Cliff Burton
Pull a thread
Forty years without Cliff Burton: the card draw in Sweden, and the two bass players who came after
On 27 September 1986 a bus went off the road near Dörarp, Sweden, and Metallica lost its bass player at 24. Four decades later the fan argument is still Jason Newsted versus Robert Trujillo, which has never been the actual question.
The night before
The band was on the European leg of the Damage, Inc. tour, out behind Master of Puppets, riding a bus between Stockholm and Copenhagen. On the night of 26 September, Cliff Burton and Kirk Hammett drew cards to decide who picked a bunk first. Burton pulled the ace of spades and took the one Hammett had been sleeping in.
Cliff Burton's bus crash at 40: the Metallica guitar tech in the bunk above him tells his side
Every retrospective of 27 September 1986 tells the story from the swapped bunk. Aidan Mullen was sleeping directly above Cliff Burton, went through the same window, and told it on a podcast in August 2026.
The scene everyone knows, minus one person
The bunk story is the one part of that night every Metallica fan can recite. The band picked sleeping spots on the tour bus in Stockholm, Cliff Burton won the choice, took Kirk Hammett’s bunk, and Kirk went to sleep at the front. A few hours later the bus went over and Cliff was dead at 24.