Megadeth founder Dave Mustaine believes his guitar playing served as a foundational blueprint for all the bands that make up thrash metal’s “Big Four.”
Speaking with São Paulo’s “89 FM A Rádio Rock“, the frontman detailed his early interactions with his peers in Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, arguing that his musical fingerprints are visible across the entire 1980s movement.
“Well, I’ve been very invested in the metal community,” Mustaine stated. “Kerry [King, Slayer guitarist] and I played together, and I showed him how to play Megadeth songs, which was before [Slayer] started having all their pivotal records. Kerry and I had a really great time together. And I wrote music in Metallica and I wrote music in Megadeth. So, I’ve been very influential with the guitar with these three bands.”
He also noted a distinct shift in Anthrax‘s creative trajectory after their paths crossed on the East Coast.
“And when I met Scott [Ian, Anthrax guitarist] and the guys in Anthrax out in New York, same thing happened. Their first record was very different from the record they made after they met me and the guys in Metallica. So I think that’s great. I love all those bands.”
The four thrash titans famously shared a stage for the first time on June 16, 2010, drawing 81,000 fans to the Sonisphere festival in Warsaw, Poland. This historic grouping led to a series of international dates, culminating in a massive September 14, 2011 concert at Yankee Stadium in New York City. While Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax subsequently played together at events like Australia’s Soundwave in 2013 and Heavy MTL in 2014, a full four-band reunion has remained elusive for over a decade.
Mustaine has actively campaigned for another “Big Four” event in recent years. In 2022, he suggested staging one final concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum, hoping to coax Slayer out of retirement to officially “pass the torch” to a new generation of metal acts. Despite his continued requests, he acknowledged that Metallica showed little interest in the idea.
At the time, he told Greg Prato of Songfacts: “I really think it’s time for the guys in Metallica to step up and us do one last round, see if we can get Slayer to come out of retirement and do a ‘Big Four’ passing of the torch to the new ‘Big Four’. It would remain to be seen who they are.”
“I think it would be really cool symbolically if we did something at, like, the L.A. Coliseum, even if it’s one show and that’s it,” he continued. “Slayer is from Los Angeles, so it would probably make it more convenient for them to go home at night. I personally have been hoping for this for a while, and I keep asking and asking and asking. They’re just not into it. But that’s up to them.”
If another show ever materialized, Mustaine has been clear about his required conditions. In 2018, he expressed frustration over the billing and staging hierarchies of past events, specifically referencing a backstage comment made by Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett on the The Big Four: Live From Sofia, Bulgaria DVD release.
“It always kind of soured to me when you watch Kirk Hammett say on the DVD, when they’re praying, and he says that ‘we’re the Big One,'” Mustaine told SiriusXM at the time. “That just kind of shows you how the mentality was there — that it really wasn’t the ‘Big Four’; it was Metallica and then the three of us.”
He concluded that any future collaboration would require absolute parity across the board.
“I would love to see it done in a way where we all got treated fairly and we all played together, same amount of time, same kind of stage situation, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. And it’s cool, because Slayer‘s gonna down in history, and they don’t need the ‘Big Four’ to make them any more legendary than they already are. Nor do I.”
