Dave Mustaine Says His Last Conversation With James Hetfield Ended Badly

Dave Mustaine has opened up about the last real conversation he had with Metallica frontman James Hetfield, and unfortunately it didn’t end with a hug and a ‘see you at Soundcheck’.

Speaking to Classic Rock, the Megadeth boss revealed their final proper chat revolved around a long-simmering dispute over publishing for Metallica’s early demo No Life ’Til Leather.

The 1982 tape is basically holy scripture for thrash heads, recorded with Mustaine, Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Ron McGovney, and it’s also the root of yet another Mustaine versus the world credits war.

A planned 2015 reissue of the demo has reportedly been stuck in limbo, with Mustaine claiming he couldn’t reach an agreement with Hetfield and Ulrich about songwriting credits, Mustaine argues he deserved a bigger slice of the pie for several tracks later re-recorded for Kill ’Em All, including the original version of what became ‘The Four Horsemen’.

“I wrote all the music on ‘Phantom Lord,’ all the music on ‘Metal Militia,’ all the music on ‘Jump in the Fire’ and ‘The Mechanix,” Mustaine told Classic Rock.

“And I wrote the lyrics for ‘Jump in the Fire’ and ‘The Mechanix.’ So do the math: If I wrote the music and James wrote the lyrics, then the credit is 50 percent me and 50 percent James. Well, that’s not what went down when I left. James and Lars figured out that they were going to give Lars some percentage of the songs he didn’t write anything on, and that happened on all four songs.”

He continued: “This was a bone of contention for me going forward with Metallica on anything because, you know, it just wasn’t fair. You guys got more money than God, why do you have to take my money?”

Hetfield called Mustaine to sort the reissue out

Mustaine says Hetfield called him to sort the reissue out, but the discussion derailed fast:

“So James called me up, and he says, ‘Hey, man, we want to release this No Life ‘Til Leather thing, and we want to get all this publishing stuff straight, and, you know, we really don’t remember what went down,'” Mustaine added.

“And I said, ‘Well, that’s good, because I do. I remember what went down, and I can help with that.’

“And then the conversation took a turn…”

According to Mustaine, it ended with:

“Well, James, honestly, there’s three ways to look at this: There’s your way, my way and the truth, which is some combination of the two.”

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