Megadeth vocalist/guitarist Dave Mustaine‘s press tour for his band’s impending final studio album (due out this Friday, January 23rd) and the farewell tour that will follow it has seen him sit down with Revolver. With a cover of Metallica‘s “Ride The Lightning” featured on that final full-length opus, the conversation in his recent interviews has regularly steered towards his thoughts on Metallica — a band he was infamously fired from back in 1983.
“Ride The Lightning” featured writing contributions from Mustaine, and as he’ repeatedly stated in the leadup to this new album, his decision to cover it was a way of proverbially ‘closing the circle’ and “showing respect.”
Mustaine however has had a very volatile on-again, off-again relationship with his former Metallica bandmates in vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. While the trio have managed to reconcile their fractured friendship for periods of time in the past, Mustaine‘s 2016 royalty dispute with Hetfield and Ulrich over Metallica‘s plans to release a deluxe edition of their “No Life ‘Til Leather” demo once again left them on bad terms.
A recently published chat with Spin found Mustaine state that Hetfield, Ulrich and himself are, “constantly working on improving our relationship.” He added, “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.”
Whether or not there his newly published chat with Revolver was conducted before or after that conversation with Spin, it would seem that the there’s still some lingering issues to work out. When asked by Revolver if he had spoken to the Metallica guys since it was revealed he was covering “Ride The Lightning“, Mustaine offered, “No. And I don’t expect to. But I’m sure at some point we’ll hear what they think.”
When asked if wished that his friendship with the aforementioned duo remained active, he responded:
“You know, I liked them. If the friendship was restarted, it wouldn’t bother me. I would accept, and I think it would be nice to revisit some of those times. But I just think because there was a lot of hurt and misunderstanding around our time together that it would be difficult not to keep bringing up the past.
I think what needs to happen is there needs to be a Megadeth/Metallica tour. Period. That would, I’m sure, make everything right. We could hang out. Spend time together. But I know they don’t really tour like we do. I mean, when we go out on tour, we play many, many shows.”
When it was pointed out by Revolver that rebuilding a relationship with so much history can be hard, Mustaine responded:
“Yeah. It’s starting over. Sometimes, I think, when you have a grudge, you can’t… You can’t get past it. Personally, I’m pretty good at getting over grudges. But I don’t know…
If it’s meant to be, I’m sure I’ll see those guys. I remember we played up in San Francisco at the Cow Palace, and James told me he wanted me to play ‘My Last Words‘, because that was his favorite song. I thought that was really cool. Thank you, James. To say that you had a favorite song of mine, that was really nice.”
This is by no means the first time Mustaine has called for the two bands to tour together, though it does find him markedly less antagonistic than he was about the idea back in 2023.
