More than four decades after he was ousted from Metallica, Dave Mustaine still has a bone to pick. During a recent appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, the Megadeth frontman revisited his exit from the band.
Although he never recorded a single album during his two years with Metallica, the Grammy winner insists he played a role in the metal pioneers' success.
"I told them when I left, 'Do not use my music,' and of course they used it," Dave Mustaine said. He went on to list multiple Metallica hits he says he wrote, including "Ride the Lightning," "The Call of Ktulu," "Phantom Lord," "Metal Militia," "Jump in the Fire," and "The Four Horsemen."
"And I wrote a bunch of 'Leper Messiah,' too," Mustaine said, referring to the track on Metallica's 1986 album Master of Puppets. "They didn't give me credit on that. You listen to the riffs, you know they're my riffs. It's like, boing -- you think I'm going to all of a sudden hear my riff and say, 'That's not me?'"
He continued, "I wrote a lot of their music that made them, and all the solos on that first record were mine. The best Kirk [Hammett] could try and copy them."
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In 1981, Dave Mustaine answered Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich's local newspaper ad looking for a lead guitarist. However, his time with the band was reportedly plagued with alcohol-fueled volatility. Two years later, lead vocalist James Hetfield woke Mustaine up and told him he had an hour to pack his bags and leave.
"I mean, they all drank of course, but I guess they could all hold their liquor better than Dave," said Brian Slagel, founder of Metal Blade Records. "And I could see they were beginning to get fed up of seeing Dave drunk out of his mind all the time."
However, Mustaine says his penchant for overindulging was far from unique among his former bandmates.
"We all drank. That's why they called it Alcoholica. I mean, they didn't call it Dave Alcoholica," he told Ryan. "We all drank, and they continued to drink like that even after I was gone."