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I Noticed Your Publication Has Been Talking a Lot of Shit About Bassists — Guest Article by the Ghost of Cliff Burton

Hey metal fans, the ghost of Cliff Burton here.

I’ve traversed the astral plane to call out The Hard Times. I couldn’t help but notice they really like to talk a lot of shit about bassists. Well if bass is so unimportant, why did the rest of Metallica fly across the country from Los Angeles to San Francisco so I could join their band? Huh? That’s what I thought.

I didn’t spend weeks learning the bass guitar for some jokes website to discredit my work 40 years after I died. Some of those bass tracks I even practiced and everything.

By the way, my death was way more metal than how the rest of Metallica’s are going to be. They’re gonna pass in cozy Malibu mansions and first-rate hospice care centers, surrounded by friends and family in their final hours.

I died at night in the icy north of Scandinavia, and under a tour bus no less. It don’t get more metal than that. Except for maybe that guy from Slayer that died by spider bite. Holy shit. I should hang with him sometime.

Can you play “(Anesthesia) – Pulling Teeth,” Hard Times? Didn’t think so. Do any of you even play in a world-renowned band? Besides, if playing bass is so easy, why was Dee Dee Ramone able to do it so well? Yet, all everyone wants to talk about is how good James is at rhythm guitar.

Playing six strings instead of four doesn’t prove anything, everybody knows it. Metallica’s bass player was the most badass member at any given time too. First there was me, who introduced the Misfits to the rest of the band. Then there’s my replacement: Jason Newsted. Hell, an entire generation of metalheads ripped off Jason’s undercut hairdo, while Lars, James, and Kirk still looked like they were on the way to a Poison concert.

So what if “…And Justice For All” didn’t have any bass? That album is still harder than anything I did with the band. Wait, forget I said that.

And then there’s Robert Trujillo, who was in the Pepsi song band. Honestly, I don’t know much about them, other than the fact that I could never beat their song in Guitar Hero. Yeah, we have Guitar Hero here, Bass Hero too, but Peter Steele is always hogging it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go finish a word search puzzle I’ve been working on for a few days.