Metallica and Dave Mustaine Jams Healed Rift 2020 In Review

Keavin Wiggins | 12-14-2020

Photo by antiMusic's Rob Grabowski

Metallica and Dave Mustaine Jams Healed Rift was a top 20 story of Jan. 2020: Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett believes that the band's rocky relationship with Megadeth frontman and original guitarist Dave Mustaine has completely changed after he jammed with them at their 30th anniversary shows back in 2011.

Mustaine was famously fired from the group and they brought in Hammett to replace him. Dave would go on to find major success of his own with Megadeth but expressed his displeasure for years about how things ended with Metallica.

Hammett says that the band's relationship with Dave is a lot better now following those anniversary shows and the Big 4 shows (featuring Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) and Mustaine agrees.

Kirk spoke about the anniversary shows and Mustaine during an appearance of the Let There Be Talk podcast. He said of the shows, which also include their original bassist Ron McGovney, "It was a very, very, very cool thing. It's probably one of our best experiences as far as celebrating time that has passed, for sure.

"It's weird. When we brought Ron McGovney and Dave Mustaine on to play those shows, something happened and it really just improved our relationship with those guys tremendously, especially with Dave.

After those shows, Dave's whole attitude toward us just f***ing turned around. Something happened and our relationship with him just completely totally changed and got much, much better.

"I think what had happened was he actually found some closure by coming up on stage and playing with us. And I remember, my attitude was, 'Dave, play whatever you want, man. If you wanna take all the f***ing solos, I'll play rhythm guitar. It's no big deal to me.' And I remember him looking at me, going... He was just, like, looking at me, going, 'Okay.' But I can tell that was not what he was expecting to hear from me.

"When we actually played, I remember standing next to him, going up to him, he's ripping a solo while I'm playing, it was a moment for the both of us," he added. "And all of a sudden, all that sh*t, all that f***ing bad vibes, all that schism, all that sh*t talking didn't even f***ing matter anymore, it didn't f***ing matter anymore. And as a result of it, we're all friends still. From that point on, we went on to do the 'Big 4' , and that was a great thing as far as all of us just kind of bonding. And it really f***ing established and really vindicated all of us as just people who just love this f***ing music and had a passion for playing it and took that passion everywhere we went."

Mustaine shared his agreement with Kirk's comments. He tweeted, "I have tremendous respect for @KirkHammett and I appreciate his take on this. he is almost 100% accurate...almost. I wish him the best."