Dave Mustaine gives more insight about his relationship with current Metallica members

Dave Mustaine discussed his choice to include his rendition of “Ride The Lightning,” the title track of Metallica’s 1984 album for which he received a co-writing credit after leaving the band in 1983, on the band’s final album, simply named “Megadeth,” in a recent interview with SPIN.com, as per Blabbermouth.

It was to complete the circle and pay respect to my partners, James [Hetfield] and Lars [Ulrich], and make clear that, to anybody that has any doubts, I believe that James is an exceptional guitar player, and that Lars is an exceptional songwriter. I’ve always thought that. It wasn’t doing a cover song, because I wrote it with James and it was our creation.

One thing I’ve always believed is when you do a song from someone else — even if it’s your band from an earlier time period — do it as good or better. We were thinking of songs we were going to do, and our management said, ‘Why don’t you do ‘Ride The Lightning’?’ At first, I thought people will think that’s kind of strange for me to do that. We talked about it a little bit, and it just became clearer that it was a good idea. We sped it up just a teeny bit, and we made sure that we beefed up a couple of the parts.

He looks more comfortable with Metallica these days.

James and I were talking about something, and I said, ‘Well, there’s your version, there’s my version, and then there’s the truth. I believe that the truth is the only one that’s accurate, because I don’t really remember everything.’ And he had said, ‘We don’t remember stuff and we’d like to go over it.’

We’re constantly working on improving our relationship, me and James and Lars. I really do love those guys. That’s why we fought so much — it was that I missed them. And the idea of leaving the band, it was just hard to fathom. ou try and put things into perspective as you get a little bit older. I think about where I am at in my journey: I’m on the backside of the mountain, and I want to make sure that every day counts and that the people that I encounter, that I’m not obnoxious to them if they don’t deserve it. If they deserve it, man, you got it coming, and here it comes.