Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine opened up about his decision to record a version of “Ride The Lightning” for Megadeth’s final album. He shared candid thoughts about James Hetfield’s talents in a recently published video.
Mustaine’s remarks centered on the 1984 Metallica track, for which he holds a co-writing credit following his 1983 departure from the band. He spoke at length about Hetfield’s abilities as both a guitarist and vocalist — qualities he said he came to appreciate deeply.
David Ellefson also contributed to the conversation, offering his own perspective on why covering the track felt meaningful:
“We chose to do a version of ‘Ride The Lightning’, partly because I wrote with the band on that song. So it just seemed like the natural thing to do — close the circle, pay my respects to the band that I got my break in, and let James [Hetfield, Metallica guitarist/vocalist] and Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] know how I really feel about stuff. I believe that James is an excellent guitar player and that Lars is an amazing songwriter.”
Mustaine then recalled the early days when Hetfield first stepped in as a guitarist. He described the moment he realized just how talented Hetfield truly was:
“We were playing one day. We had a guitar player. He says, ‘I want to be called Damien Phillips when I get up on stage.’ And I went, ‘Uh, beat it, buddy.’ So we ended up going to the venue, we’re playing and I look over and he’s got a feather earring in his ear. And I thought, ‘Oh, this is gonna be so bad.'”
“So, the next day I got to rehearsal, and he’d been fired, and James is playing guitar. And he’s not playing guitar like somebody in this room would. He’s playing guitar like me. And I thought, ‘No f*cking way. This guy is that good, and he doesn’t wanna be known for his guitar playing?'”
Mustaine went on to explain the technical and creative choices the band made when recording their version of the track. Among them was his signature “spider chord” technique:
“So it was really fun for me to do ‘Ride The Lightning’ [with Megadeth]. One of my chords that I invented, the spider chord, where you fret with these two fingers and you fret with these two fingers at the same time and you alternate, that’s in ‘Ride The Lightning’. It’s in [the Megadeth song] ‘Wake Up Dead’ also. It’s in several songs that I’ve penned. And we figured if you’re gonna do it, you gotta do it at least as good as the version that the original song is or better.”
He also detailed how the band put their own stamp on the recording, giving current members room to contribute:
“So we sped it up a little bit, and at the very end, the drum fill at the very end, there’s four drum fills at the end. The last two, I told Dirk [Verbeuren, current Megadeth drummer], ‘Do whatever you want.’ And in the solo section, I talked to [current Megadeth guitarist] Teemu [Mäntysaari], I said, ‘Why don’t we split it up? You take the first third, I’ll take the middle, and you can take the last part.'”
“And we did that, so it would have a little bit of our flair to it. It wouldn’t sound too much like Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] trying to copy me in the beginning. ‘Cause I don’t remember what I initially did on ‘Ride The Lightning’, and I can’t find any recordings of me playing it. But I think that the version that we did was great. It honors James’s playing and singing. He’s a great singer, too. F*ck, I was trying to sing that song and some of it really pushed my vocal ability.”
The cover appears on Megadeth’s self-titled final studio album, released on January 23, 2026. It is the band’s seventeenth and last record, marking the end of a career spanning over 40 years, 13 Grammy nominations, and one Grammy win for Best Metal Performance. Mustaine has described the cover as “kind of like a cover, kind of like my song,” given that he co-wrote the original alongside Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and the late Cliff Burton back in 1983.
Neither Hetfield nor Ulrich were informed about the inclusion of the cover before it was publicly announced. Mustaine made no attempt to reach out to his former bandmates ahead of the release. The gesture, while clearly one of respect, was made entirely on Mustaine’s own terms.
The song has since become a fixture in Megadeth’s live set during their ongoing farewell tour. Its inclusion on stage underscores how central the track has become to Mustaine’s sense of closure — a living reminder of where his journey in heavy metal truly began.
For Mustaine, recording and performing the song is ultimately an acknowledgment of something he has rarely stated so plainly. James Hetfield is one of the most complete musicians in rock history — a guitarist of rare instinct, and a vocalist whose range and power Mustaine himself found genuinely difficult to match.
Source: Megadeth
