A different story has been revealed about the feud that is still discussed 40 years after the first incident, which you all know very well: the one between Dave Mustaine and Metallica members. Everyone knows how close Hetfield and Ulrich are, and when it comes to making a choice, it’s no surprise that the two choose each other over Mustaine. However, judging from his last interview with the Guitar, Mustaine was surprised to be faced with such a situation and even felt he had been wronged.
“There are three sides to every story, right,” he said, and no doubt this sentence is particularly applicable to the feud between them because we have heard so many different versions. “There’s my side, there would be the other person’s side, and then there would be the truth which is somewhere right in the middle. You know, oddly enough, that was one of the last conversations I ever had with James Hetfield because we were talking about getting back together and doing a project.”
Mustaine continued, “Something had come up about the publishing discrepancy that we have been arguing about for years and years and years, and I told James, ‘I’ll do it, but we’ve got to get this stuff sorted out first.’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, sure.’ So I said, ‘Now these two songs you and me split, 50/50. Lars didn’t write on this song – you know that. I don’t know why you gave him percentages, but I’m not. I’m not going to sign another deal that’s gonna confirm that because I never agreed to that.’”
It seems like Hetfield, with Dave on one side and Lars on the other, preferred the one who was his close friend rather than the one who allegedly hit him. “And James said, ‘Well, Lars has a different recollection of that,’ and I said, ‘That’s fine; there’s his side of the story, my side, and the truth is somewhere.’ And that blew his mind, and we haven’t talked since.”
“You know, I was trying to be really friendly with him,” confessed the Megadeth icon. “He told me that the last three projects they did bombed, and they wanted to go back and use all the stuff that I was on, and I said sure. As soon as I said that ‘three stories’ bit, it was over!”
There’s probably no one left who hasn’t heard of the beginning of this feud, but to sum it up, it was fueled by Dave Mustaine’s struggle with addiction and peaked when James Hetfield allegedly kicked Mustaine’s dog, who reportedly responded by hitting the frontman and was ultimately dismissed from the band.
Interestingly, however, Papa Het decided to plan a joint endeavor with Dave after these events, but these plans fell through after Mustaine upset Hetfield with a remark about publishing rights and Lars Ulrich, and the two haven’t spoken since. Earlier this year, during a conversation with VW Music, the Megadeth founder said he was ‘secretly hoping’ to work with James Hetfield again.
Nonetheless, the musician is known for his incredibly contradictory statements since the feud. For instance, in one of his interviews, he had targeted the Metallica members and said he was the one true leader. It is impossible to know how this feud will continue and if there will be any more collaborations after this missed chance.
