Dave Mustaine has confirmed to Rolling Stone magazine that the final MEGADETH album, simply titled “Megadeth”, will include his version of “Ride The Lightning”, the title track of METALLICA‘s 1984 album for which he got a co-writing credit following his 1983 departure from the band.

“It wasn’t really that I wanted to do my version,” he told Rolling Stone. “I think that we all wanted it to turn out a certain way, and for me, this was about something so much more than how a song turns out. It was about respect.”

Speaking specifically about METALLICA singer-guitarist James Hetfield, Mustaine added: “No one ever talks to me about that. One day he’s a singer, the next day he’s this fucking powerhouse and I’ve always respected him as a guitar player. So I wanted to do something to close the circle on my career right now, since it started off with (Mustaine‘s band before METALLICA) PANIC and several of the songs that ended up in the METALLICA repertoire, I wanted to do something that I felt would be a good song.”

Elaborating on his reasons for recording “Ride The Lightning” for MEGADETH‘s final album, Mustaine said: “Our intentions were pure. I didn’t have any reason I was going to say, ‘Oh, hey man, this thing that we’ve had for 40 years where you guys will never tour with me, me doing the song is going to change things.’ That wasn’t it at all. It was more about: This is my life going forward. I want to do things that are respectable. And I think doing something where we can pay honor to the guy that … I mean, I hate to say this, because it’s just so fucking arrogant, but the guitar playing in METALLICA changed the world.”

In a separate video message (see below), Mustaine said: “So on the new album we recorded ‘Ride The Lightning’, and the reason we did that was, obviously, it’s a song that I had a lot to do with writing it. And James and I, when we were working on the song, it became clear to me, when James first started playing guitar, how good of a guitar player he was. And I thought it would be really cool to close the circle to show respect, to play the songs that I’ve written with METALLICA and to honor our friendship, even though it’s been strained and ruined from emotions over the years when we were not necessarily friendly. But one thing I’ve always had is I’ve always had a tremendous respect for James‘s guitar playing and (METALLICA drummer) Lars‘s (Ulrich) songwriting. So, it was cool to do this and add it to the record. We sped it up just a little teeny bit, and we kind of played around a little bit with the solo and Teemu (Mäntysaari, MEGADETH guitarist) and I both tossed it back and forth to each other. So, you might hear a little bit of some differences with the tempos and, of course, I sing different from James too. But once again, it was about completing the circle and just showing what James and I, as guitar players, did to change the world.”