Thrash metal greats Megadeth shocked fans earlier this year announcing that their next album will be their last. Singer/guitarist Dave Mustaine was famously ousted from Metallica back in the early ‘80s, but he has songwriting credits on the band’s first two albums.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mustaine confirmed that Megadeth would be covering one of the songs he co-wrote during his time in Metallica, “Ride The Lightning.” Mustaine explained: “It wasn’t really that I wanted to do my version. I think that we all wanted it to turn out a certain way, and for me, this was about something so much more than how a song turns out. It was about respect.” Mustaine added that the guitar playing of both himself and Metallica’s James Hatfield “changed the world.”
“No one ever talks to me about that,” Mustaine continued. “One day (James) is a singer, the next day he’s this f*cking powerhouse and I’ve always respected him as a guitar player. So I wanted to do something to close the circle on my career right now, since it started off with Panic and several of the songs that ended up in the Metallica repertoire, I wanted to do something that I felt would be a good song.”
As far as covering “Ride The Lightning,” Mustaine said: “Our intentions were pure. I didn’t have any reason I was going to say, ‘Oh, hey man, this thing that we’ve had for 40 years where you guys will never tour with me, me doing the song is going to change things.’ That wasn’t it at all. It was more about: This is my life going forward. I want to do things that are respectable. And I think doing something where we can pay honor to the guy that … I mean, I hate to say this, because it’s just so f*cking arrogant, but the guitar playing in Metallica changed the world.”
