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Dave Mustaine looked back on his garage band past with Metallica on Sunday – together with his band Megadeth, who played two tracks that he was involved in creating during his short time with his old band.
At a concert in Bogotá, Colombia on Sunday night (April 26), Megadeth performed “The Mechanix” – a song from the famous “No Life ‘Til Leather” demo that Mustaine wrote in a previous band – and “Ride the Lightning”, the title track from Metallica’s second album. Although “Ride the Lightning” was only completed and released after Mustaine’s brief stint with Metallica, he received songwriting credit for the song’s riffs. The performance in Bogotá was the first time that Megadeth played “Ride the Lightning” live.
Fan-filmed video shows the band performing a respectful version of the song: Mustaine sings the lyrics and takes turns on Kirk Hammett’s solo with Megadeth guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari. Notable: Colombian fans were so excited to hear the song that they loudly sang along to the opening guitar riff.
Farewell album at number one
Megadeth recorded the song for their self-titled 17th album – and presumably their last – which went straight to number one in January. Even though Mustaine has a complicated, on-again, off-again relationship with his former Metallica colleagues, the recording was born out of genuine affection. “I wanted to pay my respects to the band,” Mustaine told Rolling Stone in October. “And now that I’m about to hang up my guitar, I wanted to make sure nothing was left unsaid.”
In 2017, he spoke about his part in both songs in ROLLING STONE’s “My Life in 15 Songs” interview. He explained how he wrote “The Mechanix” “long before I joined Metallica” and how the band turned it into “The Four Horsemen” for their 1983 debut album “Kill ‘Em All”; Megadeth recorded the song in its original form for their 1985 debut “Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good!” on.
He also described how he recognized his contribution to “Ride the Lightning” straight away. “There are certain riffs where you immediately know who the songwriter is,” he said. “And I don’t just mean that in terms of my own writing. So there are certain places in ‘Ride the Lightning’ and ‘Leper Messiah’ and on the first album – in all that stuff you can see little similarities with Megadeth’s guitar playing, because you know there’s only so much you can do with an instrument. I think they did a great job of that.”
