Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on “Lipps Service With Scott Lipps“, Slayer guitarist Kerry King discussed the first time he saw Metallica live in 1982. He also shared his thoughts on the members of the band, including former guitarist Dave Mustaine (Megadeth), who he described as “one of those guys that can’t help but stick his foot in his mouth.”

King said the following about watching Metallica’s early lineup back in the day:

“I saw ’em with Mustaine. And we opened for them. I think Mustaine was still in the band, at the place we used to frequent called the Woodstock [in Anaheim, California].

When I first saw ’em with Mustaine, I was sitting kind of between [frontman] James [Hetfield] and [former bassist Ron] 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 he wrote tons of the riffs in the early days. So, when he branched off into Megadeth, a lot of the riffs went with him.”

He continued when asked if he wanted to do what Metallica was doing at a higher notch:

“No, it didn’t have anything to do with seeing them doing it, ’cause we’d already known Venom and we were in the process of morphing what we had to that point to punky, Venom, Motörhead — kind of what they did before us. But seeing them, it’s, like… And even when they were — I mean, they’re a Southern California band, as much as they like to be called a [San Francisco] Bay Area band, they’re from Southern Cal. Sorry. But they had streamlined everything, and we were still working it out. But we went a far darker route than they did. And then they became the biggest metal band on the planet.”

He also added the following about his relationship with Metallica’s current and former members:

“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.

It’s funny, James is one of those guys, even though we’ve got basically the same career, different circles, we did the [shows featuring the] ‘Big Four’ [of 1980s thrash metal], 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. [Guitarist] Kirk [Hammett]’s cool, [bassist] Rob [Trujillo]’s cool, [drummer] Lars [Ulrich] is cool. We hang out when they feel like hanging out. Yeah, that’s all of ’em.”

[via Blabbermouth]