DAVE MUSTAINE On METALLICA: 'We're Totally Friends Now, Have Been For Years'

Chris Riemenschneider of the Star Tribune recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Star Tribune: The book sets a different tone on your firing from METALLICA. You didn't come off so hot in the movie "Some Kind of Monster". Nobody did, really. Was it your intention to set the record straight?

Mustaine: No, no, no, that wasn't the intention. We're totally friends now, have been for years. There's no animosity. It's the press who keeps that feud going. People still look at it based on how it used to be, but we were kids back then. There's nothing there anymore.

Star Tribune: But there's clearly still tension in the movie. Was that not a factor in writing the book?

Mustaine: Basically, I just wanted to tell that story without hurting anybody and without saving my own skin at other people's expenses. I wanted to keep it, you know, really godly in the way I was handling myself. I think that's why this Big Four thing was able to happen. James [Hetfield] and I have talked about the past. I apologized to him for some stuff, and he apologized to me. We had a wonderful time on this Big Four adventure.

Star Tribune: Rumor has it the Big Four might be a U.S. tour next year.

Mustaine: Who'd you hear that from [laughs]? I'm not exactly sure. That's nothing that could be verified from my camp. If they come and ask us, I'm sure we'd agree to it.

Star Tribune: Is there still a healthy rivalry between the Big Four or you, SLAYER and TESTAMENT?

Mustaine: I really don't want to talk about rivalries. There are so many more positive things to talk about.

Star Tribune: You also healed your relations with Dave Ellefson. How did that happen?

Mustaine: When my arm got hurt, I did a lot of soul-searching. I wasn't happy with other things in my career. I had people working for me who wouldn't listen to me, so I [fired] all of them. It was very liberating, and the result was I thought of other people I've worked with. There aren't a lot of things I regret doing to get where I am in my career, but I do wish I had a couple mulligans on the way I treated some people. One of them is [original drummer] Gar Samuelson, who I wish I had hung out with more before he died. Another is Dave Ellefson, who I'm back with now.

Read the entire interview from Star Tribune.