El Cerrito is a small city in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, with around 26,000 people. The community developed along San Pablo Avenue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was originally known as Rust, after local businessman Wilhelm Rust, before being incorporated as El Cerrito in 1917. The name means “the little hill” in Spanish. El Cerrito lies immediately north of Berkeley and Albany and is connected to San Francisco and the wider East Bay by BART. The city is largely residential, with the Hillside Natural Area providing walking trails and views across the Bay. Despite its modest size, El Cerrito has an exceptional place in American rock and metal history. Creedence Clearwater Revival originated here in 1959, when John Fogerty, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford first began playing together. More than two decades later, Metallica lived and rehearsed in a house on Carlson Boulevard from 1983 to 1986, where much of Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets was written and developed during the band’s formative Bay Area thrash metal years.

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