Slayer‘s Kerry King says Megadeth‘s Dave Mustaine “can’t help but stick his foot in his mouth”.
King, 60, Slayer’s co-lead guitarist and songwriter briefly played alongside Mustaine in Megadeth in 1985 and while the pair have a good relationship, King admitted he always chooses to “bolt” before too long when they see each other.
Speaking on the ‘Lipps Service with Scott Lipps’ podcast, he said: “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.”
He also praised Mustaine as a great musician and said his departure from Metallica was a huge loss.
He said: “When I first saw ’em with Mustaine, I was sitting kind of between [frontman] James [Hetfield] and [then-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 bada** 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 also spoke about his relationship with Metallica, saying: “It’s funny, James [Hetfield, singer/guitarist] is one of those guys, even though we’ve got basically the same career, different circles, we did the Big Four [concerts featuring Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax in 2010 and 2011], 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.
“Kirk’s [Hammett, lead guitarist] cool, Rob’s [Trujillo, bassist] cool, Lars [Ulrich, drummer] is cool. We hang out when they feel like hanging out. Yeah, that’s all of ’em.”