Dave Mustaine Claims He Was a “Huge Component of Metallica’s Success”

Megadeth frontman and historical revisionist Dave Mustaine is back on his bullshit again. Just when you think he might have leveled out for realized that he’s an extremely successful musician in his own right, he turns around and talks about Metallica. You know, the band he was in four decades ago.

During a recent conversation via Twitter Spaces with RattleheadsNFT (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), Mustaine was asked how his first band Panic was discovered and signed to a record deal. Sounds like a pretty innocuous question, right? Well, it didn’t take long for Mustaine to switch gears and take at least some credit for Metallica’s massive success.

“Well, Megadeth had a little bit of a following before we got discovered by the record company. So it’s kind of unfair. But the way that it started was I had a band that I was in called Panic. And I lived in Huntington Beach. And there were a lot of bands playing backyard beer keg parties, and I thought that that was pretty fun, to go to the parties and pick up on girls. And I started seeing how easy it was for guitar players to have people freak out over them, pay attention to them, treat ’em with respect and stuff, and I know I wanted that. So Panic was formed. That band was short-lived, and I ended up joining Metallica and was in that band for about two years and then Megadeth happened. So the discovery part was…

“After I left Metallica, the world wanted to know what I was gonna do, because I was this huge component of Metallica’s success. I’m here, and then I’m gone. And people that went to go see them after I was no longer in the band and didn’t know that there was a lineup change said that there was something very, very, very wrong with the band that they heard on tape versus the band that they were watching. And that’s when people started to look for me. And the rest is history.”

So, on face value, he’s not totally wrong there. Mustaine did have a hand in writing a lot of Metallica’s early material, with Mustaine getting some writing credits on their first two albums (though he claims some of his riffs were also used in Master of Puppets). But the original question was about his first band Panic, which came to an abrupt end after a fatal car crash killed some of the members. It’s almost like Mustaine can’t help himself, really.

At least he finished out his comments in a courteous manner, as he had nice things to say about his replacement (and dude who’s featured on every Metallica album ever) Kirk Hammett.

“Now, I think that the band did great. I think they were fine. In fact, I believe that Kirk [Hammett, Mustaine’s replacement in Metallica] did a good job playing my parts. Coming into a band and having to play somebody else’s stuff isn’t always fun, but I think he was a gentleman and did a good job.”