Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian recalled the day Metallica fired Dave Mustaine, a moment that led Mustaine to form Megadeth. Ian shared the story on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan. He also revealed the ‘selfish’ request he made when he heard the news.
Ian was asked whether he was there the day Mustaine was fired from Metallica. He described arriving that afternoon and hearing about it from Cliff Burton.
“I showed up that day. I walked in. It was like early afternoon and Cliff was standing outside smoking a cigarette and I said, ‘Hey man,’ and he’s like, ‘Hey.’ I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Oh, not much. We fired Dave. He’s on a greyhound back to California.’”
Ian said he first thought Burton was joking.
“Cliff was kind of like a very dry ball buster. So I said, ‘Oh yeah, right, sure.’ He goes, ‘No, I’m totally serious.’ I’m like, ‘You’re not going to get me.’ I was like, ‘Yeah. Right. You’re playing Lamores on Friday with Vandenberg.’ I think that’s who they were like or whoever it was. They had like some gig like that in three days or four day. They had some show coming up. And he goes, ‘Bro, totally serious.’ He goes, ‘Go ask James and Lars.’”
Ian then went to confirm the news with the other band members.
“Okay, I figured I’m gonna go. They’re gonna be like, ‘What?’ or I’m gonna walk in and Dave’s gonna be asleep in his sleeping bag, you know, and I go up to the room and I don’t see Dave. And I said to Lars, ‘Cliff just told me you guys fired Dave.’ And he’s like, ‘We did. We did.’ I was like, ‘What the, you know, like oh my God, like was this like a long time coming or like what?’ They were like, we’d been thinking about it pretty much since we got to New York. And you know, everybody knows the story. I don’t need to get into all of that.”
Ian said he then asked about the upcoming shows. He admitted the question was for his own reasons.
“I was there and I was like, well, what are you going to do? You know, you’ve got gigs. We have gigs. We were playing shows with them. You know, we have gigs coming up because, in my own, for my own selfish reasons, please don’t cancel these shows. He said, ‘We already got a guy. He’s this guy Kirk from a band called Exodus in the Bay Area. He’s literally flying in. We might need a ride. Could you pick him up?’”
Ian said he didn’t end up picking up Kirk Hammett himself.
“I turned out their guy Mark who was with them picked him up. But yeah, I met Kirk like the next day. You know, there were like, ‘Kirk will be here tomorrow. He’s already learning the songs and he’s just going to jump right in.’”
Ian’s account gives a firsthand look at one of the most talked-about lineup changes in metal history. The details he describes also fit the wider timeline of Metallica’s early days.
Metallica fired Mustaine on April 11, 1983, after a run of shows in New York. The band had moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco only two months earlier, when bassist Cliff Burton joined. Mustaine’s last show with the band was at the L’Amour club in Brooklyn, just days before the firing.
The decision came weeks before Metallica entered the studio to record their debut album, Kill ’Em All. Heavy drinking, aggressive behavior and clashes with his bandmates led James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich to part ways with Mustaine. He still earned songwriting credits on four songs from that debut. He also earned credits on two tracks from the 1984 follow-up Ride the Lightning.
Kirk Hammett, who played guitar in Exodus, replaced Mustaine. That matches Ian’s memory that Metallica already had a replacement from the Bay Area lined up when he walked in. Ian has described the scene the same way before, recalling Burton’s words:
“We fired Mustaine. He’s on a bus, he’s on a Greyhound back to the Bay Area.”
Ian’s concern about the shows also makes sense given his own band’s position at the time. Anthrax had formed in Queens, New York, in July 1981, when Ian and Dan Lilker started the group. They were still building their name in the East Coast scene. Shared bills with an up-and-coming band like Metallica were valuable.
