His favourite pastime was hanging out with his friends Jim Martin and Dave DiDonato, going fishing and hunting, or just sitting around into the small hours playing Dungeons & Dragons.Įnrolling at Chabot College in nearby Hayward, Cliff studied classical music and theory. A free-thinker who drove a beat-up 1972 VW station wagon nicknamed The Grass-hopper, in which he mixed his Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes with Bach concertos. He was just another one of the guys.”īy the time Cliff graduated from high school in 1980, the Burton character was fully formed: an HP Lovecraft-reading, piano-playing homebody who loved beer, Mexican food, pot and acid. He wasn’t acting out the part to be in a band, he really was that guy.
As Martin once observed: “Most of what you see on stage at a rock show, whether it’s a thrash gig or some heavy hip-hop club, it’s all about fantasy. EZ Street afforded him his first chance to play real gigs, performing regularly at the International Cafe in Berkeley.ĮZ Street also included guitarist Jim Martin, a likeminded soul who went on to join Faith No More. It was either that or get his hair cut – and Cliff wasn’t doing that.Ĭliff was 14 when he began playing in his first band, EZ Street, named after a strip joint in San Mateo, He later played down the experience, dismissing EZ Street’s music as “pretty silly, actually… a lot of covers, just wimpy shit”. As a teenager, he took a Saturday job at an equipment rental yard called Castro Valley Rentals, where the older workers nicknamed him Cowboy, after the cheap straw hat he always wore to work. Playing Little League baseball for the Castro Valley Auto House team, he was known as a big hitter. In the third grade they tested him and he got eleventh-grade comprehension.” Cliff preferred his own company, reading books and playing music. There was also a stubborn, Aquarian side to Cliff. Speaking in 1987 with Cliff’s old friend Harald Oimeon, Jan described Cliff as “very quiet” and “normal”, except for his insistence from a very early age on being “his own person”. “He was the one who made Cliff take Beethoven and Bach, made him learn to read music etcetera.” Now he told others: “I’m gonna be the best bassist for my brother.” Jan was “totally amazed cos none of the kids in our family had any musical talent.” His early influence was a teacher named Steve Doherty. When Scott died of a brain aneurysm when Cliff was 13, it had a profound effect on him, reinforcing the idea that life was not to be squandered on trying too hard to make other people happy.Ĭliff had played the piano since he was six. Cliff was the youngest brother to Scott David and Connie. Ray’s wife Jan was a special needs teacher.
His father Ray, from Tennessee, worked in San Francisco’s Bay Area as an Assistant Highway Engineer.
Clifford Lee Burton was born February 10, 1962.
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