To Live Is to Die
song composed by Cliff Burton with lyrics by Paul Gerhardt, Cliff Burton performed by Metallica
"To Live Is to Die" is a song by the American heavy metal band Metallica from their fourth studio album, ...And Justice for All, released on September 7, 1988. Made as a tribute to their former bassist Cliff Burton, who died two years before the song's release, the heavy metal track is built on a riff that he wrote before his death. Though predominantly an instrumental, it incorporates a spoken word section where James Hetfield recites a poem written by Burton, with some lines taken from German poet Paul Gerhardt and American novelist Stephen R. Donaldson.
The song has received positive responses from music critics, many of whom commented on its role as a tribute and its associated sentimental value. Metallica initially went several years without performing the song in their live concerts due to the emotional context behind it. They played the song in full for the first time during one of the performances of their 30th anniversary celebration at The Fillmore in 2011, after their current bassist Robert Trujillo pushed for it to be played.
Background
Metallica released their third studio album, Master of Puppets, in 1986. To promote the album, the band embarked on the Damage, Inc. Tour throughout that year. On September 27, 1986, shortly after playing a show in Stockholm, the band's tour bus crashed and ended up crushing their then-bassist Cliff Burton, killing him.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “To Live Is to Die” is song composed by Cliff Burton with lyrics by Paul Gerhardt, Cliff Burton performed by Metallica. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Live, song and composed, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “song composed by Cliff Burton with lyrics by Paul Gerhardt, Cliff Burton performed by Metallica” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2038875. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 2011 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “To Live Is to Die” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.