In a recent conversation with Songfacts, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine was asked to comment more on his wish to collaborate with Metallica’s James Hetfield again.
Mustaine said:
“The last time we talked it didn’t end very well because we have some memory of a couple of things that took place when I was in the band. I remember it one way and he is saying that it happened another. But it’s about somebody else, it’s not even him. He’s talking to me on behalf of ‘you know who,
”They wanted to release ”No Life ‘Til Leather” [the early Metallica demo Mustaine was on], 27 songs, posters, flyers, pictures, everything. I said I would love to do this thing, and James said, ‘Look, we f**ked up. The last three things we’ve done failed abysmally.’ He said it was ”Lulu”, something called ”Orion” [a festival called Orion Music + More that took place in 2012 and 2013], and there was one other thing… I think it was a film about a fan or something [the 2013 film ”Metallica: Through The Never”].
”I don’t know. I don’t see them as a failure. But I had said, ‘Yeah, I’d be interested.’ And he said, ‘We’d like to get everything right with all the history, the publishing, and stuff.’ And I said, ‘Good.’ Because part of the reason why we haven’t been able to really reconcile is because I had songs that when I left I didn’t want them to record, and they went ahead and recorded them but they didn’t pay me what my share of the songs were.”
He added more:
“So I’ve come to terms with it, and when he said, ‘We’d like to get this right,’ I said, ‘Great. Let’s do it. I have no problem.’ And when I said, ‘This is what it is,’ he said, ‘No. It’s kind of what it was, and that’s how it is.’ And I thought to myself, you know what? When you guys did that to me before, it was not cool. I said, ‘Don’t use my stuff’ and you did it, and then didn’t give me my fair share. So why would I want to willingly enter into something like that? I wouldn’t. So that’s where we stand right now.
“I would love to work with James. I’d like to work with Lars again, too, but I think the real talent in Metallica has always been around the guitar, everybody makes fun of the drums.”