Lars Ulrich On Death Of Bassist

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich feels the band have never got over the death of original bassist CLIFF BURTON in 1986.

Cliff - who was killed when the band's tour bus crashed during a European tour - was replaced by JASON NEWSTEAD, who himself left the ENTER SANDMAN band in January 2001 to be substituted by ROB TRUJILLO.

Lars says, "We were in denial when Jason joined the band because we had to replace the death of one of our brothers.

"We were 22 years old and completely incapable of dealing with anything like that. So we just denied that it happened.

"The day after Cliff's funeral we were in Japan playing gigs. All of a sudden we were in Japan looking at this guy going, 'Who the f**k is he? He's not Cliff. What's he doing in our band?'.

"And in retrospect maybe it never really got over that. That's a sad thing because Jason is a good guy and a dedicated guy."