Garry Sharpe-Young interviewed Cliff on September 20, 1986, just a week before his death.

"Funnily enough Cliff and I also talked theoretically about what Metallica would do if one of the band was killed: we were actually talking about Led Zeppelin and John Bonham. What we were actually discussing was the hypothesis of Lars meeting his Maker... Cliff said that they would have a big drunken party in his honor, and then get a new drummer. Fast."

— Garry Sharpe-Young, Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica.

The band auditions a number of bass players, referred to them by friends including Les Claypool of Primus (Kirk Hammett's friend from algebra class) and Troy Gregory of Prong. Jason Newsted, in Flotsam and Jetsam at the time, learns Metallica's entire set list for the first audition. The guys take him out to Tommy's Joint in San Francisco for drinks after the audition. Kirk, James and Lars have a quick conference in the bathroom and decided at the urinals that Jason will be the new bassist.

"The spirit of this band has always been about fighting on, against all the shit we've always run into. Cliff, more than anyone else in the band, would have been the first guy to give us a kick in the ass, and wouldn't want us to sit around."

— Lars, Kerrang! Legends: Metallica

"My friend woke me up at six in the morning and said, 'Cliff's gone.' I said, 'No fucking way. Why are you doing this to me this early in the morning?' And he said, 'No, it's real. Go look in the paper.' So, I looked in the paper and I had this epiphany watching and just thinking and I was like, 'I'm going to be the dude. I'm going to do it. If they're going to go on then I'm the man. I'm going to do it.' And from that minute on I wasn't going to let anybody else get it."

— Jason, Metal Rules, 2003

"We did about 60 people in one week and we decided that we wanted to ask four of them back. (...) Jason was second of the four. We played all day and then went out for a meal. And then we went for the big test, which was obviously the drink test. Somehow, and I swear it wasn't planned, me and Kirk and James ended up in the toilet together, pissing. So we're standing there at three in the morning, out of our faces, all of us in a line and not saying anything, and I just said without looking at anybody, 'That's him, right?' And the other guys said, 'Yeah, that's him.' And that was it!"

— Lars, Kerrang! Legends: Metallica

Jason Newsted

Metallica: Kirk, James, Jason, and Lars.

Jason Newsted's first show with Metallica is at the Country Club in Reseda, CA. His second gig is the very next night, at Jezebel's in Anaheim.

"On the second song of the set [at Jezebel's], 'Master of Puppets,' the power went out three times. The only thing that didn't go out was the bass amp, so I just continued playing drums acoustically along with Jason. All the kids were singing. It was brilliant."

— Lars, Metallica: Unbound

Then the band travel to Japan for five sold-out gigs. The guys take it upon themselves to 'initiate' Jason, tricking him into eating a ball of wasabi, and other pranks. The "hazing" continues...

"We've told everybody that Jason is gay, and the first thing anyone says to him is: 'Is it true?'"

— James, November 1986, Metallica: In Their Own Words

"The tour in Japan had different vibes than elsewhere because you don't use buses on the road. Instead, after every gig you stay at a hotel and then travel during the day on a bullet train. Also, there are no support act—ever. You take the stage cold, which is weird, and the shows start early. You get onstage by six, and are done by 7:30. In addition to all this, most of the kids in the audience are female. All these twelve-year-old girls follow you around like you're in Bon Jovi or something."

— Lars, Metallica Unbound

Japan, November 1986

2-3. Backstage with fans
4-6. Travelling on the bullet train

The band play sold-out dates throughout U.S. and Canada, with Metal Church as a supporting group.

"A lot of places we played in Canada were hockey rinks. Sometimes the ice behind the stage would be left open. We'd borrow skates and skate around. I remember playing hockey once and Lars was skating toward me with a hockey stick in his hand. He didn't know how to stop and ended nailing me in the face."

— Duke Erickson (Metal Church), Metallica Unbound

1. "Lars On Ice" in Canada, December 1986
2. Christmas 1986

Damage Inc. European tour. The first date of the tour is in Copenhagen—it is the show which the band originally set out to play when the bus accident occurred.

"It was the first time we we'd toured Spain and our first gig, in Barcelona, sold out to over 7,000 people. They're really rowdy in Spain, they fuckin' stormed the merchandise stand when they came in, ripping off hundreds of shirts."

— Lars, Metallica Unbound

Damage Inc. tour, Europe

Despite wearing protective heavy-duty wrist braces, James breaks his arm again, skateboarding in an empty swimming pool. The band misses a scheduled Saturday Night Live appearance.

"It was their first time skating an empty pool—James was really excited and asked me a lot of questions. I showed him some lines, and soon he was ripping it up—he was hitting tiles and going for coping. Then it happened. James somehow lost his balance coming down off the transition into the flat around the drain and fell backward. His wrist snapped and the bone was protruding out from his wrist brace. That basically ended James' skating career, since it affected his main career. The first Metallica skateboard design was done in 1986—the 'pirate.'

