Cliff Burton's dad marvels at Metallica Master Of Puppets book

A picture of Ray Burton with his copy of Metallica: Back To The Front
Ray Burton

Cliff Burton’s father Ray features in an unboxing video for the upcoming Metallica Master Of Puppets book.

Metallica: Back To The Front explores the making of the band’s third album and documents the Damage, Inc tour that followed. Written by Matt Taylor, it’s released on September 13 while a Collector’s Edition will be available two weeks earlier on August 30 at Metallica.com

Metallica suffered a tragedy on the Damage, Inc tour when bassist Cliff Burton died in a tour bus crash on September 27, 1986, in Sweden. His father Ray contributes to the book and can be seen opening his copy of the book in the video below.

Flicking through the book and finding images he had never seen before, Ray Burton says: “I just received this marvellous heavy package. That guy Matt is really thorough.”

Metallica previously said of the book: “We’re honoured that Cliff Burton’s dad Ray sat down for an extensive interview. Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin and drummer Mike Bordin and Diamond Head’s Brian Tatler spoke with Matt about their memories of those crazy times and, of course, you, the fans who were at those shows gave us an amazing view of your memories and experiences.”

Metallica are currently working on their 10th album and this week announced that they’ll live stream their show from US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on August 20.

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Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.