I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine was in Metallica once! Mustaine hardly ever brings it up or complains about it, and frankly we forgot, so… alright, enough of the bit. Dave Mustaine is complaining about Metallica again, this time during a Twitter Spaces event for his RattleheadsNFTs. This whole first paragraph is painful.
During the discussion, Mustaine once again went on the offensive about his time in Metallica. Mustaine alleges that people didn't know he was fired from the band, and were pissed at live shows when Metallica didn't sound the same. Or in his own words, "something very, very, very wrong with the band that they heard on tape versus the band that they were watching."
"Well, Megadeth had a little bit of a following before we got discovered by the record company," said Mustaine as transcribed by Blabbermouth. "So it's kind of unfair. But the way that it started was I had a band that I was in called Panic. And I lived in Huntington Beach. And there were a lot of bands playing backyard beer keg parties, and I thought that that was pretty fun, to go to the parties and pick up on girls. And I started seeing how easy it was for guitar players to have people freak out over them, pay attention to them, treat 'em with respect and stuff, and I know I wanted that. So Panic was formed. That band was short-lived, and I ended up joining Metallica and was in that band for about two years and then Megadeth happened. So the discovery part was…
"After I left Metallica, the world wanted to know what I was gonna do, because I was this huge component of Metallica's success. I'm here, and then I'm gone. And people that went to go see them after I was no longer in the band and didn't know that there was a lineup change said that there was something very, very, very wrong with the band that they heard on tape versus the band that they were watching. And that's when people started to look for me. And the rest is history.
"Now, I think that the band did great. I think they were fine. In fact, I believe that Kirk [Hammett, Mustaine's replacement in Metallica] did a good job playing my parts. Coming into a band and having to play somebody else's stuff isn't always fun, but I think he was a gentleman and did a good job."
Maybe David Ellefson is right.
