More than four decades after his split with METALLICA, Dave Mustaine says he has no interest in revisiting old drama. Speaking in a new interview with Brazil’s Ibagenscast, the MEGADETH leader opened up about his decision to record “Ride The Lightning” for the band’s upcoming final album, Megadeth, while also making it clear that any talk of a feud with his former bandmates is long in the past.
Mustaine explained that “Ride The Lightning” felt like the right choice because of his personal connection to the song, having co-written it with James Hetfield before his 1983 departure from METALLICA.
“I’ve got a really good explanation for you. That was one of the songs that I wrote with [METALLICA frontman] James [Hetfield], and just like the other songs that I wrote, something happened when I left,” Dave said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “Parts were changed, credits were assigned to other people, and I thought of all the songs, ‘Ride The Lightning’ showcased my guitar talents the best: the spider chord that I invented, the grunting chords. Those were things that bands weren’t doing. And it happens in ‘Ride The Lightning’.”
Rather than simply recreating the 1984 classic, Mustaine said MEGADETH wanted to push the song further and make it their own.
“I’ve always thought that James was an excellent guitar player, so when we set out to do the song, we figured we needed to do it as good or better than the original,” he explained. “And we figured, how are we gonna do that? METALLICA‘s an amazing group. So we sped it up just a little bit, made it a little bit more frantic, and then we kind of spiced up the solo a little bit. And then, at the end, there’s some drum fills that the METALLICA guys had played, and I told [MEGADETH drummer] Dirk [Verbeuren], I said, ‘Have fun there. Just have fun.’ So he did a drum fill at the end in the four spots that there’s drum fills. And I think that they’re really stunning drum fills. They may be similar to the original stuff, but I’m not sure how similar. And he recorded his parts, and I love it.”
The conversation also turned to the possibility of MEGADETH performing the track throughout the band’s farewell tour. While Mustaine confirmed it’s now in the live arsenal, he stressed that the band wants to get it exactly right before making it a regular part of the set: “Now it’s just a matter of us playing it live and when in the set it would be played and how many times do we wanna play it?
“I mean, we may not play it down [in South America]; we may only play it once down here. I don’t know. It has to be right, because the first time we play that, people are gonna record it and it’s gonna go around the world. And I don’t want a version of a song that we did that almost everyone says is better than the original, I don’t wanna go out there and play that song and have a little lack of confidence. I wanna go out there and own it. I wanna be the f**king boss.”
But perhaps the most telling part of the interview came when Mustaine addressed the long-discussed tension between himself and METALLICA, making it clear that revisiting “Ride The Lightning” was never about reigniting old rivalries.
“And going back to why we did that song — it’s kind of closing the circle, paying my respects to the band that I was a founding member in,” Dave added. “And love me or hate me, they’ll never be able to erase me. And I think that when people can look with acceptance and fondness of the two bands and not try and keep something that I don’t wanna keep going. I don’t wanna have a feud. I’ve put that to sleep so many years ago. So, yeah, I wanted to do something that was — just show some respect, ’cause it doesn’t matter to me if he cares, if he likes it; it matters what I do and that I show respect and close the circle.”
MEGADETH already gave fans a taste of what that sounds like live, performing “Ride The Lightning” for the first two times ever during back-to-back shows on April 26 and April 27 at Movistar Arena as part of the band’s South American farewell run.
Mustaine previously elaborated on his decision to include a cover of “Ride the Lightning” on the album during an appearance on Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM.
He said: “Well, we were past the halfway point in the album. ‘Cause that song ended up being song number 13. And when the time came to do that, we were talking about — what we usually do is a rendition of somebody’s song that we like or something like that, or a remake.
“And when I was talking with [my son] Justis [who is part of the MEGADETH management team], he had said, ‘Why don’t you do ‘Ride The Lightning’?’ And I kind of looked at him like, ‘Hmm.’ And then I thought about it. I said, ‘That’s probably a good idea.’ And I said, ‘Let’s try it.’ We tried it. It was cool. And I said to the band guys, ‘Okay, if we’re gonna do this, let’s make sure that we do it as good as the original or better.’ ‘Cause we gotta do that. If we’re gonna honor those guys by doing a new version of the song that I did with James [Hetfield], I think it’s important to make it as good or better. And what we did was we sped it up a little bit, and the drum fills at the very end, I told Dirk [Verbeuren, MEGADETH drummer], ‘Have fun there. And you can beef it up if you want’.
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