{"id":284232,"date":"2026-02-06T17:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284232\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T17:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:26:10","slug":"james-says-kill-him-this-guy-looks-at-the-two-of-us-and-says-whos-gonna-kill-me-and-james-pointed-at-me-dave-mustaine-looks-back-on-metallicas-wild-early-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284232\/","title":{"rendered":"“James says, ‘Kill him!’ This guy looks at the two of us and says, ‘Who\u2019s gonna kill me?’ And James pointed at me.” Dave Mustaine looks back on Metallica’s wild early days"},"content":{"rendered":"

By his own admission, in the early ’80s, when he was Metallica’s guitarist, Dave Mustaine<\/a> was an angry young man, and wasn’t afraid to deal out a little ‘attitude adjustment’ to those who crossed him or his friends.<\/p>\n

“I would be destructive,” Megadeth<\/a>‘s frontman admits in a new interview with British newspaper The Telegraph<\/a>. “If there\u2019s somebody getting in your face, you know, pulling something, trying to take advantage of you, I\u2019m the guy you want there with you.”<\/p>\n

In his 2010 autobiography, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir, the 64-year-old Californian musician admitted that his personality, particularly when amplified by considerable alcohol intake, wasn’t always aligned with those of his bandmates James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. <\/p>\n

“The more they drank, the goofier they became,” he wrote. “With me it was a different story. The more I drank, the more I sought an outlet for my rage and frustration. I wanted to get out and do some cruising and bruising.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But as Mustaine points out to Telegraph writer Neil McCormick, his bandmates were often thankful for his ‘feisty’ demeanour in the early years of the band.<\/p>\n

“We were at a club,” he remembers, “and some guy was punching on a girl, and James says, ‘Kill him!’ This guy turns around and looks at the two of us and says, ‘Who\u2019s gonna kill me?’ And James pointed at me. I had to fight the guy on the spot.”<\/p>\n

On another occasion, Mustaine recalls, he broke someone\u2019s leg because they “were giving Lars a hard time.”<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

“When Metallica first came to San Francisco I thought Lars\u2019 guitarists were either going to get him killed or else land him in jail,\u201d the band’s old friend Ron Quintana once recalled . \u201cHetfield and Mustaine were just out of control. For a time it seemed like Dave would get in a fight every single night on Broadway. He wasn\u2019t always the instigator, he didn\u2019t always start the fights, but he usually finished them. He was a tough guy and was always drunk. I didn\u2019t expect him to last the \u201880s.”<\/p>\n

“I think my younger self just needed to be loved,” Mustaine tells The Telegraph.<\/p>\n

Megadeth’s final album, Megadeth<\/a> is out now. It features Megadeth’s take on Metallica’s Ride The Lightning, which Mustaine co-wrote. “I wanted to do something to close the circle on my career,” he says.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By his own admission, in the early ’80s, when he was Metallica’s guitarist, Dave Mustaine was an angry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-284232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}