— Pushead (a.k.a. Brian Schroeder), Transworld Skateboarding, 2002

"With James out of commission, the band took the opportunity of his accident to repair the two-car garage behind Lars's East bay home. Jason, whose Phoenix rehearsal garage had been such a showcase, took the lead in Lars's garage conversion. Jason was often there before Lars got up. 'I came down to help out every day when I woke up, about 2 p.m.,' Lars explained. 'James would come over and do whatever he could with his arm being broken, and Kirk was out doing his toy shopping!'"

— Frayed Ends of Metal

"Now I get to buy the comics I've been wanting since I was a little kid. I can pay more attention now to my hobbies. When I was younger I played with toys and they were a lot of fun. But, why should anyone say that should end because you're older? There's absolutely no reason why that should end. I mean, it might appear to be an immature kind of thing to do, but if you think about it, what's so immature about wanting to have fun?"

— Kirk, Thrasher Magazine, 1986

1-2. James and Kirk with their Zorlac skateboards featuring artwork by Pushead
3. James and Kirk skateboarding
4. James with a broken arm, 1987
5. "I got going a little too fast..." James explains to his insurance company
6. Kirk and his toys

Metallica release The $5.98 EP, Garage Days Re-Revisted, the first album to feature Jason. It takes them less than four weeks to conceptualize, rehearse, and record The $5.98 EP. It is certified gold soon after its release.

"We've taken a whole bunch of strange shit recorded by other bands and breathed death into them!"

— Lars, Metallica: In Their Own Words

"It was fucking blast, man. You walked into the room, set up your amp the way you would live, put a microphone in front of it and play the song. We recorded it there and then, mistakes and all."

— Jason, Kerrang! Legends: Metallica

The album sleeve says, "Not very produced by Metallica."

The EP also features a Ross Halfin photo of each band member. In mock publicity shot style, the guys wrote their autographs—with names deliberately misspelled—on each photo.

1. The $5.98 EP, Garage Days Re-Revisted
2. Misspelled names from the back cover
3. Sticker explaining that "$5.98" is part of the title, not the price
4-6. Garage Days photo shoot

Metallica play the Monsters of Rock Festival at Castle Donington in England alongside Bon Jovi, Dio, Anthrax, W.A.S.P. and Cinderella.

Two days earlier, on August 20, they play a secret warm-up gig at London's 100 Club. The name they choose, "Damage Inc.," is not very hard to decode and the club which usually holds only a few hundred people is packed with more than 2,000 fans. Towards the end of the set, the bass drops out of the mix because of some technical difficulties. However, due to the heat and the fact that the stage is not clearly visible from the back of the venue, a rumor spreads that Jason passed out in the heat.

1-2. Jason and James at The 100 Club, August 20, 1987
3-5. Monsters of Rock, Castle Donington, August 22, 1987
6. The last date of the Monsters of Rock tour in Europe, Pforzheim, Germany, August 30, 1987

Metallica's first home video Cliff 'Em All is released. It's a collection of bootleg and amateur videos shot during 1983-1986 that pays homage to Cliff Burton.

"It's really a look back at the 3 1/2 years that Cliff was with us and includes his best bass solos and the home footage and pix that we feel best capture his unique personality and style. The quality in some places ain't that happening, but the feeling is."

— metallica.com

"Cliff was a wild, hippie-ish, acid-taking, bell-bottom-wearing guy. He meant business, and you couldn't fuck around with him. I wanted to get that respect that he had."

— James, Rolling Stone, 1993

"We're not trying to be something big and fancy. It's just us, doing what we do. Let's keep it that way."

— Cliff Burton, Cliff 'Em All

Cliff 'Em All

Metallica starts the US Monsters Of Rock tour with Kingdom Come, Dokken, Scorpions, and Van Halen. During the Monsters of Rock tour, Master of Puppets goes platinum.

Sammy Hagar of Van Halen tells Hit Parader magazine: "They'll be the new kings of rock, just you wait and see."

"That was the Jagermeister days. I am still hearing stories about it, like that I slugged Lars but I don't remember any of it. We were drunk the whole time. We were very much into drinking and having a good fucking time. That was the pinnacle of all the debauchery, drinking, fucking and general insanity."

— James, Metal Hammer Magazine, 1999

"Basically, at that time, we used to start drinking when we woke up. We'd get the gig over by three o'clock, and then we'd have eight or nine hours to drink. It was awesome. That was our first exposure to big crowds, like, 50,000 people every day ... We were just drunk basically all the time. There are pictures of us at the top of Tampa stadium with our pants off flashing everybody. It's four o'clock in the afternoon and we're already drunk off our asses. The not-giving-a-fuck meter was peaking."

