In an interview with Loudwire, MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine was asked if he is truly “the godfather of thrash metal” like ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian wrote in his book, “I’m The Man: The Story Of That Guy From Anthrax”. Dave responded (see video below):
I think there’s a good chance it might not have… The guitar player that we hired in METALLICA before James [Hetfield] actually started playing [guitar] was… he wasn’t metal. And if he would have been the guy that we chose over me, who knows what would have happened? And I think that if you really look at the mathematics of METALLICA in the beginning, me being the only guitar player, if I wasn’t there, there probably wouldn’t have been a METALLICA. But let’s not kid ourselves: James is a great guitar player; he really is. And I’m sure that at some point they would have realized that he needed to play guitar and sing, and they would found a guitar player as good as I am. I just know that about those guys; they’re excellent musicians and they know what they want. Now, if James would have been playing guitar at the time when I joined? I don’t know… I don’t know that that would have held the same kind of merit. You know what I mean? But since I was the only guy there, I think it’s probably pretty accurate.”
Scott Ian says in his book: “The guy is arguably the godfather of thrash metal. He wrote a lot of the riffs on [METALLICA‘s] ‘Kill ‘Em All’ [album] and even some of ‘Ride The Lightning’. Without Dave Mustaine, maybe thrash metal never would have happened. At least in the beginning, he was the driving force, artistically.”
