Dave Mustaine Recalls His First Reaction to James Hetfield’s Guitar Skills: ‘I Didn’t Think He Knew How to Play’

“When I was in Metallica, I was kind of playing at Lars’s level, because Lars was still learning to play drums back then.”

Dave Mustaine Recalls His First Reaction to James Hetfield's Guitar Skills: 'I Didn't Think He Knew How to Play'

Dave Mustaine praised his former Metallica bandmate James Hetfield’s guitar playing, admitting how he didn’t think Papa Het was such a capable guitarist at the time.

The current Megadeth mastermind has shared a complicated history with Metallica that caused intense emotion to flow both ways back in the day, but it’s inevitable that the fledgling musicians did sow the seeds of something much greater together. Given that they were all youngsters who hardly knew which way was up, Dave tells Metal Hammer in a new interview how he was still playing at Lars’ level when the story of Metallica began — meaning that he was still finding his way around his chosen instrument:

“When I was in Metallica, I was kind of playing at Lars’s level, because Lars was still learning to play drums back then.”

As such, he recalls the shock of discovering that James Hetfield was already a competent guitarist at the time:

“But watching James play guitar for the first time was kind of shocking, because I didn’t know he knew how to play guitar. We just got fed up one day of auditioning guitar players, just like I did with singers. And he picked up this guitar and started playing, and inside I’m going, ‘Get the fuck out of here. How can you possibly be satisfied being a singer when you play like that? Why not be both?’ I’ve always thought he was a really talented guitarist.”

Even though they were still wet behind the ears as musicians, it didn’t take long the early Metallica to find its groove. Looking back on the first time he witnessed a practice sesh by the Mustaine-era thrash giants, Anthrax’ Scott Ian recently said:

“This is when Mustaine was still in the band, and they started playing the songs that were going to be on ‘Kill ‘Em All’. The energy was just insane, I had never heard songs like that and a band that tight.

“And there’s Cliff [Burton, late Metallica bassist] banging his head like he’s playing for 10,000 people in an arena, and it’s just them and three of us sitting on the floor drinking beer. And he was going for it like it was the last show he was ever going to play or something.”