— Lars, Rolling Stone

Monsters of Rock, 1988

5. With Van Halen
6. That would be the Tampa stadium...

"When Metallica hit the road, they were as well organized as Boy Scouts. They came equipped with a first aid kit, toothpaste, foot powder, hangover cures, stomach medicines, toothbrush holders and travelling soap dishes (each with a band member's name written on it in Magic Marker.) By now, touring was no haphazard thing."

— Frayed Ends of Metal

Metallica's backstage "equipment"

...And Justice For All is released. It's the first Metallica record to enter the Billboard top 10. On Halloween of 1988, the album is certified gold and platinum simultaneously. The album features a song that Cliff Burton helped write, titled "To Live Is To Die."

"We're gonna call it 'Wild Chicks And Fast Cars And Lots of Drugs'..."

— Lars, March 1988, Metallica: In Their Own Words

"With heavy music you should have heavy lyrics. Not just, 'Hey baby, let's drink a lot and puke on each other all night!'"

— Kirk, Guitar World, November 1988

...And Justice For All

Damaged Justice tour in support of the ...And Justice For All album.

"I look at that tour as a kind of awakening, seeing what we could and couldn't do, especially me. I found that I couldn't fucking drink like I used to, as far as singing went and being 100 percent into what the fuck you're doing every night and stuff."

— James, May 1991, Metallica: In Their Own Words

"What's cool is that by the end of the tour we'll have played all 50 states. We were sitting in the plane and at the table there's a map of the States. We worked out that we had shows booked in 48 states, but that we'd miss two that pretty much everyone forgets about: Burlington, Vermont, and Wilmington, Delaware. We wanted to book some shows up there, and we were told that there were no arenas really to play. So we said, 'Fuck it, let's do it anywhere just to play.' We've booked a club date in Wilmington and a 2,000-seat venue in Vermont. It's actually quite exciting to have a club date when you've just played 188 arena dates in a row..."

— Lars, December 1989, Metallica In Their own Words

"The last gig with Queensryche [support band] was pretty good. During one of their songs we hired about four male strippers, real gay looking guys, and they got up on our back amp line. Everyone could see them—the spotlights were right on them! But the band couldn't really see them, 'cause they were up so high behind them. These fags would be dancing on the amps the whole time! Queensryche didn't know what was going on."

&mdash James, Metallica: Unbound

Damaged Justice tour

Metallica shoot their first music video for "One" which features clips from the film Johnny Got His Gun.

"It's a nice, jolly little affair, isn't it?"

— Lars, March 1989, Metallica: In Their Own Words

"I think the band was a little taken aback by how much of the movie I put in there. It's a very complicated story and to do it with just one or two soundbytes here and there wouldn't have made it. Basically, every time there was an extended guitar intro or guitar solo or anything like that, I covered the whole thing up. (...) But I think they realized that for this particular clip, the story element was more important."

— Michael Salomon, co-director of the video, Frayed Ends of Metal

"The other day in Italy there were two guys just drilling into this whole thing about 'One' and anti-war and making a statement of peace for the kids. 'You guys care so much.' I was telling James about this afterwards. We were laughing. 'Why do people make such a big deal about it?' And James turns round and goes, 'All it is, is a fucking song about a guy who stepped on a land mine!' That kinda sums the whole thing up."

— Lars, November 1991, Metallica: In Their Own Words

"One" video
1. On the set on "One": "Can you guys do something interesting with your hands?"

The band perform "One" on the worldwide broadcast of Grammy Awards. They are nominated in the heavy metal category for the ...And Justice For All album, but they lose to Jethro Tull. The band add a sticker to their album that says "Grammy Award LOSERS."

"The first TV thing we did, which was the Grammies, really turned us off to TV. You can't do what you wanna do. It's all fucking planned out. They basically told us, 'You can't do this, you can't do that.' In soundcheck we were playing the nice little beginning bit to "One," and then we kicked in to the double-bass "bra-ta-ta-ta-ta-TA"—the machine gun fire—and they freaked out, and said, 'Hold it! Stop! There's no way you can do this on TV."

— James, Metallica: Unbound

"It is the first time that a lot of people have seen a Heavy Metal type band on a show like this and it showed those who have painted those misconceptions of HM in their minds that they were wrong. I think a lot of people probably thought there'd be satanistic cross-burning and ritual sacrificing! The ignorant middle-class America who have these weird views saw otherwise."

— Lars, Metallica: A Visual Documentary

"Of course I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I was disappointed, human nature is that you'd rather win than lose, but Jethro Tull walking away with it makes a huge mockery of the intentions of the event."

— Lars, Metallica: A Visual Documentary

Metallica perform "One" at the 1989 Grammy Awards.

Metallica are nominated for an MTV Music Video Award for "One" only to lose to Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine." When GNR's Duff McKagan makes his acceptance speech, he says that he felt Metallica deserve the honor.