Watch Megadeth perform their Ride the Lightning cover for the first time ever
After 4 decades, Megadeth are officially calling it quits – but the thrash metal legends are making sure to honour their roots on the way out. Most notably, frontman Dave Mustaine has buried the hatchet on any lingering hostility with Metallica, even knocking out knocking out a brand new version of Ride The Lightning on Megadeth’s final record.
While fans were already excited to hear Mustaine’s recorded reworking of the 1984 track, Megadeth’s take on Ride The Lightning has just made its live debut. The thrashers knocked it out at their show on Sunday 26 April at the Movistar Arena in Colombia – and, based on a fan recording from the crowd, it went down pretty damn well.
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Mustaine plays the track like it was made for him – which makes sense, considering he was involved in its creation. Despite leaving Metallica in 1983, he was a co-writer on the iconic 1984 track. Due to his role in the track’s creation, Mustaine has explained that the new Megadeth recording feels less like a ‘cover’, as he was equally as involved in its creation.
“I wrote music in that song, it just makes sense,” he told Record Collector back in January when asked why he decided to re-record the track. “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.”
Last year, Mustaine also explained that Megadeth’s version of Ride The Lightning comes as his way of ‘honouring’ Metallica as a key step in his musical journey. “It wasn’t really that I wanted to do my version…It was about respect,” he explained to Rolling Stone.
Elsewhere in the interview, he even praised the “fucking powerhouse” of a guitarist that is James Hetfield, adamant that he has “always respected” the frontman. “I wanted to do something to close the circle on my career right now, since it started off with [Mustaine’s band before Metallica] Panic and several of the songs that ended up in the Metallica repertoire, I wanted to do something that I felt would be a good song.”
“Our intentions were pure,” he states. “I didn’t have any reason I was going to say, ‘Oh, hey man, this thing that we’ve had for 40 years where you guys will never tour with me, me doing the song is going to change things.’ That wasn’t it at all. It was more about: This is my life going forward. I want to do things that are respectable… I mean, I hate to say this, because it’s just so fucking arrogant, but the guitar playing in Metallica changed the world.”
For more info on the band’s final world tour, head to Megadeth’s official website.
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