Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian has recalled the afternoon he walked into Metallica’s New York rehearsal space and learned that Dave Mustaine had just been fired. In a conversation on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan, Ian described how Cliff Burton broke the news to him outside, cigarette in hand.
“I showed up that day. I walked in. It was like early afternoon and Cliff was standing outside smoking a cigarette and I said, ‘Hey man,’ and he’s like, ‘Hey.’ I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Oh, not much. We fired Dave. He’s on a greyhound back to California.'”
Ian thought Burton was joking at first, because the bassist was known as a dry ball buster. He went upstairs anyway, and when he asked Lars Ulrich about the news, Ulrich confirmed it. The band told him they had been thinking about the decision since arriving in New York, and that a replacement was already on the way.
“He said, ‘We already got a guy. He’s this guy Kirk from a band called Exodus in the Bay Area. He’s literally flying in. We might need a ride. Could you pick him up?'” Ian recalled. “I was turned out their guy Mark who was with them picked him up. But yeah, I met Kirk like the next day.”
Ian also admitted he had one selfish reason for hoping the shows would go on. Anthrax had gigs booked with Metallica, and he did not want the dates cancelled.
Ian’s memory of that afternoon lines up closely with the documented history of one of the most famous lineup changes in metal. The details he heard second-hand that day have been confirmed many times over the decades since.
Metallica fired Dave Mustaine on April 11, 1983, after tension inside the band had been building for months. At around 9 a.m. that morning, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Cliff Burton woke him up while he was still dealing with a heavy hangover and told him he was out of the band.
The exit came without warning, and Mustaine was put on a Greyhound bus for the long trip back to California. Because the band was in New York at the time, that ride home lasted four days. The decision was driven by his alcohol and drug use, along with escalating personality clashes with Hetfield and Ulrich.
Kirk Hammett’s side of the story picks up at almost the same moment. The guitarist has often described exactly what he was doing when Metallica called to recruit him from Exodus. “It was April 1st, April Fool’s Day, and I was sitting on the toilet,” he told.
Hammett left Exodus in April 1983 to replace Mustaine, taking the place of the guitarist who had been one of Metallica’s main creative forces in their early years. He flew in, learned the songs quickly and stepped straight into the band’s live schedule, exactly as Scott Ian remembered hearing that day.
For Mustaine, the firing became the fuel for a new band. He formed Megadeth in 1983, turning the anger he felt over the split into the sound of a new group. Megadeth released their debut album, Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good!, in 1985.
The episode remains a key chapter of metal history, and Scott Ian’s account offers a rare, firsthand glimpse of the day it happened. He was not just a witness to the news. He was standing outside the building when Cliff Burton delivered it with the calm of a man discussing the weather.
