Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine on Being a Control Freak: “That was just a bunch of bitter ex-members” – 2022 – INTERVIEW

Guitar.com: “THERE’S THREE SIDES TO EVERY STORY” DAVE MUSTAINE ON 40 YEARS OF MEGADETH, DEFYING DOCTORS, AND A REUNION WITH METALLICA THAT ALMOST HAPPENED.

You can read the entire interview @ this location. An excerpt from the conversation can be found below.

INTERVIEW EXCERPT:

On being a control freak…

Dave Mustaine:

“All you have to do is look at the last record and how much Kiko (Loureiro) wrote on it. It completely dispels the lies from the past about me not letting certain band members in the past write music. Same thing with Dirk (Verbeuren), too. So that was just a bunch of bitter ex-members complaining about ‘quality control’ over riffs that weren’t that good. If they were good, they would have been on the record.”

You have a reputation for being outspoken. Do you think that has benefited or hindered your career in the long run?

“There’s three sides to every story, right. There’s my side, there would be the other person’s side, and then there would be the truth which is somewhere right in the middle. You know, oddly enough that was one of the last conversations I ever had with James Hetfield because we were talking about getting back together and doing a project.”

“Something had come up about the publishing discrepancy that we have been arguing about for years and years and years, and I told James, ‘I’ll do it but we’ve got to get this stuff sorted out first’. And he said, ‘Oh yeah, sure’.”

“So I said, ‘Now these two songs you and me split, 50/50. Lars (Ulrich) didn’t write on this song – you know that. I don’t know why you gave him percentages but I’m not. I’m not going to sign another deal that’s gonna confirm that because I never agreed to that’.”

“And James said, ‘Well, Lars has a different recollection of that,’ and I said that’s fine; there’s his side of the story, my side and the truth is somewhere. And that blew his mind, and we haven’t talked since. You know, I was trying to be really friendly with him; he told me that the last three projects they did bombed, and they wanted to go back and use all the stuff that I was on, and I said sure. As soon as I said that ‘three stories’ bit, it was over!”

You can read the entire interview @ this location.