Opinion: Why Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine cannot stop talking about Metallica
Every time Dave Mustaine has something to say about Metallica, it’s like Al Bundy talking about his big game for Polk High. Not because he brings it up once in a while, but because he never stops. How is someone who hasn’t been in a band for forty years still talking about a band he hasn’t been in for forty years?
This is beating a dead horse, but for the few metalheads living under rocks, here’s the deal. In 1981, Mustaine disbanded his band Panic and joined Metallica as lead guitarist after Lars Ulrich placed an ad in The Recycler looking for someone who could shred. Mustaine later recalled walking into the audition, warming up, and asking if he was actually going to audition. “No, you’ve got the job,” they told him. He suggested they get some beer to celebrate.
That celebration, by most accounts, never really stopped.
Metallica began recording their debut album, Kill ’Em All, in 1983, but Mustaine’s tenure was short-lived. He was an extremely talented guitarist and an unmanageable drunk. Brian Slagel, founder of Metal Blade Records, put it plainly: “Dave was an incredibly talented guy but he also had an incredibly large problem with alcohol and drugs. He’d get wasted and become a real crazy person, a raging megalomaniac, and the other guys just couldn’t deal with that after a while. I mean, they all drank of course, but Dave drank more… much more.”
Mustaine brought his dog to rehearsal; the dog jumped on bassist Ron McGovney’s car and scratched the paint. Hetfield allegedly kicked the hound, Mustaine attacked Hetfield. He was fired, begged his way back in, and was reinstated.
On April 11, 1983, Metallica finally had enough. While driving to New York to record their debut, they packed up Mustaine’s gear, drove him to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and put him on a Greyhound bus back to Los Angeles. For Metallica, it was logistics. For Mustaine, it became an origin myth he’s been rewriting ever since.
During his brief time in the band, Mustaine toured with Metallica, co-wrote four songs that appeared on Kill ’Em All, and co-wrote two songs that later appeared on Ride the Lightning. Those credits are real and deserved. He’s also made unverified claims to having written parts of “Leper Messiah” from Master of Puppets—because of course he has. The pattern is consistent: legitimate contribution followed by an endless need for metal daddy’s acknowledgment.
The relationship between Mustaine and Metallica has since stretched into a forty-year shitty soap opera. They’ve reconciled, did the Big Four Shows together, fallen out again over remasters and credits, and repeated the cycle enough times to outlast most marriages. Metallica treats it like whatever. Mustaine treats it like the high school game where he fumbled the ball.
Which is why Megadeth covering “Ride the Lightning” on their final album feels less like homage and more like some weird, emotional regression. (It’s an awful cover, btw.) Dave already made his rebuttal decades ago with “Mechanix,” Megadeth’s speed-fueled version of Metallica’s “The Four Horsemen.” The point was made. The argument was had. Reopening it now doesn’t add context—it just replays a doom loop that Mustaine cannot let go of his conflict with the band who eclipse his career in every way.
What’s especially frustrating is that Megadeth doesn’t need Metallica to matter. They have their own legacy, their own fans, their own place in metal history. They’re beloved by a lot of long-haired dudes who love craft beer and quote Rick and Morty. But why keep circling a band you didn’t write the best songs for and didn’t play on the records that made them a global institution? Kirk Hammett wrote the riff to “Enter Sandman,” not Dave Mustaine, and that says just about everything.
In a later interview, Mustaine reflected, “We’re constantly working on improving our relationship, me and James and Lars. I really do love those guys. That’s why we fought so much—it was that I missed them. And the idea of leaving the band, it was just hard to fathom.” Anyone who is a fan of metal music has had to endure this sad dialogue of comparison for decades, and it always plays the same way; like that scene in Mad Men where one character admits obsession and Don Draper shuts it down with a flat, devastating: “I don’t think about you at all.”
Forty years later, it’s still hard for Mustaine to accept. Four touchdowns in a single game, Dave. We get it, bro. Move on. Celebrate the solo of “Tornado of Souls” instead.
Featured photo by Selbymay courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
