they decided to sell out" kind of makes my point for me. If they weren't influenced by what Metallica did, what were they responding to?

You might be misunderstanding what I meant by the word "influenced." I didn't mean that everyone playing metal after Metallica was born liked them and wanted to play like them. I meant it in the literal sense. Even if a band tried to write music that "built on" or "improved" what they were doing because they found Metallica lacking in some way, one can still say they were influenced by them.

I think we're getting sidetracked from what the OP originally asked. He wanted to know why people thought Burton was "hyped." If I concede your point that Metallica didn't influence EVERY band in every genera of hard rock (which I'm willing to do since I didn't really start posting in order to defend Metallica's place in music history) its still hard to argue that he was a major part of a band that influenced LOTS of other bands and thus deserves props.

If you consider what I say completely wrong. More power to you. I'm not a music history scholar. I am not, nor did I ever argue that Metallica should be considered more important than (or more influential than) any other specific band out there in every situation--only that they were important. And in the end, my opinion really doesn't matter.
 

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