Inside Metallica’s Darkest Morning: Aidan Mullen Remembers Cliff Burton and the 1986 Bus Crash
By Seth Metoyer | Metal Crawlspace
Forty years ago this September, Metallica were somewhere in the middle of becoming Metallica.
These days it can be difficult to look back at the Master of Puppets era without seeing everything that came afterward. We know about stadium tours, the Black Album, decades of arguments over Load, Napster, Some Kind of Monster, induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a level of cultural permanence that eventually turned four guys from the Bay Area metal scene into something closer to an institution.
In September 1986, much of that future remained unwritten. Master of Puppets had been released six months earlier, Metallica had spent part of the year opening for Ozzy Osbourne, and the crowds were beginning to make it obvious that something unusual was happening.
Aidan Mullen had one of the better seats in the house for all of it, although “seat” probably makes the job sound considerably more comfortable than it was. Mullen worked as James Hetfield’s guitar technician during that period, joining Metallica while the band was still learning how quickly its world was expanding. He traveled with them, maintained Hetfield’s guitars and equipment, became friendly with members of the band and eventually found himself aboard the tour bus traveling south through Sweden during the early morning hours of September 27, 1986.
That was the morning Metallica bassist Cliff Burton died.
Mullen survived the crash, and in a recent conversation with Peter Emerson on Extra Credit with the Professor, he tells the story from a perspective that has received remarkably little attention considering how thoroughly Burton’s death has been documented over the past four decades. Early in the interview, Mullen makes a statement that immediately changes how the rest of the conversation lands:
“No one ever asked me about my personal experience.”
He also points out that some of the accounts repeated over the years differ from what he remembers.
That doesn’t turn the interview into an attempt to rewrite Metallica history. What makes it interesting is almost the opposite. Mullen is careful about what he remembers clearly, what has become fuzzy over forty years and which details he can only reconstruct from what others later told him. There is no grand conspiracy hiding underneath the bus. There is simply another witness who happened to be physically inside one of the most discussed tragedies in metal history, and his version deserves a place in the record.
Peter Emerson also published a companion piece on Heaven’s Metal Magazine exploring Mullen’s account and the history surrounding the crash.
Before Metallica Became Untouchable
One of my favorite parts of Mullen’s story happens before anything tragic enters the picture, because his introduction to Metallica sounds almost absurd when viewed through everything we know now. Mullen had been working with Y&T and was hardly what anyone would describe as a devoted thrash fan. He had previously seen Metallica at a Day on the Green show in Oakland and remembers walking toward the stage wondering, “What’s with the noise?”
That was his first impression of one of the biggest metal bands that would ever exist.
A job opportunity eventually came through Bobby Schneider after another Y&T employee passed along Mullen’s information. Hetfield called him, the two got along, and Mullen joined the touring operation during the Ozzy Osbourne run. Hetfield had broken his wrist in a skateboarding accident around that period, which temporarily put Kirk Hammett’s guitar tech John Marshall into the rhythm guitar position and gave Mullen an unusual introduction to a band whose music he was still trying to understand.
The education happened quickly. Mullen recalls walking into arenas and seeing handmade banners hanging from the upper levels, except there seemed to be more Metallica banners than Ozzy banners. The audience response told the same story. Ozzy Osbourne was already an established star with Jake E. Lee in the band and Bark at the Moon still relatively recent, yet the opening act had begun attracting the kind of reaction that suggested the normal hierarchy of the evening was starting to bend.
It is easy to describe that period now as Metallica’s inevitable rise because history has a way of making everything that happened look destined to happen. Mullen’s recollection gives us something more interesting: the view from inside the organization while people were beginning to realize, in real time, that this thing might become enormous.
Life on the Other Side of the Stage
There is also quite a bit in the interview about what being Hetfield’s guitar tech actually meant, and I think that material is worth keeping because it puts some machinery around the mythology. Mullen was responsible for Hetfield’s guitars, amplifiers, pedals, cables and the dozen little disasters waiting to happen during any live performance. Strings stretch, equipment fails, temperature changes affect instruments and Hetfield has never exactly approached the guitar with the delicacy of someone handling antique porcelain.
Mullen learned the songs because he had to. During performances he would prepare the next instrument while Hetfield was still playing the current one, making sure guitars were properly tuned and ready before they reached the stage. He also handled switching between clean and distorted sounds at points in the set, which meant understanding arrangements well enough to know exactly when those changes happened.
This is one of those jobs most people only notice when something goes wrong. Nobody leaves a Metallica concert discussing the flawless guitar change that happened during the fourth song, but everybody notices when the guitar arrives out of tune or an amplifier dies. Mullen summarizes the philosophy perfectly during the interview: “You’re only as good as your spare.”
