Way back in 1996, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine and Fear vocalist Lee Ving formed the short-lived project MD.45. The project put out The Craving that same year and then went defunct. MD.45 then became a source of contention in 2004 when Mustaine remixed the album and cut out all of Ving's vocals and harmonica parts, which Ving obviously wasn't thrilled about.
Now all these years later, Ving got on stage with Megadeth on June 24 at MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa, FL to play MD.45's track "Nothing Is Something" live for the first time ever. Check out fan-filmed footage of it above and below!
Mustaine said in his 2011 autobiography Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir that he removed Ving from the album "to entice interest from Megadeth fans who might have overlooked the original." Ving said in the The 80its podcast back in 2020 that his removal in 2004 came "without any notification or preparation, like notifying the guy who sang it first." He later adds that Mustaine never reached out to him afterward, but "if I knew how to call him, I would, just to get pressure off the matter. And we could be what friends we could be."
So should we expect more MD.45 collaborations or live performances in the future? Not according to Mustaine, who said before the performance: "This has never happened anywhere and it will never happen again anywhere, so enjoy this."
