General Discussion

Miles Archer

(18,837 posts) Thu Aug 10, 2017, 05:36 PM Aug 2017

Father of the late Cliff Burton has been quietly donating Metallica royalties to music scholarships

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/cliff-burton-royalties-scholarship/

Cliff Burton‘s father has been quietly donating the royalty checks he receives to a scholarship at his son’s old high school.

Burton’s family continues to receive royalty checks from the three Metallica albums he played on, and his father has been donating the money for music scholarships to Castro Valley High School, according to a new interview on Ultimate Guitar. “The kids that have won it thank me for it,” he said. “I think Cliff probably would have done that with his money, because he was not against education by any means. He liked it very much.”

Ray Burton recalled the first time his son came home with a royalty check. “I think it was $1,500,” he noted. “He said, ‘Mom and Dad, here’s my first check. Come on, I’ll take you out to dinner tonight.’ ‘Okay, let’s go!’ We went to dinner to his favorite sushi place in Hayward, which is right next door to Castro Valley. That was the first thing that I got that maybe there were bigger things down the road.”

Despite his age and the generation gap, Ray Burton said he still enjoys Metallica concerts. “The music isn’t my big-band music, but nevertheless it is entertaining,” he said. “Music should be entertaining to you, and they certainly are. James [Hetfield] does a fantastic job as a singer and the frontman. He’s just an absolute natural. I remember one time asking him if he was a cheerleader in high school. Got a big laugh, and gosh, he was anything but that.”