Dave Mustaine discussed his initial reaction when Metallica first asked him to play with the band again in 2011 for an intimate show at the Fillmore in San Francisco, speaking on the Let There Be Talk podcast.
The event was part of Metallica’s week-long celebration of its 30th anniversary. Mustaine reflected on what went through his mind when he received the invitation to reunite with his former band.
“I don’t remember clearly, but probably a little bit of ‘no’, a little bit of ‘yes’, a little bit of ‘why’d you take so long’, a little bit of ‘shouldn’t we have done this a long time ago?'” Mustaine said. “Think about all the kids that wish they could have seen me play [with Metallica]. That part’s sad.”
The Megadeth frontman also addressed the perception that he is difficult to work with, pointing to comments made by his former guitarist Marty Friedman as an example of how narratives around band departures can form.
“I just saw something from [former Megadeth guitarist] Marty Friedman — I don’t know if you saw it or not — where he was talking about how he left [Megadeth] and how he mishandled it, and I thought that was really great,” Mustaine said. “I thought it was really cool, because when Marty left, I became the bad guy.”
“And I’m not a bad guy. I’m not a bad guy. If you piss me off, you know what? There’s a 50/50 chance I’m gonna react bad, but generally, during the day, I don’t walk around with a chip on my shoulder. And when Marty left, everybody thought, ‘Dave wasn’t using his songs’, ‘Dave’s a bad band leader’. And it’s real easy — you get two guys to say the same thing, and then it looks like it’s true.”
Mustaine pointed to Megadeth’s current state as evidence that he is an effective leader. “I’m not a bad band leader. Look where Megadeth is right now after almost 45 years. We’re the biggest we’ve ever been. The band guys are the happiest they’ve ever been.”
These comments came as Mustaine reflected on the historic reunion performance and the long history surrounding his departure from Metallica decades earlier.
Mustaine’s conflict with Metallica stretches back decades. On April 11, 1983, Metallica fired Mustaine from the band. His bandmates woke him up, told him he was fired, and put him on a bus from New York to his home in California. The four-day journey led Mustaine to form Megadeth as a new project. Over the following years, the two camps traded accusations: Mustaine claimed Metallica stole his songs and solos, while Metallica pointed to his ego and substance abuse struggles.
The tension between the bands lasted nearly three decades. In 2017, Mustaine even blocked the reissue of Metallica’s demo tape No Life ‘Til Leather due to a disagreement over songwriting credits. The situation began to shift when both bands appeared together in 2010 to perform Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil?” before Mustaine joined Metallica on stage on December 10, 2011, at the last of their four 30th anniversary concerts at The Fillmore in San Francisco.
Friedman left Megadeth in 2000 after creative differences with Mustaine. The departure came following tension over a guitar solo on the band’s 1999 album Risk. In his autobiography “Dreaming Japanese,” released in December 2024, Friedman discussed his time with the band with what he called honesty and respect, revealing details about what “really, really happened” during his years with Megadeth.
Megadeth released its self-titled final album on January 23, 2026, which became the band’s only album to reach number one on the Billboard 200. Mustaine announced that after the album’s supporting tour concludes, Megadeth will disband. On the final album, the band covered “Ride the Lightning,” a song written by Metallica, showing the civility Mustaine has demonstrated toward his former bandmates in recent years.
