Steve-O recently revealed that he confronted Lars Ulrich for betraying Cliff Burton’s legacy. In a recent episode of Steve O’s Wild Ride!, the host recalled:
“The VJ guy in charge of the show, he said, ‘Here, we have a request for a Metallica music video and just to let you know there are so many requests for Metallica music. Look at this pile.'”
Steve-O continued, “And there’s this huge pile of envelopes on the floor and they said, ‘Every single one of those letters is a request for a Metallica music video but I want you to know that the band’s official statement, the official position is that they’ll never make a music video. They don’t want to be commercial’ or whatever it is.”
“And I thought, ‘Okay, that’s great,’ but then Cliff died, and then next thing they got the ‘One’ music video and I thought, ‘Wait, you said one thing and then you did another.’ And I was kind of offended by that,” he further explained.
The host also talked about his conversation with Ulrich, “Years years later, I’m partying with Lars and I told him among other things, I told him, ‘When I saw the ‘One’ music video, I arrived at the conclusion that Cliff was leaving claw marks inside his coffin trying to get out to strangle him’ [laughs]. It’s a terrible thing to say.”
‘One’ was Metallica’s first music video, directed by Bill Pope and Michael Salomon. It premiered on MTV on January 20, 1989. The video, filmed in Long Beach, California on December 7, 1988, is mostly in black and white and shows the band playing in a warehouse. It also includes scenes and dialogue from the 1971 movie ‘Johnny Got His Gun.’
The idea of using scenes from the film in their video excited the band. “The idea took precedent over the assumption that we had to do a video because that’s what you did when you were putting out your next single,” Ulrich said. “We were pretty comfortable with the idea right away — dare I say even excited about it.”
Originally, Metallica wanted director Wayne Isham for their video, but he struggled with combining archival footage and band shots. The job then went to Michael Salomon, who had a background in editing but little experience with metal videos.
