LARS ULRICH Slams DAVE MUSTAINE For His 'Pathetic' METALLICA-Bashing

BLABBERMOUTH.NET has obtained another excerpt from METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich's exclusive interview with editor Steffan Chirazi of METALLICA's official fan club magazine, So What! The chat, which was conducted in September 2005, was published in the magazine's latest issue, which was recently sent out to the band's fan club. An excerpt from the interview follows:

So What!: We should address the Dave Mustaine [MEGADETH mainman, ex-METALLICA guitarist] issues which have repeatedly come up. It irritated you to a great degree at one point on the tour, to the point where I think you considered for the first time in 20 years stepping off the high ground and throwing a volley of shit back at Dave. Why do you think this continues to come from him? Are you, as we sit here, at peace with the fact that Dave is, shall we say, an idiosyncratic person? Do you feel sorry for him? Or do you think it's lame that this guy keeps on popping up, like 20 years later, and bitching about a life that is actually rather good as a consequence of his work with you?

Lars: "I talked about it quite a bit towards the end of the tour. And my thoughts haven't changed much. I was saddened by the fact that his views on 'Some Kind of Monster' [METALLICA's documentary about the making of their last album, 'St. Anger', in which Mustaine makes a brief appearance] were as extreme as they were, because I still say today that those moments in the film were incredibly strong and incredibly emotional and powerful. And I'm certainly proud of my part in that. I'm a little perplexed by his reaction, but also a little mistrusting of it… because he wasn't able to follow through on that kind of openness in front of whoever he feels he has to serve. And I felt that was just a pity. One could certainly argue that all of the shit that went down in the wake of it summarizes the different places that we are in, how we view our careers, just who we are, and so on."

So What!: When he was speaking up and out, why did you just not get him on the phone and say, "Look, dude, what the fuck's the problem?" And why does that not happen? I mean, why could that not happen?

Lars: "I don't know, man. I think I divorced myself from it emotionally. You were around at the height of all that stuff, and like I pointed out at the time, [there's] a funny parallel between Dave Mustaine's METALLI-bashing and the releasing of a new record of his. So there's this weird thing that's kind of sad and pathetic that, X percentage of the press around a new MEGADETH release simply becomes about METALLICA, which is, you know, sad and pathetic. But also, if you put it in perspective and still look at a couple of factual things, remember that the guy was in our band for just around a year."

So What!: Wow. When you put it like that…

Lars: "…there's two more. He was in our band for about a year. Before we released our first record — he's never played on a METALLICA record. Okay, that's number two. It was 22 years ago. That's number three — okay? So put those three facts down, he was in our band for a year. He never played on a METALLICA record, and it was 22 years ago. It's pretty absurd that it still can be that big a deal. I mean, to me, that's just fucking mind-boggling to the fucking highest degree. There was one other thing that happened, which was that in the wake of Dime's [late PANTERA/DAMAGEPLAN guitarist 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott] untimely and tragic death obviously, a year ago, when Dave kind of —"

So What!: We're reffering to the PANTERA guitar player.

Lars: "Yeah, when Dave, one day, two or three after Dime was killed, did kind of a 180 and said something like, 'I regret everything I've ever said bad about anybody,' and basically extended an olive branch or peace offering to everyone. And I was sitting there thinking, 'That's all well and good, but it's really fucked up that it takes a tragedy like someone dying in order for that to come up in you.' And what happened was, on the back side of that, I pretty much divorced myself from him emotionally and to be totally honest with you, Dave Mustaine hasn't really registered on my meter in the last nine months. I thought there was a pathetic element to that, like, you know, 'Now the heavy metal community must stand in unison,' and so on. And I appreciate that on the surface, but why the fuck does it take the tragic death of somebody like Dime in order for us to band together?! We should all band together, all of us, always, in the rock community. Do you know what I mean? So since then I've been emotionally disconnected from Dave. Now, as you're well aware, in a moment of boredom on an airplane from A to B, at some point just about a year ago right now when his last record came out, as you are well aware because you read it, I sat down and wrote him a letter that I was contemplating publishing on some of the fine Internet gossip services that we all have available at our reach. And I decided not to, but it was certainly fun writing it."

To read more of Ulrich's exclusive September 2005 interview with So What!, click here.