public face and the resumption of Metallica’s medium-term plans as speedily as possible. This, after all, was an absolutely crucial juncture in the band’s career, for which James and Lars had worked so hard the previous five years to get to: the very moment when they were poised to become a big-time act in their own right. Not just ‘inventors’ of thrash, more than just potent second-stringers to bigger, more commercially adept rock outfits, but an actual mainstream headliner themselves. At any other point in Metallica’s career trajectory they might have been able to afford to take the time they needed to come to terms mentally, emotionally and spiritually with the huge loss they had just suffered. But not right now. Burnstein and Mensch had been here before enough times to know just how important – and fleeting – such moments in a rock band’s career can be; how one false move could destroy the work of a lifetime. Burnstein had been one of the leading lights at Mercury Records in the late 1970s, forced to stand by impotently and watch as Thin Lizzy’s career in America fizzled out in the wake of serial tour cancellations when various members left abruptly. No one had died – too many early-morning drugs and late-night fights had been Lizzy’s downfall – although it could be argued that the slow, painful demise of singer Phil Lynott, dead barely five years after Lizzy’s last, ill-starred US tour, could be traced back to his band’s inability to make the most of their luck while it was still riding high. Mensch, meanwhile, had been key in overseeing the impossibly swift resurrection of AC/DC when their singer Bon Scott had died in 1980. Like Metallica, AC/DC had just had their first breakthrough album in America, with Highway to Hell. Any delay in its follow-up could have been fatal to their chances of long-term success there. Under Mensch’s tutelage, however, they achieved the seemingly impossible and almost immediately found a replacement for Scott, their first album with new singer Brian Johnson, Back in Black, being released within months of his arrival and subsequently becoming the biggest, multi-million-selling success of AC/DC’s career.
Sitting with Peter the night before Cliff’s funeral, James and Lars had already made up their minds about wanting to continue with Metallica. They just needed their brilliant, all-seeing manager to spell out the reasons for them, to make it all better. Mensch put it to them succinctly. It wasn’t just a case of not throwing in the towel; it was absolutely essential they understood they had not a second to spare. The cancelled European tour could be rescheduled for the new year. Mensch had already looked into that, he told them. But the Japanese tour in November – their first visit to the country, the third largest record-buying territory in the world and another important milestone on the route map to success – should not be delayed. Could they meet that deadline? Lars and James decided they could.
Professionally, it was absolutely the right thing to do, they all agreed. The human cost of this hurriedly made decision, however, would be immense, not just for the three remaining members of Metallica, but also for the poor unfortunate whose job it would be to attempt the impossible and somehow replace Cliff Burton.
‘I don’t understand how anyone who knows what Metallica is about could honestly think that we’d give up,’ Lars would tell Sounds journalist Paul Elliot three months later. ‘The question was not, “Are we gonna pack it in or not?” It was, “How fast can we get the whole thing back on its feet again?”’ He added, ‘We have to do it for Cliff…If he knew we were sitting around in San Francisco feeling sorry for ourselves, he’d come round and kick us in the ass and tell us to get back out on the road and continue where we left off.’ This was to become the prevailing theme, repeated like a mantra, whenever the question of how they came to the decision to carry on without Cliff Burton came up. It was, as Kirk later told me, ‘Because that’s what Cliff would have wanted.’ Uh huh…
The Japanese