DAVE MUSTAINE Doesn't Rule Out Performing METALLICA's 'Ride The Lightning' On MEGADETH's Upcoming Tour

During a February 4 appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk", Dave Mustaine once again spoke about his decision to include his version of "Ride The Lightning", the title track of METALLICA's 1984 album for which he got a co-writing credit following his 1983 departure from the band, on the final MEGADETH album, simply titled "Megadeth". Regarding when he came up with the idea to record this particular METALLICA song, Dave said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "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, METALLICA frontman], 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'. And I talked to Teemu [Mäntysaari, MEGADETH guitarist] and I said, 'The guitar solo that's in there, try and stay close to it, if you can.' 'Cause it really is Kirk [Hammett, METALLICA guitarist] doing an improvisation of what I was doing. 'So, let's have fun with it.' And the solo was a little different — close to the original that Kirk did, but it was a little different. And then there was the singing. James and I have instantly identifiable voices, but they're not at all alike. And I was listening to James sing, and it was fun for me to be able to listen to his vocal parts and break it down and hear how he sings, and then to go back and approach the song and try and sing in my style, which I do believe I put my DNA on that."

Mustaine continued: "It would've been different if I would've done a song by a band I was in that I didn't write. That's kind of like doing a weird nepotistic cover song. But this is one of my songs. So, yeah, I loved doing this. I loved writing it with James, and I loved playing it with MEGADETH."

Asked if he thinks MEGADETH will include "Ride The Lightning" in the live set on the upcoming tour, Mustaine said: "Oh, shit, Eddie. You don't have to ask me that. [Laughs] Maybe. Maybe. We do play 'Mechanix'."

During the same chat, Mustaine spoke about his ongoing battle with Dupuytren contracture, a condition that causes one or more fingers to bend toward the palm of the hand. The affected fingers can't straighten completely. Asked if he is concerned about his physical ability to play all the shows on MEGADETH's upcoming final tour, Dave said: "I have concerns, but they're small. And I'm in good condition, and I have a great trainer that travels with me and I've got a very healthy band. My family's very healthy. It's just part of our way of life. And the stuff that I went through when I was younger, that was stuff that I went through. Nobody in our family ascribes to that lifestyle."

After host Eddie Trunk noted that Mustaine has "people that will work with" Dave to make sure that he is able to get through the shows, Mustaine said: "Well, I can't do anything about my hands. The next thing to do is go back to the hand surgeon. And the stuff with my back, I have fusion in my spine and I've got fractures and compression and bulging discs going on back there. So it's painful. I know that there's a lot of other guys that were dealing with this kind of chronic pain from headbanging a lot. And we would hear about 'em, and I would think, 'Man, I'm so sorry for you.' One of the guys — I think the guy was from DEATH, or what was the band that [ex-MEGADETH bassist] Jimmy MacDonough was in? ICED EARTH. Yeah, ICED EARTH. That guy's got a really bad back, supposedly. I never got a chance to talk to him about it, but I heard about that."

Mustaine co-wrote the song "Ride The Lightning" with Hetfield, METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich and then-METALLICA bassist Cliff Burton.

"Mechanix" was the original version of "The Four Horsemen", the METALLICA song that was co-written by Mustaine and included on METALLICA's debut album, 1983's "Kill 'Em All". METALLICA wrote new lyrics and renamed the song "The Four Horsemen" after Dave was kicked out of the band. The track "Mechanix" later appeared on MEGADETH's debut album, 1985's "Killing Is My Business...And Business Is Good!".

MEGADETH secured its first-ever first No. 1 album in the U.S. with the band's final self-titled effort. "Megadeth" debuted at the top of the chart after earning 73,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending January 29, according to Luminate. The bulk of that sum was driven by pure album sales (purchases of physical and digital copies of the album),totaling 69,000.

The follow-up to "The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!", "Megadeth" was released via Mustaine's Tradecraft imprint on Frontiers Label Group's new BLKIIBLK label.

