Megadeth frontman and former Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine had a lot to say about his former band and their songs during a recent appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show. Mustaine again claimed that the band used several of his riffs for songs on their first three records.
Mustaine said that he recorded “probably two days’ worth of guitar riffs” that the band based numerous songs around which he didn’t get credit for. The allegation came up when Mustaine addressed if his drinking was why he was fired from the group.
“We all drank,” Mustaine said. “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. ‘Ride The Lightning’ 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’ 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 could try and copy them.”
Mustaine also claims that Metallica’s biggest hit was either nicked or heavily inspired from thrash band Excel. “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.’ Pretty similar.”
The song, “Tapping Into the Emotional Void,” does have a similar riff to “Enter Sandman.” Excel’s singer commented back in 1991 to the Los Angeles Times about the similarity. “You don’t know what to think,” Dan Clements said. The singer did add that the uptick in sales or the band ended up being more beneficial than a lawsuit would have been. “I just want it to be known that it’s time more than 20,000 people recognized that musically Excel has it and is ahead of its time.”
Mustaine’s full interview can be viewed below.
