Metal Anarchy

About a decade ago, Metallica were planning to release an expanded edition of their “No Life ‘Til Leather” demo tape. However, the reissue never materialized due to a dispute involving songwriting credits. At the time, former guitarist Dave Mustaine (Megadeth) took issue with drummer Lars Ulrich receiving credit for songs he didn’t write. Now, during an interview with Classic Rock, Mustaine addressed that situation further, saying “it just wasn’t fair.”

Mustaine said the following:

“I wrote all the music on ‘Phantom Lord‘, all the music on ‘Metal Militia‘, all the music on ‘Jump In The Fire‘ and ‘The Mechanix‘. And I wrote the lyrics for ‘Jump In The Fire‘ and ‘The Mechanix‘. So do the math: if I wrote the music and James [Hetfield] wrote the lyrics, then the credit is 50 per cent me, and 50 per cent James. Well, that’s not what went down when I left. James and Lars figured out that they were going to give Lars some percentage of the songs he didn’t write anything on, and that happened on all four songs.

This was a bone of contention for me going forward with Metallica on anything because, you know, it just wasn’t fair. You guys got more money than God, why do you have to take my money?

So James called me up, ‘Hey, man, we want to release this ‘No Life ‘Til Leather‘ thing, and we want to get all this publishing stuff straight, and, you know, we really don’t remember what went down. And I said, Well, that’s good, because I do. I remember what went down, and I can help with that.

And then the conversation took a turn. James goes, ‘Well, that’s not the way that we remember it’. And I went, Well, James, honestly, there’s three ways to look at this: there’s your way, my way, and the truth, which is some combination of the two. And that was the end of the conversation. He took offence to that, and we hung up, and I don’t remember speaking to him since then.”