The Big Four of thrash—Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax—are set to play New York City’s Yankee Stadium on September 14. It will be the second time ever that all four groups have shared a stage in the United States. To mark this occasion, Revolver and Guitar World are celebrating the event with the Big Four Weeks leading up to the event. For the next month or so, leading up to the show, our websites will be giving fans eye-popping exclusives (like the Big Four trading cards from the September/October issue, which we unveiled last week), previously unseen backstage video, and excerpts from our interviews with the bands on a regular basis.

This installment is an excerpt from Revolver’s special issue devoted to the Big Four, which you can buy right here. This section recounts how Metallica burst into superstardom and what continued to unite the four bands after that. The excerpt features interviews with Anthrax’s Charlie Benantie, Slayer’s Kerry King and Tom Araya, and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich. So, without further ado, here is the inside story.

REVOLVER Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax toured together on the Clash of the Titans tour in 1991. Up until last year, that was the closest people got to seeing the Big Four together.
CHARLIE BENANTE Throughout the ’80s, the Big Four title remained with all the bands. And then somewhere in the ’90s, one of the Big Four became huge. There was really no more Big Four. It was like your older brother went to college and became Bill Gates. “Make sure you write sometimes please.” And that was it. No longer was there really the Big Four. Metallica was this thing unto itself. They were this huge entity.

When you have a record like the “Black Album,” when something is like Back in Black or Dark Side of the Moon, that’s it. That’s it, you know, goodbye. You don’t need anything else. You’re set. So while all of us still had success, you know, I guess that time was done.

KERRY KING I think we rose to prominence at the same time. And three of us were on Clash of the Titans—Metallica didn’t need us. They don’t need us now. I think it’s just the cool factor of the four bands going together. It’s real similar to ’91, when we did Clash of the Titans, ’cause I remember the three of us joined together, and I knew Metallica wouldn’t be a part of it ’cause they didn’t need us. They’re on the “Black Record,” man, they were jettisoning themselves to superstardom. And now, they’re still superstars and the three of us can band together like we did on the first U.S. run, but I think the cool factor of all four being together is the enticing thing.

What is it that you feel unifies the bands as the Big Four? Just growing up together at the same time?
LARS ULRICH Growing up together­—that’s a lot. That’s a lot to begin with. I think that obviously. Also, it never really dawned upon me, and I think it was Mustaine who said at some point last year that it may just be that these four bands are four of the biggest of the latter-day hard-rock bands coming out of America. In terms of the real hard-rock stuff. I never really thought of it as an American thing, but I think he’s right about that.

KING Yeah, I remember Mustaine saying something like, “We’re the four biggest metal bands from the U.S.” I never even considered that. And I went, Wow, that’s pretty cool. I’d throw Pantera in there, too. But just even to be in that statement, I kind of read it and went, No shit.

We’re pretty unassuming guys, the crew I roll with. We don’t think of our legacy. I only think about stuff like this when journalists and people bring it up. And it’s the same kind of thing, when Dave made that statement. It was like, Wow, I never thought of that. It’s really cool.

TOM ARAYA One thing that unifies us is we’re a lot like our fans. As people, we’re fans of the music as it is. I know I’m in Slayer, but I’m a big fan of the band Slayer. Whenever we work on new material I always have to take a step back and listen to it as a fan and go, like, Wow this is fucking awesome. That’s something that we’ve always done. It would be safe to assume that all four bands do that. That they sit there and they listen, and they think, OK, you know, I’m a fan. You have to like what you do, and if you’re a true fan, you’re always gonna be on the mark ’cause you’re a fan just like all your fans.

ULRICH Obviously, we all come in one way or another from the same musical seeds, the generation before us—the Judas Priests, and the Iron Maidens, and the Motörheads, and the Saxons and so on. They were a group of bands. We were the next round of bands that certainly had one thing in common: that we were all influenced and inspired by the Judas Priests, the Iron Maidens, the Motörheads, the Saxons, the Diamond Heads, the list goes on obviously. So that’s all. And obviously we had a lot of crossover. We were playing shows with Slayer back in ’82 in L.A. Megadeth came out of the whole thing that happened with Metallica in ’83, and Anthrax kind of became our partners in crime and our brothers in arms when we were out in New York. We all came from the same seeds.

To read the rest, get Revolver Presents: The Big Four right here.

Ian, Mustaine, and Araya Pic: Neil Zlozower
Slayer in 1990: M. Temme

The Big Four of thrash—Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax—are set to play New York City’s Yankee Stadium on September 14. It will be the second time ever that all four groups have shared a stage in the United States. To mark this occasion, Revolver and Guitar World are celebrating the event with the Big Four Weeks leading up to the event. For the next month or so, leading up to the show, our websites will be giving fans eye-popping exclusives (like the Big Four trading cards from the September/October issue, which we unveiled last week), previously unseen backstage video, and excerpts from our interviews with the bands on a regular basis.

This installment is an excerpt from Revolver’s special issue devoted to the Big Four, which you can buy right here. This section recounts the early days of Megadeth, right when they were playing their first shows featuring a young guitarist from another band in the Big Four, Slayer’s Kerry King. The excerpt features interviews with King, Slayer vocalist-bassist Tom Araya and drummer Dave Lombardo, alongside Megadeth bassist David Ellefson. It also features photography of Megadeth by Bill Hale, who is working on a book titled Megadeth: Another Time, Another Place, which will feature tons of great photos from this time period (for more on the book, scroll to the bottom). So, without further ado, let’s get back to business.

