The Megadeth leader, vocalist and guitarist Dave Mustaine recently announced that the group recorded a version of Metallica‘s “Ride the Lightning” song, which he originally co-wrote with the band. He was fired from the James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich band before they had the chance to record their first album, however, he was still “part” of their first albums because songs they co-wrote were still released by the band and he was still credited as writer when the albums were released.
On their debut record, for example, he was credited on “Jump In The Fire”, “Phantom Lord”, “Metal Militia” and “The Four Horseman” (which he recorded with Megadeth as ‘Mechanix’). On their second album he was credited on “The Call of Ktulu” and “Ride the Lightning”, which he now decided to do his own version of it with Megadeth, since the band will come to an end. He explained in an interview with Eddie Trunk how he decided to cover that track.
Dave Mustaine talks about covering “Ride The Lightning”
“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 (Hetfield). 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.”
“(…) 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 (‘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,” Dave Mustaine said (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).
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