“It’s not a cover song. It’s a song I wrote part of… It doesn’t feel like we’re doing a song by another band”: Dave Mustaine on Megadeth’s Ride the Lightning
It’s been a landmark few days in the world of heavy metal, as genre titans Megadeth have just dropped their final-ever album. As you might expect, Dave Mustaine’s swansong is chock-full of abrasive riffs and searing solos (try Let There Be Shred on for size).
One of the biggest things that’s got people talking in the runup to the album’s release, though, is the inclusion of Ride the Lightning, a cover of the Metallica classic which Mustaine helped write all the way back in the early ‘80s.
READ MORE: NAMM 2026 is done and dusted – and loads of the gear debuted is already available at Sweetwater
But Mustaine helped write a number of Metallica songs before he was fired in 1983, including a selection from the band’s debut album, Kill ‘Em All. So why did he choose Ride the Lightning for Megadeth’s final record?
“We were working on the album and my son, Justis, said, ‘Why don’t you do a Metallica song, Dad?’” he recalls in a new interview with Record Collector.“I thought, ‘I don’t think so.’
“Then I thought about it more and the idea just felt good, so I agreed. I wanted to close the circle and pay my respects to James [Hetfield, Metallica frontman] and Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer]. I personally have always thought James was an excellent guitarist, so I think it was the right thing to do.
“Panic [Mustaine’s first band] was never solidified as a real band, so my first real band was Metallica. Now that I’m going into retirement, I think it’s the right way to pay my respects.”
While it was important to pay his respects to his former band, Mustaine says he was also conscious not to make the cover too similar to the original.
“When the time came to actually do the song, we thought, ‘Do we want to make it a little longer? Do we want to make it a little fast? Do we want to extend the solo section?’ We started working on it and everything came together nicely. We did speed it up a bit and we did try to do a couple of things a little different from the original version. It was a great song to play.
“Because I wrote music in that song, it just makes sense. It’s not a cover song. It’s a song that I wrote part of, and it just feels different. It doesn’t feel like we’re doing a song by another band.”
Asked whether he’d ever consider recording covers of the other Metallica songs he had a writing credit on, Mustaine replies: “Not anymore. No. I think I said what I wanted to. Unless something gigantic happens, I don’t know that I’ll be going into the studio again. If I do, it probably won’t be for a very long time.
“With my hands the way that they are, it’s hard to sit in the studio all day long and play guitar. Nine months we were in the studio working [on Megadeth], every day, from the morning hours up until seven o’clock at night. My hands got roasted.”
Megadeth’s last-ever album is out now. The band will embark on a massive final world tour from February. See the official Megadeth website for tickets and details.
The post “It’s not a cover song. It’s a song I wrote part of… It doesn’t feel like we’re doing a song by another band”: Dave Mustaine on Megadeth’s Ride the Lightning appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
