Lars Ulrich discussed Dave Mustaine’s songwriting on Metallica’s 1983 debut album Kill ‘Em All in a new interview with Metal Hammer, talking specifically about “The Four Horsemen.”
“Dave brought in some things he had from his old band, Panic – things he’d been jamming, bigger-picture ideas, stuff like that.
The song ‘The Four Horsemen was,’ in its early version, called ‘Mechanix,’ and it was literally a song about sex. There were lyrics about taking the hose and sticking it in the tank – a gas-station stop disguised as sexual engagement.
It didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but we knew that was the sort of thing we wanted to move away from – the sexual stuff that hard rock bands were singing about at the time, which we thought was a little light and a little obvious.
You didn’t find stuff like that on the first Witchfynde album [1980’s ‘Give ‘Em Hell’].”
He also discussed “Phantom Lord.”
“That song was like ‘Mechanix,’ in that it originally had sexual connotations to it. But that’s who Dave Mustaine was. He was cool and confident, he had a cool haircut.
When we went and hung out with him at his apartment, there were girls there. He was much more of a man of the world, where James [Hetfield] and I were these weird little awkward, disenfranchised teenagers.”
