Today, Metallica are known as consummate musicians, but it wasn’t always that way.

Their early career is marked by a gradual evolution from garage thrash to sophisticated, progressive heights – an evolution driven by their bass player, Cliff Burton, who pushed the band to new heights with his songwriting ability and phenomenal bass skills across the band’s first three albums, including their undisputed masterpiece, Master Of Puppets.

Cliff’s life was short but influential; his death at the age of 24 in a tour bus crash on a Swedish mountain road was sudden and shocking. Following his passing, Metallica went on to huge global success, but by their own admission they never pushed the creative envelope as radically as they had done during the first four years of their career.

The cult of Burton grows year on year, and so too the list of bassists acknowledging his influence in metal and beyond. Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Metallica’s debut album, Kill ’Em All, this revised and updated edition of To Live Is To Die Testament bass master Steve Di Giorgio, who shares his memories of meeting Burton as a teenager and then watching on from close quarters as Metallica began to take off.

‘One of the best biographies you’ll ever read.’– Robb Flynn, Machine Head