Despite being kicked out of Metallica four decades ago, Dave Mustaine says his relationship with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich is solid today.
Mustaine said, “It took a while for James and Lars and I to kind of come around and become friends again. But I would say we’re probably better off now than we’ve been for a long time. And it comes and goes.”
He added, “I think the emotions between all of us, it’s probably understandable for a lot of people who break up with someone, it’s like a marriage and you part ways and sometimes you try and justify in your head the decision that you make…I just look at that whole period with Metallica as something that was really great for me. And I wish them the best.”
In June, Mustaine doubled down on previous claims that he was a “huge component of Metallica’s success.”
During a Twitter Spaces talk, Mustaine was asked how Megadeth was first discovered and managed to turn the talk to his role in Metallica.
“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.” Mustaine explained, “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.”
Mustaine then said his replacement, Kirk Hammett, “did a good job playing my parts.”
