In a recent appearance on “The Shawn Ryan Show,” Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine openly discussed his brief but impactful tenure with Metallica in the early 1980s, emphasizing his significant songwriting contributions to the band’s initial sound.
Mustaine recounted how he joined Metallica after seeing a classified ad. He connected with drummer Lars Ulrich over their shared appreciation for Motörhead and Budgie. He described his “audition” with the band, where he simply started warming up: “I went up there with Lars and I set up my amps and I plugged my guitar in and I just started warming up. [And] they wouldn’t come in… I walked out and I said, ‘Guys, are we gonna do the audition?’ They said, ‘You got the gig.'”, he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Despite his short time with the band, Mustaine asserts that his influence on Metallica‘s early material was fundamental. “I wrote a lot of their music that made them,” he stated. He specifically cited several tracks: “[The] ‘Ride The Lightning‘ [title track] I wrote… ‘The Call Of Ktulu’ I wrote. Let’s see, what else? There’s ‘Phantom Lord,’ ‘Metal Militia,’ ‘Jump In The Fire,’ ‘The Four Horsemen.’ And I wrote a bunch of ‘Leper Messiah’ [on Metallica’s third album, ‘Master Of Puppets‘] too. They didn’t give me credit on that. You listen to the riffs, you know they’re my riffs. It’s, like, you think I’m gonna all of a sudden hear my riff and say, ‘That’s not me.’ So, yeah, I wrote a lot of their music that made them, and all the solos on that first record were mine — the best Kirk [Hammett, Mustaine’s replacement in Metallica] could try and copy them.”
Mustaine’s time with Metallica ended in 1983 when he was dismissed. He described the moment: “They woke me up one morning and said, ‘You’re out of the band.’ No warning. No second chance.” While Metallica has often attributed his firing to heavy drinking and violent behavior, Mustaine argued that the band’s environment was not sober. “We all drank. That’s why they called it Alcoholica,” Mustaine quipped. “I mean, they didn’t call it Dave-Alcoholica. We all drank. And they continued to drink like that even after I was gone.”
Following his departure, Mustaine founded Megadeth, which became one of thrash metal’s “Big Four” alongside Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax. The ongoing impact of his dismissal and his claims of uncredited musical contributions remain a significant point for Mustaine. He remarked, “They used my music. You listen to the riffs—you know they’re mine. It’s like you think I’m gonna all of a sudden hear my riff and say, ‘That’s not me’?” Reflecting on being “axed” from Metallica, Mustaine stated: “I went home and I contacted a friend of mine and I said, ‘I quit.’ She said, ‘No, you didn’t. You got fired.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I got fired. I quit. I got fired, whatever. I’m back home. Wrong word. [it’s] not changing the outcome.’ And I made sure not to ever say that I quit, ’cause I wanted people to know that I was unfairly dismissed and that I didn’t give a sh*t. ‘Cause we [Megadeth] may not be as big as they [Metallica] are. Hell, their biggest song, ‘Enter Sandman’, go look up the band Excel right now. Look up their song — I think it’s something ‘Into The Unknown’. Pretty similar.”