The road also created relationships that would become more distant as Metallica grew. Mullen describes an era when the band and core crew traveled together, stayed in the same hotels and operated with fewer layers between everyone. He remembers going fishing with Hetfield and even attending a rodeo with him. As the organization became larger, the structure around the musicians naturally became larger with it, but this was still a period where the people working behind the stage lived much closer to the people standing on it.
Getting to Know Cliff Burton
Mullen doesn’t oversell his relationship with Burton, which actually makes the memories he does share feel more credible. He admits that he later learned more about Cliff through reading than he ever knew personally during those few months together. They got along, although the relentless touring schedule left little time for anyone to sit around contemplating the historical significance of the people around them.
One of their better opportunities to talk happened on a flight to England. Burton smoked, airplanes still had smoking sections, and Mullen was the new guy on the crew, so he ended up sitting beside Cliff for the eight-hour trip. Mullen remembers Burton as “100% Cliff,” completely himself in a way that stood out even among the other personalities in Metallica, and he believes some of Burton’s energy helped propel the band forward.
The more haunting memory came later.
Metallica played Solnahallen in Stockholm on September 26, 1986, in what became Burton’s final performance. Hetfield was back playing guitar after recovering from his wrist injury, the band had a good show, and Mullen remembers the general mood surrounding that part of the tour as positive. After the concert, he and Burton ended up hanging out with some local people from the venue, drinking a few beers and enjoying the night.
Nothing extraordinary happened.
That detail may be more affecting than any dramatic final exchange could have been. Mullen doesn’t remember Burton offering some eerie last statement or anyone sensing that something was wrong. They had played a successful show and spent the evening doing what people on tour do after a successful show. Mullen remembers it as relaxed and upbeat, then adds the perspective that only forty years can provide:
“When you’re in a situation like that, you’re not thinking that this is going to end in 12 hours.”
The Morning of September 27, 1986
After Stockholm, Metallica and the core crew boarded their bus for the overnight trip toward Copenhagen, where another show had been scheduled for September 27. The bus never made it.
Some of the details surrounding who slept where have become part of Metallica folklore. Kirk Hammett and Burton wanted the same bunk and reportedly settled the issue by drawing cards, with Burton ultimately getting the bunk. Mullen remembers sleeping in an upper bunk close to Cliff and believes he may have been directly above him, although he makes a point of acknowledging some uncertainty about the exact arrangement.
What he remembers next unveils considerably more clarity.
Mullen woke up to a sensation resembling a vehicle running across the rumble strips found along modern highways. The problem was that those strips weren’t there. The bus had left the pavement. He remembers becoming instantly alert, feeling the bus jerk violently and then experiencing several strange seconds where the vehicle seemed to glide or slide with almost no sound from the tires.
Then came the impact.
Mullen describes the rollover almost as a slow-motion crushing, with bags, blankets, wood, fixtures and bodies moving through the bus as it turned. The bunks had been constructed against windows that had been covered with plywood and upholstery. During the crash, the window beside Burton and Mullen broke, and according to what Mullen learned afterward, the two of them went through that opening as the bus came over on top of them.
He found himself pinned beneath the wreckage, unable to move his legs or right arm and increasingly unable to breathe. At that point, the story moves away from metal history altogether and becomes something much more basic: a 24-year-old man lying underneath a bus and beginning to understand that he may die there.
Trapped Beneath the Bus
Mullen talks openly about his faith during this section of the interview, although he doesn’t frame the experience like some perfectly packaged conversion story. He describes realizing that his faith had never truly been tested before and thinking about his family while accepting the possibility that he would not get out. He remembers reaching a strange sense of peace before eventually hearing muffled voices and realizing people above him were beginning to remove debris.
Bobby Schneider, who Mullen credits with saving his life, had apparently seen his feet moving and realized he was still trapped underneath the wreckage. As Schneider and others pulled debris away, Mullen became aware that somebody was lying beside him and pinning his right arm. At first he could only see hair. Eventually he realized the person beside him was Cliff Burton.
Mullen told Schneider that if they could get him out, he could help Cliff. Schneider told him to sit tight and concentrate on being rescued.
It took Mullen a moment to understand what Schneider was communicating.
“He knew,” Mullen says in the interview, referring to Schneider’s understanding that Burton had already died. Mullen remembers the details becoming increasingly blurry after that realization. The rescuers eventually had to jack the bus upward to free him, and at one point the bus fell again before they managed to raise it a second time and pull him out.
Mullen left the scene in an ambulance with broken fingers and toes, a dislocated shoulder and extensive muscle injuries. Burton, also 24, died at the scene.
The Black Ice Question
The official explanation given for the crash involved black ice, and members of Metallica have questioned that account for decades. Hetfield famously searched the road afterward looking for the ice the driver claimed had caused the bus to lose control, and the uncertainty eventually became another part of the mythology surrounding Burton’s death.
