Metallica's original 1982 lineup was guitarists James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine, bassist Ron McGovney, and drummer Lars Ulrich. Mustaine left the band in 1983 and formed Megadeth that very same year.
Someone recently asked Dave on Twitter what his measure for success was for Megadeth when it was formed, and he said it was pretty much just trying to get by and if he ate that day. Though his overarching vision for the band was to "destroy Metallica."
My measure of success was if I ate that day or not, and my vision was destroy @Metallica and stop living in a van. Good thing I got over my animosity for leaving the band. I’m glad we reconciled… where’s the Big 4 shows??? https://t.co/nmq6eBIeeH
— Dave Mustaine (@DaveMustaine) January 13, 2018
Fortunately, Mustaine and Metallica have been cool for quite some time now, and he's looking forward to doing some Big Four shows eventually. Even though the bands are "cool," there was still some discrepancies about old Metallica songwriting credits earlier this year between Dave and Lars. Mustaine tweeted a fan in late 2017, saying there was a songwriting dispute that led to a re-release of Metallica's No Life Till Leather demo being shelved:
“James contacted me 2 years ago. We were going to officially release the ‘No Life Till Leather’ demo as a record, w/27 tracks, pics, the whole enchilada, and the talks broke down because Lars wanted credit on two songs I wrote every note and word to. I have the texts. I passed.”
As for why there were no more Big Four shows, Slayer's Tom Araya said that the Big 4 shows, which feature Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth & Anthrax will probably never happen again due to the character of one person in one of the bands, heavily suggesting it was Dave Mustaine without outwardly saying it. When asked about Araya's comments, Mustaine denied he had any problems with any other members of the Big Four. Mustaine noted in his autobiography that he noted that while he wasn't offended that Slayer were playing after Megadeth during the mega-shows, he was hoping at some point in the future, they'd be able to flip around.
For more on the never-ending saga between Dave and Metallica, we highly recommend our Some Kind of Monster episode of the RIP a Livecast, or our continuing series of articles.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFGs6U6Bnb4[/youtube]
