Dave Mustaine Addresses a Helsinki Reporter’s Provocative Question Onstage

One week ago, Megadeth’s farewell tour reached Helsinki, and frontman Dave Mustaine had a few words for a local journalist. Onstage at Suvilahti, Mustaine recalled a pre-show interview during which a reporter asked a question that clearly struck him as both lazy and inflammatory: Who would win in a fight between Mustaine and Metallica’s James Hetfield?

“He asked me if I fought James Hetfield who would win?” Mustaine relayed to the crowd. “And I thought, ‘What kind of a fucking idiot would say something like that?'” He then dedicated a track to the absent reporter—noting that since Megadeth lacked a song called “I’m An Asshole,” they would play “Let There Be Shred” instead.

The episode is a minor footnote in a tour that marks the end of a four-decade run for one of heavy metal’s defining bands. But it also underscores the weary persistence of the Mustaine-Hetfield narrative. Mustaine, who co-wrote “Ride the Lightning” before being fired from Metallica in 1983 and replaced by Kirk Hammett, has spent years answering questions about the split. That a journalist in Helsinki still reached for the hypothetical fistfight speaks less to rivalry than to an inability to treat the music as the main story.

Megadeth’s self-titled LP, which includes a cover of that very track, topped charts earlier this year. The tour continues, presumably without further pre-show questions about physical confrontations.