Besides James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, the original Metallica line-up also included Dave Mustaine, who was later fired and went on to form his own Thrash Metal band. Mustaine played an important role in Metallica’s early days and some of his compositions appeared on the band’s first records.
Over the years he praised Metallica’s work and eventually made amends with the band, even performing with them live a few times. But what have James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich said about Megadeth’s music? Both have talked about the group and shared their opinions.
What is James Hetfield’s opinion on Megadeth
James Hetfield likes Megadeth’s music and Dave Mustaine as a guitarist, having praised him and the band a couple of times. He said that Mustaine is a great guitarist and songwriter who has done amazing stuff with his band. “(Dave is) an old friend of ours, for sure, he has done very well for himself in Megadeth. After getting kicked out of Metallica, he went on to have an amazing career. Dave is an amazing guitar player, great songwriter and he has done some amazing stuff in his band,” the musician said in an interview with Bild in 2016.
Hetfield believes that even if they hadn’t fired Dave back then, things wouldn’t have worked because of their personalities and they would have ended up holding each other back. “I don’t know if ‘glad’ is the right word (to have fired him back then), but it was necessary. There would have been myself, Lars and him all trying to drive and it would have been this triangulated mess. It’s obvious that he had the same drive as us — he went on to do great things in Megadeth.”
“The way things are now, the character dynamics, Lars and I are one half of the scale with Rob and Kirk on the other. They’re great idea people but very good at being okay with someone else driving. It does take that, I think. They’re very un-ego-driven and Lars and I are the other way, it seems. That’s what I’ve been told. (Laughs) So back then Dave had to go.
He continued:
“He’s an amazing, talented person. Maybe just part of his character is having a chip on his shoulder. If I got kicked out of Metallica, I would have one too. Ron McGovney, our first bass player — very big chip on his shoulder. They’re never able to really be comfortable in the now, and that’s tough to see. Lars did say that too in the interview: ‘Can’t you see what you’ve done?’ But none of that matters because he’s chasing something unreachable,” James Hetfield told Classic Rock in 2009.
Over the past decades, Hetfield has said he was glad to see Mustaine sober and noted that Mustaine was well intentioned when, for example, saying he would like to someday record with the Metallica members. “I see him healthier now. I see him as less of a bitter guy. But I do see a lot of stuff in the press with him talking about jamming with us and making an album. All this other crazy stuff.”
“I read it and say to myself, ‘Hold on. This is the Dave that we kind of wanted to forget about. You know, the big mouth that wants to just go-go-go.’ But there is an authenticity about him when he speaks. He doesn’t think too much before he does. He just goes off the cuff. Plus, when he says stuff like that, it’s well-intended,” James Hetfield told So What Magazine in 2013.
Dave Mustaine thinks James Hetfield is one of the greatest guitarists in the world
Although Dave Mustaine and James Hetfield are different kinds of guitar players, the Megadeth leader says there are many similarities between them. In Metallica, Kirk Hammett is the lead guitarist while James is mainly responsible for the rhythm parts. Mustaine, on the other hand, handles both roles in Megadeth, although there has always been another guitarist in the band as well.
“If you put the two of us together side-by-side, split a TV monitor in half, and had us both hopping around onstage, there’s a lot of similarities. The way he acts and moves with his guitar and stuff like that. I think James is one of the best rhythm guitar players in the world.”
“As far as rhythm guitar players are concerned, there’s James, there’s me, there’s Malcolm Young and there’s Rudolf Schenker. There’s no one else that touches the four of us. We’re the fantastic four.” Dave Mustaine told Rock Cellar Magazine in 2017.
During other interviews, Mustaine already described him as a “mind-blowingly talented guy” and “still one of my favorite living guitar players”.
James Hetfield called Mustaine when he announced he had cancer
The tension between Mustaine, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield is not the same as it once was. That became clear during the Big Four tour and Metallica’s 30th-anniversary shows. A few years ago, the Megadeth leader briefly battled throat cancer and publicly announced that he was facing that health issue. He received support from many musicians he never expected would reach out, and Hetfield was one of them.
“It came as quite a surprise. A lot came from people that I knew but I didn’t know cared. Most notably, I got a text message back from my old brother, James Hetfield. I was so, so happy to hear from him. Contrary to what anybody says and contrary to any of the act that we put on, I love James. I know that James loves me and cares about me. You can see that when the moment of truth is here and I’m telling the world that I’ve got a life-threatening disease. Who comes to stand next to me? James.”
“And I got a text message from Ozzy, and one from Paul Stanley. It was great to get one from Ozzy; I didn’t expect it from Paul Stanley. That was super bitchin’ because in the beginning, when Kiss first came out, I was just a kid. I loved them, I’m really grateful for everybody. Even the people who have a hard time with my behavior and my big mouth, I’m just so grateful for them showing care for me. Like they say, at the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other here in this crazy Metal community,” Dave Mustaine said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2019
Lars Ulrich is a big fan of Megadeth’s “Peace Sells”
Over the decades Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich was more open about Megadeth’s music. He already praised their album “Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying?” (1986). “‘Peace Sells’, I remember when the first (Megadeth) record didn’t do much for me. I mean, I respected and stuff like that, but I was like a really big fan of ‘Peace Sells, the second record. I thought it was an awesome Heavy Metal record at that time and I listened to it a lot.”
“Even though I certainly didn’t tell anybody at the time, I was secretly kind of proud of the work that he done. Because he had stepped up to the plate. I certainly didn’t tell James (laughs), but I thought that was an awesome record,” Lars Ulrich said in a TV interview (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
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