Ellefson: Dave Mustaine Reportedly Wanted to Re-Record Contested Metallica Songs

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Megadeth frontman and dude who never holds grudges Dave Mustaine was once a member of Metallica. He got fired from the gig and eventually, Megadeth was formed and he never thought about his former band or his former bandmates ever again.

Now, we all know that to not be the case, so we’ll just skip the pretense and talk about what actually happened. In the most recent episode of The David Ellefson Show [as transcribed by Blabbermouth], disgraced former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson revealed that Mustaine wanted to re-record the Metallica songs he’d recorded for the No Life Till Leather! demo while making 2022’s The Sick, The Dying… And the Dead!

“There was clashes all the way down, and for me, it started in 2018 when Dave came in to — we started a tour in Oslo, and he came in and he said he wanted to re-record [METALLICA’s] ‘No Life ‘Til Leather’ demo [which Mustaine played on when he was briefly a member of METALLICA]. I’m, like, ‘Are you kidding me? This is where we’re at? After all this time? We’re supposed to be writing a new album and new songs. And I was just, like, ‘I am not down with that.’

“As fun as it would be to play those songs, ’cause that’s one of my favorite METALLICA recordings, I was just, like, ‘Yeah, I ain’t down with that.’ I’m sorry. I couldn’t kiss the ring for that one. I was, like, ‘I’m out.’ And so I think our problem started then. So as we went into the record, he knew I wasn’t willing to just fucking say, ‘Yes, Dave,’ and go along with shit. So eventually I’m out of the band. So it goes. Bands are what bands are, and it is what it is.”

Honestly, I can kinda respect it. Dave. Dude wanted to pull a Taylor Swift and regain some semblance of control over songs he helped write. Not entirely sure how that would float among the metal community.