MEGADETH also claimed the top spot in Australia (highest previous position No. 2) and Austria (highest previous position No. 8). Other top five spots included No. 2 in Finland (and No. 1 physical),Sweden (plus No. 1 physical; highest previous position No. 9),and Belgium (highest previous position: No. 6); No. 3 in both the U.K. and Germany (highest previous position No. 6); No. 4 in the Netherlands (highest previous position No. 7); and No. 5 in both Italy (highest previous position No. 15) and New Zealand (highest chart position ever).

In a recent interview with Spain's MariskalRockTV, Mustaine also spoke about his decision to include his version of "Ride The Lightning" on "Megadeth". Regarding why he chose to record "Ride The Lightning" at this point in his career, Dave said:  "Probably 'cause it was the most emblematic of my guitar influence. The spider chord — you know how I do the spider chord. And then there's something called grunting, where I'll hit the chord a half a step below the note I want to go to. I'll fret it and I'll slide into it… It's way heavier. So, to me, I call that grunting. So spider chords and grunting are in 'Ride The Lightning'."

Mustaine continued: "Having written so much of the songs with [METALLICA] — people think I wrote a lot, but on that record ['Ride The Lightning'], it was 'The Call Of Ktulu', which used to be called 'When Hell Freezes Over', and [the title track] 'Ride The Lightning'. And the previous album [METALLICA's 1983 debut, 'Kill 'Em All'] had four songs on it [that I co-wrote]."

Asked if the guitar solo in MEGADETH's version of "Ride The Lightning" is "very close to the original song" because current METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett copied Mustaine's solo from Dave's original version of "Ride The Lightning" with METALLICA, or if Mustaine simply "wanted to respect" Hammett's work by reproducing Hammett's solo from the 1984 album, Dave said: "I think Kirk — if you listen to [METALLICA's 1982] 'No Life 'Til Leather' demo and then you listen to the 'Kill 'Em All' record, it's pretty clear that that Kirk had some instruction [about how to approach the guitar leads on that album]. Was it note for note? No. But it was pretty close. So, when the opportunity came to do 'Ride The Lightning' [with MEGADETH], I didn't really feel like I knew the song very well anymore, and I don't remember what I played on for that song, for 'Ride The Lightning'. I had a hard time finding anything that I played on either. So we just figured, 'Fuck it. [Current MEGADETH guitarist] Teemu [Mäntysaari] and I'll split the solo up, and half of it'll be for him and half of it'll be for me,' and it turned out so that [Teemu] did a little more than half."

In December 2025, Mustaine told Guitar World magazine about his decision to include his version of "Ride The Lightning" on "Megadeth": "The main reason I chose to do this was to close the circle and pay my respects to my partners. I thought this was a really great way to do that.

"Whenever we select any other band's music to go on our albums, sometimes there's a lot of thought behind it and sometimes there's not. This was one of the ones that we thought long and hard about, because all I wanted to do was play the song I wrote with the guys in METALLICA," Mustaine explained. "I wanted to pay my respects to James Hetfield, who I think is an amazing guitar player, and Lars Ulrich, who was an excellent songwriter. I remember when I was there and we were putting these songs together, Lars didn't just sit there; he was very instrumental in making these songs.

"Of course, when we got into making demos of these songs, it was fun to do the recordings, but we were never really able to do a full-on produced version of 'Ride The Lightning' [while I was in METALLICA], and I would have loved to have heard that.

"I gotta tell you — listening back to James's original vocal performance, it was really tremendous," Dave added.

"Anyway, there's no big strategy; I have respect for the guys, and I just wanted to show that. And it's a hell of a song."

Mustaine previously talked about his version of "Ride The Lightning" during an appearance on the December 5, 2025 episode of SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". Dave said at the time: "We're managed by three men — Danny Nozell, Steve Ross and Justis Mustaine. And we were talking with management, and we were just kind of yacking about what the cover song was gonna be on the record, 'cause we always did cover songs on our records. But this wasn't a cover song, because I wrote it with James. And it just became clear that I should do this, because if I'm going to ride off into the sunset, I wanna pay tribute to the band that I started in, and I wanted to make mention about what I think about James."

