Original METALLICA Bassist Says DAVE MUSTAINE Crushed The Whole Band Musically On No Life ‘Til Leather

Metallica released their legendary demo No Life ‘Til Leather in 1982. The demo features former guitarist Dave Mustaine, as well as original bassist Ron McGovney despite Cliff Burton being credited on the tape itself. Now all these years later, McGovney found himself listening to the tape and being blown away by Mustaine‘s performances.

“No Life ‘Til Leather still is the best metal demo ever. Dave Mustaine just kills it on this tape,” wrote McGovney in a tweet. “He leaves the rest of us in the dust. I am just listening to it for the first time in 10 years. Wow!”

One fan named Roger then accused McGovney of wanting to speak ill of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. McGovney clarified what he mean, saying: “Roger… I am not talking bad about James and Lars or even me for that matter. Dave was just so far ahead of us as musicians at that point. I have a huge amount of respect for James, Lars, and Dave for what they have accomplished in the music industry.”

Despite the popularity of No Life ‘Til Leather, the demo has never been widely available outside a cassette reissue for Record Store Day 2015. Last we heard about a reissue was in 2017, when Mustaine said the project was shelved due to disagreements over songwriting credits.

“James contacted me 2 years ago,” said Mustaine at the time. “We were going to officially release the No Life Till Leather demo as a record, w/27 tracks, pics, the whole enchilada, and the talks broke down because Lars wanted credit on two songs I wrote every note and word to. I have the texts. I passed.”

Mustaine later added in 2018: “I don’t think that’s going to happen. We talked about it a little bit, and there are certain things about the way Lars wants things to go down, and it’s just not going to happen. They want to say things happened one way, and it didn’t happen that way. I can’t go along with that. I can’t fabricate stuff.”