Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [134]
Looking back now, Marsha says she is grateful she had the chance to spend a bit of time with Cliff in England just before he died: ‘Not knowing that would be our goodbye, it was such a lovely afternoon we spent together that I felt somehow comforted by it when he did go.’ That had been in London, the day after the Hammersmith Odeon show with Anthrax. ‘It was a day off and so we all had gone out to Carnaby Street. He had a [skull] ring that he had being made at [the specialist jewellery store] The Great Frog. So we went over there and he picked up his ring and we just went out and had lunch and sat and just caught up. He was always respectful, I think, of what Jonny and I had taken from our lives to give them that time. We just sat and reminisced about the old days when they lived in the house and the things that had been done and then of course we parted ways and Jon and I got on a plane and came back to the States.’ The memory of receiving the dreadful early-hours phone call from Tony Ingenere still makes her shudder: ‘That was just devastating beyond our wildest dreams that [Cliff] of all of them – that warm, settled soul – should be the one who lost his life in that episode.’
There was a special Cliff Burton Tribute section in the following week’s issue of Kerrang!, in which several condolence messages were also placed, including one from Music for Nations, a single white page with Cliff’s name and date of birth and death inscribed on it and, most strikingly, a black double-page spread from Jonny and Marsha that read simply: ‘The Ultimate Musician, The Ultimate Headbanger, The Ultimate Loss, A Friend Forever’. There were also some touchingly light-hearted contributions, notably one from Anthrax: ‘Bell-Bottoms Rule!! Laugh it up, We Miss You’.
Gem Howard remembers: ‘I had a late holiday that year. I’d been gearing up for the UK dates then when they were over I left the following Saturday for a few days in Cornwall, thinking: they’re off to Europe now; they won’t need me again this tour. Then on the Wednesday morning I bought a copy of Sounds and it was on the front page. I got a hell of a shock. Then I called the office and that’s when I heard what had happened. It was the first Metallica European tour I hadn’t been the tour manager on and, yes, I could have been on that bus with them. But I don’t do any of that “if only I’d been there it might have been different” stuff, because I don’t believe in it. It was an accident, accidents happen. It was just one of those things. I do remember going straight to the pub, though, and drowning my sorrows. Cliff was such a huge part of who Metallica were as a band, it seemed inconceivable he had gone. It wasn’t just about his bass-playing. I sat there thinking of the times Cliff would be in the front seat of the van while I was driving, he’d be pounding away on the dashboard one moment listening to The Misfits, the next minute he’d be playing “Homeward Bound” by Simon & Garfunkel, the whole band singing along.’
There was a memorial service back in San Francisco during the first week of October, at which ‘Orion’ was played. His funeral was held on Tuesday 7 October, at Chapel of the Valley in Castro Valley, where he had lived with his folks most of his life. As well as Cliff’s immediate family, his girlfriend Corinne and best pals Jim Martin and David Di Donato were there, along with the rest of Metallica, plus Bobby Schneider and key members of the American crew, and Peter Mensch, who had flown in especially. Other mourners included all of Exodus, Trauma, Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin, and others who knew Cliff well. After Cliff’s coffin had been cremated