Kerry King Opens Up About Dave Mustaine and Metallica: Says Mustaine “Can’t Help But Stick His Foot In His Mouth”

In a recent episode of ‘Lipps Service with Scott Lipps‘, Slayer guitarist Kerry King opened up about seeing Metallica during their early days and shared insights into his relationship with the legendary thrash metal band.

King recalled his first experience watching Metallica in the early 1980s, during the era when Dave Mustaine was on guitar and Ron McGovney played bass. Reflecting on those formative years, King offered high praise for Mustaine, saying:

“When I first saw ’em with Mustaine, I was sitting kind of between James [Hetfield, Metallica vocalist/guitarist] and McGovney in where the audience is, and I was just blown away watching Mustaine just ripping on guitar and not even looking at his fingers. I’m, like, ‘I can’t do that.’ And to this day, he’s a badass guitar player.

But that’s what I walked away from Metallica [thinking]. And [Mustaine] wrote tons of the riffs in the early days. So, when he branched off into Megadeth, a lot of the riffs went with him.”

Dave Mustaine’s time with Metallica was short-lived after he was fired mid-tour in 1983, with the band citing issues related to his substance abuse. This led to a decades-long, on-again, off-again feud between Mustaine and Metallica, which notably resurfaced in 2016 over a royalty dispute related to material written during Mustaine‘s brief tenure with the band.

Kerry also spoke about his current relationship with the members of Metallica, including Mustaine, stating the following regarding Mustaine:

“Mustaine‘s cool, but Mustaine‘s one of those guys that he can’t help but stick his foot in his mouth. So, I’ll take my 20 minutes and I’ll bolt just before anything gets uncomfortable.

King then shared his thoughts on the other members of Metallica:

“It’s funny, James is one of those guys, even though we’ve got basically the same career, different circles, we did the ‘Big Four’, he made a point to come say ‘hey’ to us, but it’s funny that it hasn’t occurred in the 40 years we’ve both been doing this that I’ve rarely seen James. Kirk‘s [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] cool, Rob‘s [Trujillo, Metallica bassist] cool, Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] is cool. We hang out when they feel like hanging out. Yeah, that’s all of ’em.”

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