Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine recently rejected the “bad guy” label and defended his leadership of the band during an appearance on the Let There Be Talk podcast.
During the interview, Mustaine discussed his initial reaction to being invited to perform with Metallica again in 2011 for their 30th-anniversary celebration, as well as how he was perceived after former guitarist Marty Friedman left Megadeth.
“I don’t remember clearly, but probably a little bit of ‘no’, a little bit of ‘yes’, a little bit of ‘why’d you take so long’, a little bit of ‘shouldn’t we have done this a long time ago?'” Mustaine said. “Think about all the kids that wish they could have seen me play [with Metallica]. That part’s sad.”
He then addressed Marty Friedman’s departure from Megadeth and how it affected his public image.
“I just saw something from [former Megadeth guitarist] Marty Friedman — I don’t know if you saw it or not — where he was talking about how he left [Megadeth] and how he mishandled it, and I thought that was really great,” Mustaine continued. “I thought it was really cool, because when Marty left, I became the bad guy.”
Mustaine went on to defend his character and his role as a band leader.
“And I’m not a bad guy. I’m not a bad guy,” he added. “If you piss me off, you know what? There’s a 50/50 chance I’m gonna react bad, but generally, during the day, I don’t walk around with a chip on my shoulder. And when Marty left, everybody thought, ‘Dave wasn’t using his songs’, ‘Dave’s a bad band leader’. And it’s real easy — you get two guys to say the same thing, and then it looks like it’s true.”
He concluded by highlighting the current success and state of Megadeth.
“I’m not a bad band leader,” Mustaine said. “Look where Megadeth is right now after almost 45 years. We’re the biggest we’ve ever been. The band guys are the happiest they’ve ever been.”
Mustaine’s comments touch on two long-running storylines in his career: his return to the Metallica stage and Friedman’s exit from Megadeth. Both episodes have been revisited many times over the years, and the podcast remarks arrive as Megadeth enters the final chapter of its career.
The band held four invitation-only concerts at San Francisco’s Fillmore from December 5 to December 10, 2011, and the December 10 performance served as the fourth and final show. Mustaine joined Metallica on stage that night for “Phantom Lord,” “Jump in the Fire,” “Metal Militia,” “Hit the Lights” and “Seek & Destroy.” It was his first onstage performance with the band in 28 years, and the set focused on songs he had co-written during his brief tenure with the group.
Friedman’s departure from Megadeth remains a frequent topic as well. He left the band in 1999 following the “Risk” era, and Mustaine has publicly identified a specific creative dispute as one of the causes. Mustaine previously told the story of the split in a way that sheds light on the tensions of that period.
“One of the main reasons Marty Friedman left Megadeth was because of the solo in ‘Breadline,'” Mustaine said. He explained that Friedman wanted to perform the solo himself, and that management later rejected it, prompting Mustaine to approve a replacement.
