"I told him not to join. I said, "Fuck those guys, they suck." I just thought they were stupid. When Hetfield called up Cliff and said that they wanted him to join, I went with him to see Metallica play with Bitch at the Stone in San Francisco. Cliff was saying, "Geez, this is kind of weird. These guys want to talk to me about joining their band, and their bass player's still here." Then we were standing outside and Metallica's roadies got busted for stealing beer from the club. Cliff was like, "I don't know about these guys." It was pretty funny—especially in retrospect."
still thinking about how jim martin (ex-fnm guitarist, also one of cliff’s friends) told cliff not to join metallica, said “fuck those [lars and james] guys, they suck”, and thought they (lars and james) were “stupid”.