DAVE MUSTAINE: If You Hear This Guitar Technique In Any METALLICA Song, It Means I Wrote It

MEGADETH frontman Dave Mustaine singled out his signature spider chord technique as one of the key elements to recognize his work in METALLICA, telling (see video below):  Wake Up Dead is a song that has my personal favorite guitar solo in it – whenever we play this live I get really excited.

“And every single night I swear this happens – I get excited and I get halfway in the solo and I forget where I’m at. And it’s one of those solos were you’re going… *gasps* So this song, we have a love-hate affair.

“And there’s a part in there. I invented this one thing. I was really lazy at guitar and I thought that when you’re jumping [power] chords you have to lift off this chord. No matter how elegant you are, there was a little bit of time in between.

“So I thought just dropped these two fingers [second and fourth finger on the fretting hand] when it’s still sustaining. There’s no loss, there’s nothing there. And I figured it kind of looks like a spider. So I call it a spider chord.

“And we did that in METALLICA a lot. [plays riff from ‘Ride the Lightning,] You know that riff, right?

“And then in ‘Wake Up Dead’… [plays ‘Wake Up Dead’]. That’s a spider riff.

“So that’s shown up in MEGADETH songs and METALLICA songs and that’s my part. So if you heard it in METALLICA song – I wrote that song.”