Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

A few great shots of him with his Burgandyglo 4001 (albeit highly modded).

RIP Cliff, you were a bad mofo.

I agree. It's a great write up. Excellent pics. A man that passed way too early. I always wondered what Metallica would have sounded like if he was still alive.

Much better than they ended up sounding. He was the only one in that band with any sense of melody.

Some bass magazine had a write up about him a few years back which had some interesting info about his Rick. It said that when they went in the studio to record Kill 'em All, the bass was giving him interference problems, so they replaced the pickups (A jazz pickup in the bridge and a Gibson mudbucker in the neck) which solved the problem.

The producer of the album, Paul Curcio, still has a bag full of Cliff's Rick parts.

Yeah, I read that too. I wonder where the bass itself is. They ask him about it in the new article I mentioned earlier & he just says "the Ricky needs some work."

I think he was the attitude and the "Hardcore" part of that band, for as much as Lars and Jaymz pretend to be, they all knew Cliff was the real deal and no BS got by him.

I have pre-Metallica Lars story. Wanna hear it? It involves Newport Beach, CA, Judas Priest and an AMC Pacer.

I'm on the edge of my seat, Alan!

The year? 1980. Or 1981. I don't really remember.

For some reason my pal and I decided it would be a good idea to see Judas Priest at the Orange Pavilion in San Bernardino, CA (official name: "San Berdoo."). When I picked up my pal he said, "Oh, hey, we need to go get this other guy. He said he'd drive us if we went with him."

"'K... Who is this guy?"

"His name is Lars, he's in Newport Beach."

OK, so we go get a teenaged Lars Ulrich from his Mom and Dad's place at a tennis condo community (Lars' Dad wanted him to be a professional tennis player). We hopped in his car and took off, Lars behind the wheel and the cassette player loaded with these obscure heavy metal bands from Scandinavia and Britain.

By the way, Lars was a motor mouth back then, too.

We got there early enough that the doors hadn't opened yet so that meant Lars and my pal would be able to get wasted without too much effort, so they did.

I? Had to stay sober, which I did.

At some point during the show Lars disappeared but we found him afterwards, completely utterly wasted out of his mind. Yay for excess! I remember him saying something like, "The people at Judas Priest shows are so nice; they gave me lots of drugs."

He was reasonable, though, and he let me drive us all back to his house, where we let him off, hopped into my car and went back to good ol' Huntington Beach.

And that's how I drove Lars Ulrich's orange with a white vinyl top AMC Pacer home from the Judas Priest concert.

"I think he was the attitude and the "Hardcore" part of that band, for as much as Lars and Jaymz pretend to be, they all knew Cliff was the real deal and no BS got by him."

"By the way, Lars was a motor mouth back then, too."



Beautiful.

Great story Alan!

cool...