In a revealing and candid conversation on The Shawn Ryan Show, MEGADETH frontman Dave Mustaine opened up about his formative role in METALLICA’s early days, detailing his brief yet impactful tenure with the band in the early 1980s. During the extensive three-hour interview with host Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, Mustaine reflected on his entry into METALLICA, the band’s internal dynamics, and his enduring influence on their music.
Mustaine recounted his journey from his previous band, PANIC, to METALLICA, sparked by a classified ad in The Recycler, a Los Angeles-based magazine. “It said, ‘Wanted: lead guitar player,’” Mustaine recalled (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “A phone call with drummer Lars Ulrich sealed the deal. “I said, ‘I like MOTÖRHEAD and BUDGIE,’ and he goes, ‘You like BUDGIE, man?’ That was the icebreaker,” Mustaine explained, emphasizing how his taste in obscure heavy rock established his credibility in the burgeoning New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene.
Following the call, Mustaine met Ulrich face-to-face at his Newport Beach apartment. Their conversation led to an impromptu jam session at bassist Ron McGovney’s parents’ house. “I went up there with Lars and I set up my amps and I plugged my guitar in and I just started warming up,” Mustaine recounted. “[And] they wouldn’t come in. They wouldn’t come into the rehearsal room. So I put my guitar down and I thought, ‘This is really strange.’ And I walked out and I said, ‘Guys, are we gonna do the audition?’ They said, ‘You got the gig.'”
While Mustaine’s stint with METALLICA lasted barely two years, he asserts that his contributions to their early sound were significant—and foundational. “I wrote a lot of their music that made them,” he stated bluntly.
[The] ‘Ride The Lightning’ [title track] I wrote,” he said. “‘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.”
Mustaine’s tenure with METALLICA was cut short in 1983, during the band’s fateful drive to New York. After a car accident and growing tensions, he was unceremoniously fired. “They woke me up one morning and said, ‘You’re out of the band,’” Mustaine recalled, describing his sense of betrayal. “No warning. No second chance.”
While METALLICA’s official line has often cited Mustaine’s heavy drinking and violent behavior as reasons for his dismissal, he contends that the band’s culture at the time was far from sober. “We all drank. That’s why they called it ALCOHOLICA,” Mustaine quipped. “I mean, they didn’t call it DAVE-ALCOHOLICA. We all drank. And they continued to drink like that even after I was gone.
Mustaine’s departure from METALLICA, while devastating at the time, fueled his ambition to create something even bigger. Returning to Los Angeles, he founded MEGADETH, a band that would go on to become one of thrash metal’s “Big Four” alongside METALLICA, SLAYER, and ANTHRAX. Still, the sting of his dismissal—and his unacknowledged contributions—remains.
Reflecting on METALLICA’s subsequent success, Mustaine remarked, “They used my music. You listen to the riffs—you know they’re mine. It’s like you think I’m gonna all of a sudden hear my riff and say, ‘That’s not me’?”
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