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tour, just five weeks away, would give them a deadline to work to. Rejecting the suggestion of getting in a veteran simply to help them through the tour, they decided to go for broke and find a full-time replacement. ‘We wanted someone young, hungry, someone new and a bit unknown,’ said Lars at the time. ‘Not someone that people would associate with another band.’ Bobby Schneider recalls, ‘Everybody got completely trashed at Cliff’s funeral. And I can remember Mensch looking at me and saying, “I told you guys not to get fucked up” because we had to have this meeting afterwards. Not me and the band but Mensch and me, and I think one other.’ The plan, as outlined by Peter, says Bobby, was, ‘“Okay, the guys want to keep going, you’re gonna move to San Francisco, you’re gonna set up this rehearsal, we’re gonna start auditioning bass players. You’re gonna run the whole thing, you’re gonna look after the guys here.” So I moved out.’ Rich enough to no longer have to put up with the garage at El Cerrito, Lars and James had planned to buy their own properties at the end of tour. Now, back in San Francisco suddenly, they didn’t have anywhere to live. ‘We all got apartments down by Fisherman’s Wharf and they started the process,’ says Bobby.

They didn’t have to search hard. Every young bass player in America seemed to be dreaming suddenly of replacing the irreplaceable. The same night they’d heard about Cliff’s death, Jonny and Marsha Z had wandered down to Testament’s rehearsal space. ‘It was like every band in the Bay Area was there,’ Jonny recalls. ‘Every rehearsal space in the building was filled with bass players trying to play “Pulling Teeth”. It was kinda nuts.’

Among the personal effects returned to his family after his body had been shipped back to the USA were the two skull rings that Cliff always wore, one of which the family now gave to James. Although they had only really become close in the last year of his life, of everybody in the band, James had looked up to Cliff the most. Says Schneider, ‘I think of everybody, James was [most affected]. Because if you’re in with James and you’re part of James’ family, you’re part of James’ family for the rest of your life. James is as true blue and loyal a person as they come and I think he was very freaked out.’ He and Cliff had ‘identified with each other’, said James – not just through their shared love of southern rock and bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, but also the whole outdoorsman lifestyle both were drawn to, ‘hiking, camping, shooting guns, drinking beers…’ More importantly, James looked upon Cliff as a big brother figure, very much the wise older head. Onstage, where James had always felt most insecure as frontman, yet been forced to grow into the role in the aftermath of the sacking of Dave Mustaine, Cliff’s almost supernaturally confident demeanour had been a huge inspiration to him. Look now at some of the early live footage of their first shows and you’ll see James habitually glancing to his right, to the space on the stage dominated by Cliff’s huge presence. Seeking approval; needing validation; and getting it. It may have been Lars and James who formed Metallica, may still have been James and Lars who wrote together, but by 1986 in James’ mind Metallica had become far more about how he and Cliff saw things. They had even reached a point where they had apparently begun discussing seriously the prospect of replacing Lars as drummer.

How serious this suggestion should be taken remains a hot topic for debate among Metallica aficionados. As the years have gone by there are few left who will talk openly about it – except, of course, for Dave Mustaine, who was still talking about it 2008 when he told viewers of Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro’s Spread TV show, ‘James and I had planned on firing Lars so many times. And [Lars] won’t ever cop to this but he was getting canned when the guys were coming back from the European tour, before Cliff died. They planned on getting rid of him.’ It was a claim he repeated during an interview with Rolling Stone the following year.