During a new interview with “The Shawn Ryan Show,” Megadeth frontman and former Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine spoke in length about his time with James Hetfield and co. and his exit from the band in 1983.
Recalling his firing, Mustaine accused Metallica of taking credit for songs he wrote, despite him asking them not to.
“I had a reel of tape… that had probably two days’ worth of guitar riffs on it, just me playing and playing and playing. And we took that tape player and the reel of tape with us out to New York,” he explained. “We did two shows out there, and after those two shows, they woke me up one morning and said, ‘Look, you’re out of the band.’ … I said, ‘No warning? No second chance? You’re not gonna give me a warning? You’re just gonna kick me out?’ And I thought that was unfair. And it showed a grotesque lack of character. And so that pissed me off and was a huge part of the fuel.
“But at the time, I was really mad and I didn’t wanna forgive them for what they did. And I told them when I left, ‘Do not use my music. And of course they used it.”
He continued, listing the many Metallica songs that were allegedly based on his riffs: “[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.”
