During a recent appearance on the Lipps Service With Scott Lipps podcast, Kerry King admitted he couldn’t handle Dave Mustaine over 20 minutes.
“Mustaine’s cool, but Mustaine’s one of those guys that he can’t help but stick his foot in his mouth,” the guitarist said of his relationship with Mustaine. “So, I’ll take my 20 minutes and I’ll bolt just before anything gets uncomfortable.”
“It’s funny, James is one of those guys, even though we’ve got basically the same career, different circles, we did the [shows featuring the] ‘Big Four’ [of 1980s thrash metal], he made a point to come say ‘hey’ to us, but it’s funny that it hasn’t occurred in the 40 years we’ve both been doing this that I’ve rarely seen James,” King talked about James Hetfield.
He continued, “Kirk’s [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] cool, Rob’s [Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo] cool, Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] is cool. We hang out when they feel like hanging out. Yeah, that’s all of ’em.”
Last fall, King was asked by Metal Hammer magazine which band he would join if he could. Kerry responded, “I was almost in Megadeth. I think if myself and Dave Mustaine could have co-existed for four years, it would have been a very different band. I’m not saying I’d have made them better — I’d have made them different.”
In another interview with Metal Hammer, King again reflected on what he thinks about Mustaine, saying, “Still to this day, he’s a f*cking great guitar player.”
After seeing King’s words, Mustaine also said, “It’s not every day one of the most fearsome guitarists in the world gives you a compliment like this. Thank you, Kerry, I look forward to hearing your new stuff, and we should definitely go out together.”
Kerry had a brief time with Megadeth in the band’s early days. He played as their second guitarist for the first five shows.
