ANTHRAX' Scott Ian has posted the following message regarding legendary METALLICA bassist Cliff Burton, who was killed in a bus accident in Sweden (near Ljungby) on September 27th, 1986 at the age of 24:

"September 27th marked the 25th anniversary of Cliff Burton’s death.

I knew Cliff for three years and in those three years became good friends with him and Kirk, bonds that have lasted and stood the test of time. We were the three musketeers when we were together and we got to spend a lot of time together back in those days. We were all coming up at the same time and reveling in our bands, the music, the scene and the lifestyle. We fucking loved Metal!

This is one of the many fine memories I have of Cliff. Add your favorite beverage and enjoy.

I was in London in March of 1984 doing promo for our first album Fistful Of Metal. Metallica was also in London because they were supposed to do a tour with THE RODDS and EXCITER in the UK but the tour was cancelled. They were in the middle of making Ride The Lightning in Denmark but they couldn’t go back to the studio because it had been booked during the time they were supposed to be on tour. Music For Nations got an apartment for them to stay in and I ended up staying there with them.

As you can imagine things were very crazy. Too much alcohol. Too much everything. We were partying non-stop and having the time of our lives. A bunch of 20 year old kids in London living the dream.

One day Cliff and I were going to a store so Cliff could buy a Walkman. We were in the tube station and two policemen approached us and asked us if we had drugs. We said no, big surprise. Truth is, we didn’t. They kept telling us that we should just tell them what we have and things would be easier for us. We kept telling them that we didn’t have anything. I guess they didn’t believe us being the long haired freaks that we were because they arrested us and took us to the police station. They took all of our clothes and put us in separate cells. These weren’t cells with bars, they had solid doors with a little window that they could slide open from the outside. I was sitting in a six by six concrete room with no windows in my underwear for five hours with no communication with anyone. At some point I heard Cliff’s voice and I started banging on the door screaming at them to tell me what was going on. A cop opened the window in the door and told me 'they were taking my mate back to the flat so they could search it'. Apparently they had found Cliff’s cold medicine pills in his coat and they assumed it was illegal drugs. I guess they hadn’t heard of Sudafed yet in England. They sent the pills to a lab to be tested because they didn’t believe Cliff when he told them that it was just cold medicine. So now they were taking him back to the apartment and I got really nervous because I knew he had weed back there. If they found the weed we were fucked. All I could think of was that movie Midnight Express where the guy gets busted in Turkey for smuggling and sent to Turkish prison and nobody ever sees him for years and he bites the guys tongue out and kisses boobies through glass. Randy Quaid is in it. He gets stabbed in the ass."

Read more at this location.

To mark this sad anniversary, BraveWords.com has unearthed a near 40-minute chat longtime scribe Mark Gromen had with Burton and guitarist Kirk Hammett when the band was promoting Ride The Lightning.

Mark Gromen's story can be read below:

"Dateline: February 7th, 1985

As a college radio DJ, I'd done a couple of on-air interviews, but the prospect of METALLICA playing the Variety Theater, outside Cleveland, OH, alongside W.A.S.P., seemed like the perfect opportunity to have a face-to-face chat. In the years since, I've done hundreds of them, but this was my first and have never replicated the exact procedure either. Day of show, my production assistant Josh and I rode the Rapid (Cleveland subway) to the West side and walked the remaining distance to the Marriott at W. 150th (which is still there). No simple pocket recorders or MP3s back then, so he brought along a home tape deck, capable of two stereo inputs and corresponding microphones!

When I arrived at the hotel, I was surprised to find the band, touring in support of Ride The Lightning, were registered under their given names, so after no answer from Lars and James, it was on to Cliff and Kirk, who were sharing the same room and just rolling out of bed. We gave them a few minutes to get ready (Cliff's hair was still wet, up in a towel when he entered the room and if you listen carefully, you can hear him brushing his teeth: the recording is that clear!). The majority of the line of question was directed by me, but Josh couldn't help but chime in.

All these years later, still sort of rare to hear Hammett speak and Burton, well consider this a long buried treasure. After it aired on my WRUW radio show (at some ungodly hour of a weekday morning), it has been gathering dust (along with a lot of other tapes that BraveWords.com will gradually unearth). Sit back and enjoy the youthful exuberance of a band on the rise and a couple of fans."

The interview is currently streaming online at BraveWords.com - head to the left-hand-side of the site to launch the KnuckleTracks Online Audio Player.