-Music Monday-

This meme was created by Drew @ The Tattooed Book Geek. You pick a song that you really like and share it on Monday!

Today’s share is a song by Metallica. This is one of my favorite Metallica instrumentals and gives me a chance to talk about two of my favorite bassists of all time. It’s one that Jason Newsted (former bassist) performed in, and the last Metallica song that Cliff Burton (bassist of Metallica before Newsted) was credited for. Cliff died on my 9th birthday. That day, he was in a tragic bus accident and perished at the young age of 24.

The band wrote this song to pay homage to Cliff and it does include some of the riffs he wrote before he died along with his lyrics. I was confused when reading that the poem belonged to Cliff solely because some claim that parts of it were taken from a book by Stephen R. Donaldson The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever while others say the original words belonged to Paul Gerhardt. One of the books I’m reading below does confirm that the first part of the poem came from the book.  Regardless, before his death, he wrote the short lyrics below:

When a man lies he murders some part of the world
These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives
All this I cannot bear to witness any longer
Cannot the kingdom of salvation take me home

Metallica wasn’t going to let Cliff’s work go to waste. This is something I learned when reading  Metallica: The Stories Behind The Biggest Songs.

Here’s a quote by Lars Ulrich (drummer) from the book…

“A lot of people might give us flak about this because it features some riffs written by Cliff a few months before he was killed – just like they gave us flak about using Mustaine’s stuff – but the truth of the matter is, these riffs were just so huge and Metallica-sounding, we had to use them. We’re certainly not trying to dwell on Cliff’s death or anything, we’re simply using the best ideas we had available, and this was one of them.”

I’m also reading To Live Is To Die by Joel Mclver which is a book about Cliff. I’ve been slowly plowing my way through these two books for some time now. To Live Is To Die has some of the best photography of the band I’ve ever seen plus I’ve learned so much already.

Overall, And Justice for All is probably the most prominent Metallica album in my collection, next to Master of Puppets and Ride The Lightning, of course. I cherish all the albums, but these are my most favorite as they’re albums I grew up with from a very young age.

The song is long, but in my opinion, worth listening to every single note. The lyrics don’t come in until 7:34 and last few seconds are cut off, but this is the full song for the most part.

Metallica

“To Live Is To Die”

Here is a drawing I made last year. This was something I thought to do when I was seventeen years old, but lost my original, so I remade it. Basically, it’s Jason Newsted’s profile similar to the ‘hammer’ album artwork which was drawn by Brian Schroeder, aka Pushead. I decided to recreate the profile and draw it into a crescent moon. I also included the lyrics to the song.

Thanks for checking out Music Monday. Are you a Metallica fan? Feel free to share your thoughts below. Have an awesome week everyone! ❤