Mullen’s recollection adds another piece of information without pretending to solve the mystery. He remembers extremely cold conditions during that part of the trip and recalls that the equipment truck had frozen up on the way to the Stockholm show, forcing the crew to visit a music store and buy supplies they needed to get through the night. He still owns a plastic string winder purchased that afternoon, which he describes as the only physical object he has kept from that period.
I think that is where the black ice discussion becomes most useful. Forty years later, there probably isn’t much value in pretending a new interview will suddenly solve every disputed detail surrounding the crash. Mullen gives us his memory of the conditions and his memory of what happened inside the bus. Those pieces belong beside the other accounts rather than being forced into a definitive theory that the available evidence doesn’t support.
Going Back to Metallica
After several days in a Swedish hospital, Mullen had another surreal experience when he finally managed to reach his parents. They had not yet heard about the accident, which meant he had to tell them from his hospital bed while immediately assuring them that he was alive and expected to come home.
Metallica manager Peter Mensch later came to the hospital, drove him to Copenhagen and helped get him onto a flight home. Mullen remembers the time with Mensch as helpful during a period when he was still trying to understand what had happened. The next time he remembers everyone being together was at Burton’s funeral.
Metallica then faced a decision that has also been examined endlessly over the years. They could stop, or they could continue. They chose to continue, eventually beginning auditions for a new bassist, and Mullen went back to work with them despite having some understandable reservations about returning to the road after nearly dying on it.
That decision put him in another small corner of Metallica history. Mullen picked Jason Newsted up from the airport when Newsted came in for his audition, and he remembers becoming convinced during the drive that Newsted was going to get the job. Metallica ultimately reached the same conclusion.
Mullen stayed through the Garage Days Re-Revisited period before deciding he wanted to make another serious attempt at becoming a professional guitarist himself. Metallica wanted a larger commitment from him as the organization moved toward the ...And Justice for All era, but Mullen had spent years playing guitar and felt he needed to find out where that path could take him.
So he left.
In hindsight, walking away from Metallica immediately before they became one of the biggest bands on Earth sounds like the setup to a story about regret. Mullen doesn’t tell it that way. He went on to play professionally, spent several years with Eddie Money, moved to Nashville and eventually joined Collin Raye’s band after initially working as his guitar tech. His career moved through completely different musical worlds before, in one of those strange circular turns that occasionally make a life look better plotted than most screenplays, Metallica came calling again.
Coming Full Circle
In 1999, Mullen learned that Metallica needed someone to replace Hetfield’s guitar technician. Within roughly 24 hours, he says he had his old job back, was making three times his previous salary and was preparing for his first show in Berlin with Metallica and an orchestra.
The kid who once watched Metallica at Day on the Green and wondered what all the noise was about had somehow left the band, built another career, moved across the country and eventually found himself standing beside Hetfield’s guitars again.
Mullen’s life continued after September 27, 1986, and the decisions he made afterward took him through Eddie Money, Nashville, country music and eventually back into Metallica’s orbit. The crash became part of his history without becoming the only thing in it.
Toward the end of the interview, Mullen talks about how those experiences changed him. He describes becoming more serious about his work, more focused and more appreciative of the life he built. When Emerson asks what he would tell the younger version of himself climbing onto that bus in 1986, Mullen talks about staying the course through whatever trials are coming and trusting that the experiences ahead will eventually become part of the person he grows into.
Forty years later, that may be the most interesting reason to hear his story now. Cliff Burton’s death has become so deeply embedded in metal culture that many of us first encountered it as history rather than news, something that had already happened before we ever heard the opening bass notes of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” or figured out who was playing what on “Orion.” The people inside that history experienced something much messier, more immediate and far less organized than the version eventually assembled through documentaries, books and anniversary articles.
Mullen remembers the tour before anyone knew where Metallica were headed. He remembers Burton as a person he was still getting to know rather than an icon whose photograph would eventually hang on bedroom walls. He remembers a good show in Stockholm, a few beers afterward, climbing onto a bus and waking up when something suddenly felt wrong. He remembers the vehicle leaving the pavement, the strange silence before the impact, the wreckage around him and realizing that the person lying beside him was Cliff.
There are plenty of ways to tell the history of Metallica, and Burton’s death will always remain one of the darkest chapters in that history. Forty years later, Aidan Mullen has added something that history always needs: another voice from someone who was actually there.
Forty years later, Cliff Burton’s absence still hangs over metal in a way few losses ever have. He left behind more than a handful of landmark records and some of the most distinctive bass work the genre has ever heard; he helped shape the sound, attitude and imagination of a band that would go on to change heavy music forever. For everyone who discovered Metallica through Kill ’Em All, Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets, and for every musician who heard “Orion” and realized the bass could carry its own mythology, Cliff remains part of the architecture. Rest in peace, Cliff Burton. Your voice is still in the room.
