DAVE MUSTAINE Says A MEGADETH/METALLICA Tour 'Needs To Happen': 'That Would Make Everything Right'

In a new interview with Revolver, Dave Mustaine 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 how the new recording came about, Dave said: "That was just random, I guess. [Laughs, pauses] I didn't plan that. Honest. I promise.

He added: "I wasn't trying to do anything disrespectful, that much I can tell you. You know, I really respect James's [Hetfield, METALLICA guitarist/vocalist] guitar playing. And I think that Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] is a tremendous songwriter. I really did enjoy my time with them. That's why I had such a hard time when it ended. And this is me closing the circle, paying my respects."

Asked if he feels like he is also saying goodbye to his time in METALLICA with his new version of "Ride The Lightning", Mustaine responded: "I didn't think that, no. I loved that time. It was very fun. We were dangerous. But no, there's no hidden agenda… This is about showing respect.

Mustaine also talked about his relationship with Hetfield and Ulrich, saying: "I liked them. If the friendship was restarted, it wouldn't bother me. I would accept, and I think it would be nice to revisit some of those times. But I just think because there was a lot of hurt and misunderstanding around our time together that it would be difficult not to keep bringing up the past.

"I think what needs to happen is there needs to be a MEGADETH/METALLICA tour," he continued. "Period. That would, I'm sure, make everything right. We could hang out. Spend time together. But I know they don't really tour like we do. I mean, when we go out on tour, we play many, many shows.

"If it's meant to be, I'm sure I'll see those guys," Dave added. "I remember we played up in San Francisco at the Cow Palace, and James told me he wanted me to play 'My Last Words', because that was his favorite song. I thought that was really cool. Thank you, James. To say that you had a favorite song of mine, that was really nice."

The so-called "Big Four" of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — played together for the first time in history on June 16, 2010 in front of 81,000 fans at the Sonisphere festival at Bemowo Airport in Warsaw, Poland and shared a bill again for six more shows as part of the Sonisphere series that same year. They reunited again for several dates in 2011, including the last "Big Four" concert, which was held on September 14, 2011 at Yankee Stadium in New York City. Since then, METALLICA, SLAYER and ANTHRAX played a number of shows together, including the 2013 Soundwave festival in Australia. They also performed at the 2014 Heavy MTL festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Back in 2018, Mustaine said that he would love play a "Big Four" show where all the bands "got treated fairly" instead of METALLICA performing a longer set and getting more stage space than the other groups on the bill. "It always kind of soured to me when you watch [METALLICA guitarist] Kirk Hammett say on the DVD ['The Big Four: Live From Sofia, Bulgaria'], when they're praying, and he says that 'we're the Big One,'" Mustaine told SiriusXM. "That just kind of shows you how the mentality was there — that it really wasn't the 'Big Four'; it was METALLICA and then the three of us."

Mustaine added: "I would love to see it done in a way where we all got treated fairly and we all played together, same amount of time, same kind of stage situation, but I don't think that's gonna happen. And it's cool, because SLAYER's gonna down in history, and they don't need the 'Big Four' to make them any more legendary than they already are. Nor do I."

In 2013, SLAYER frontman Tom Araya said that the only thing that was standing in the way of further "Big Four" shows was "the politics of character in one particular band," with some fans speculating that he was talking about Mustaine and MEGADETH.

In his autobiography, "Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir", Mustaine addressed the issue of where his band fit in the "Big Four" order. According to The New York Times, he assured the reader that he was not offended by being put behind SLAYER. But he added an interior monologue: "O.K., we'll play ahead of you guys on this trip, and God willing we'll do it again sometime in the near future and we can flip things around."

Mustaine was a member of METALLICA for less than two years, from 1981 to 1983, before being dismissed and replaced by Hammett. He went on to form MEGADETH and achieve worldwide success on his own.

Mustaine feuded with the members of METALLICA for more than two decades before finally seemingly patching things up a decade and a half a ago. He jammed with his ex-bandmates on several occasions during "Big Four" shows and at METALLICA's 30th-anniversary concerts in 2011.

Last May, Mustaine gave a three-hour interview to Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, and host of the Shawn Ryan Show, in which he spoke about his brief stint as a member of METALLICA in the early 1980s. Addressing the allegations that his excessive drinking was the main reason he was fired from METALLICA, Mustaine said: "We all drank. That's why they called it ALCOHOLICA. I mean, they didn't call it DAVE-ALCOHOLICA. We all drank. And they continued to drink like that even after I was gone. But that was, I think, the beginning of the end. And when we got out to New York, I had a reel of tape, this quarter-inch tape, that had probably two days' worth of guitar riffs on it, just me playing and playing and playing. And we took that tape player and the reel of tape with us out to New York. We did two shows out there, and after those two shows, they woke me up one morning and said, 'Look, you're out of the band.' And I said, 'What are you talking about?' 'You're out of the band.' I said, 'No warning? No second chance? You're not gonna give me a warning? You're just gonna kick me out?' And I thought that was unfair. And it showed a grotesque lack of character. And so that pissed me off and was a huge part of the fuel. But at the time, I was really mad and I didn't wanna forgive them for what they did. And I told them when I left, 'Do not use my music. And of course they used it. [The] 'Ride The Lightning' [title track] I wrote. '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."

Asked what he did after he got "axed" from METALLICA, Mustaine said: "I went home and I contacted a friend of mine and I said, 'I quit.' She said, 'No, you didn't. You got fired.' And I said, 'Yeah, I got fired. I quit. I got fired, whatever. I'm back home. Wrong word. [it's] not changing the outcome.' And I made sure not to ever say that I quit, 'cause I wanted people to know that I was unfairly dismissed and that I didn't give a shit. 'Cause we [MEGADETH] may not be as big as they [METALLICA] are. Hell, their biggest song, 'Enter Sandman', go look up the band EXCEL right now. Look up their song — I think it's something 'Into The Unknown'. [Editor's note: The track is actually called 'Tapping Into The Emotional Void'.] Pretty similar."

"Megadeth" will be released on January 23, 2026 via Mustaine's Tradecraft imprint in partnership with Frontiers Label Group's new BLKIIBLK label.

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

Photo credit: Ross Halfin