Mustaine continued: "I think [James is] an exceptional guitar player. I remember the day that I saw him play guitar for the first time. We were playing at the Whisky [A Go Go in West Hollywood, California]. And we had a guitar player with us, and his name was Brad Parker. And the night of the show he changed it to Damian Phillips. And he showed up at the Whisky in mid-1980s Rudy Sarzo garb. And I thought, 'Wow, that's not gonna go down.' And I looked at him and he had a giant feather earring. And I thought to myself, 'This guy's not gonna be here very long.' So I go to rehearsal, after the show, the next rehearsal I go and there's no Brad, there's no Damian, nobody. It was just James playing guitar — like a motherfucker. And I thought, 'How did this happen? How did this guy go from singer to a great guitar player like this?' And I was excited for me. I was excited for the band. And we started playing then."

As for how "Ride The Lightning" was chosen as the song for MEGADETH to record this time around, Mustaine said: "With the track, choosing that, I figured it should be something that I had something to do with, but I didn't know it was going to turn out like that. Something off of 'Kill 'Em All' would've been obvious, and we already did that [with 'Mechanix']. And so I was thinking about 'Ride The Lightning', and there's only a couple songs on there that I wrote. And I didn't think that 'The Call Of Ktulu' would be the right move, 'cause that's not even how the song was when I was in the band; they changed it so much, so it's not the way that I remember it. So we started doing 'Ride', and it just felt so great, listening to the tracks, listening to James's singing, listening to how the song structure was. It was just great. I loved it. And I've always believed when you do a song from somebody, you've gotta do it as good or better — you've got to. So we sped it up a little bit and we beefed up a couple parts, just to make them a little bit more modern. And there you have it."

Mustaine also previously talked about MEGADETH's version of "Ride The Lightning" last October in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. He said at the time: "It wasn't really that I wanted to do my version. I think that we all wanted it to turn out a certain way, and for me, this was about something so much more than how a song turns out. It was about respect."

Speaking specifically about Hetfield, Mustaine added: "No one ever talks to me about that. One day he's a singer, the next day he's this fucking powerhouse and I've always respected him as a guitar player. So I wanted to do something to close the circle on my career right now, since it started off with [Mustaine's band before METALLICA] PANIC and several of the songs that ended up in the METALLICA repertoire, I wanted to do something that I felt would be a good song."

Elaborating on his reasons for recording "Ride The Lightning" for MEGADETH's final album, Mustaine said: "Our intentions were pure. I didn't have any reason I was going to say, 'Oh, hey man, this thing that we've had for 40 years where you guys will never tour with me, me doing the song is going to change things.' That wasn't it at all. It was more about: This is my life going forward. I want to do things that are respectable. And I think doing something where we can pay honor to the guy that … I mean, I hate to say this, because it's just so fucking arrogant, but the guitar playing in METALLICA changed the world."

In a separate video message, Mustaine said: "So on the new album we recorded 'Ride The Lightning', and the reason we did that was, obviously, it's a song that I had a lot to do with writing it. And James and I, when we were working on the song, it became clear to me, when James first started playing guitar, how good of a guitar player he was. And I thought it would be really cool to close the circle to show respect, to play the songs that I've written with METALLICA and to honor our friendship, even though it's been strained and ruined from emotions over the years when we were not necessarily friendly. But one thing I've always had is I've always had a tremendous respect for James's guitar playing andLars's [Ulrich] songwriting. So, it was cool to do this and add it to the record. We sped it up just a little teeny bit, and we kind of played around a little bit with the solo and Teemu and I both tossed it back and forth to each other. So, you might hear a little bit of some differences with the tempos and, of course, I sing different from James too. But once again, it was about completing the circle and just showing what James and I, as guitar players, did to change the world."

Mustaine was a member of METALLICA for less than two years, from 1981 to 1983, before being dismissed and replaced by Hammett.

Mustaine was not inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with METALLICA during the April 2009 ceremony at Cleveland, Ohio's Public Auditorium. Ulrich later explained to The Plain Dealer that Mustaine "never played on any METALLICA records. No disrespect to him. But there [were] half a dozen other people that were in the lineup in the early days. We thought... the fair thing to do would be to include anybody that played on a METALLICA record." He added: "Dave Mustaine was in the band for eleven months, predominantly in 1982... I'm not trying to play it down. I have nothing but respect and admiration for his accomplishments since."

Photo credit: Ross Halfin