While in New York, Metallica kicked Dave Mustaine out of the band, replacing him with Exodus’ Kirk Hammett, and sent him back to San Francisco. Not long after, he formed Megadeth. What do you all remember about Megadeth’s early days?
DAVE LOMBARDO I remember seeing Megadeth at Slayer’s rehearsal in Tom’s house before they hit the stage. And I remember Gar Samuelson, the drummer, was amazing. He was really, really good. I thought they were amazing musicians with what they did, with the guitars and the scales and that technical stuff.

Kerry played with Megadeth early on. What were those shows like?
DAVID ELLEFSON He played the first five shows with us as our second guitar player. I think Slayer was a little bit on the fence with what they were doing, what their direction was. Kerry always claimed that he saw Dave play with Metallica at the Whisky and how it changed his life. Playing with us, Kerry was such a natural fit with Dave’s guitar-playing style. He just fundamentally understood how to play those riffs.

Kerry, did you learn a lot from Mustaine about guitar while you were in Megadeth?
KERRY KING Well, if you listen to him, he’ll fucking say, “Yeah.” As far as he’s concerned, he’ll tell you he fucking created me.

Listen, I’ve learned to take Dave with a grain of salt. He means something, and it just comes out different. I think everybody’s learned that over the years. I’m sure I did learn stuff from Dave. I was very young. I think he’s got a couple years on me. He’d been doing it longer than me.

An early Megadeth show, featuring Kerry King on guitar

What was it like for the rest of Slayer to see Kerry play with Megadeth?
DAVE LOMBARDO It was awkward. It was a little awkward, yeah. But you know, it worked out, and of course the band continued.

TOM ARAYA I guess Dave was trying to make a supergroup. And I guess Kerry didn’t really…I guess their personalities clashed. He did five shows with them and kind of said, “Eh.” When he was playing with them, me, Dave , and Jeff were like, “Oh well, I guess we can go on.” It wasn’t gonna stop us from doing what we were doing. In the end, I like to think Kerry made the right decision.

David, what do you remember about Kerry’s decision to stick with Slayer?
ELLEFSON During those first few shows, we did an in-store at the Record Vault in San Francisco. All these fans were going up to Kerry going, “Dude, Slayer! Slayer!” And I think Kerry kind of had a second thought, like, Wait a minute, maybe I shouldn’t be joining Megadeth, maybe I should go back home and kick my bandmates’ asses and get everything in gear.

I think Kerry making that trip with Megadeth up to San Francisco in February 1984, that again changed Kerry’s whole perception because he got to be right up in the Bay Area and saw thrash metal, front and center, for what it was. It’s funny, ’cause I think he went back home and Slayer wiped the makeup [futureusgallerythey wore at the time] off their faces. They definitely got out of L.A. mode and into thrash-metal mode.

To read the rest, get Revolver Presents: The Big Four right here.

Megadeth and Mustaine photos by Bill Hale. For more info on his book, which you can buy here, visit his blog and Facebook group and MySpace page. Also, check out the blog for Hale’s Metallica book, Metallica: Club Daze 1982 – 1984.

Les Claypool of Primus
“He’s the first one I can think of, because he’s just a tremendous bass player. I’ve had the privelege to see him play on Ozzfest ’99. It was amazing.”

Troy Sanders of Mastodon
“I’m not too up on a lot of the modern bass players, but he’s great. He’s also a good bass player and singer, which is, of course, something I appreciate.”

Stanley Clarke
“He’s a fantastic bass player. He’s someone who Rocky George from Suicidal Tendencies introduced me to.”

Billy Sheehan of Mr. Big and Steve Vai
“A really amazing bass player. He and Steve Vai playing together, man—amazing.”

Revolver Presents: The Big Four

REVOLVER Lars, how much attention did you pay Megadeth early on?
LARS ULRICH I don’t remember getting that into the first record, but when Peace Sells came out in ’86, it just blew me away. That was right up my alley. That literally became my favorite record for a long time. Dave would come up and play San Francisco a lot. And I would always go find him, and we would drink and do lots of drugs and sit around. For those years, ’84, ’85…me and him got over our issues really quickly at that time.

I remember at the …And Justice for All tour, we played down in Irvine Meadows , and Dave came down and hung out at the last couple shows at the Justice tour. This may have been ’89, and we just hang out. I remember actually when we finished the …And Justice for All album in L.A., in the summer of ’88, I went to some apartment and played it for him at 5 in the morning. We were sitting there, playing “Blackened” and a bunch of other stuff while we were busy keeping ourselves awake. Me and Dave had kind of a friendship and a cool thing going at that time, up through most of the ’80s.

It wasn’t until both bands started getting bigger that this whole kind of thing started happening in the press, which was really kind of different than what we had going between us. There was almost like two relationships there. The press loved the whole Megadeth-Metallica [futureusgalleryrivalry]. And I sort of think it got a life of its own. And in some way, you could argue that the thing that the press was doing about setting our bands up, eventually started kind of transcending itself into our personal relationship and probably became a big part of the fact that over the ’90s it got a little frosty at times. You know what I mean?

Lars solo photo by Anton Corbijn. Lars and Dave by Ross Halfin.

The issue features all-new, exclusive interviews with members from each group talking about how they’ve crossed paths in the past, the idea behind the Big Four tour, and what lies in the future. Also included are an in-depth history of U.S. thrash metal, a look back at the 1990 Clash of the Titans tour—when the Big Three of thrash, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax, first joined forces—and stories on the making of each band’s masterpiece: Metallica’s Master of Puppets, Slayer’s Reign in Blood, Megadeth’s Peace Sells…but Who’s Buying?, and Anthrax’s Among the Living.

Revolver Presents: The Big Four features original “Four Horsemen” cover art by Baroness frontman John Dyer Baizley. The magazine is also jam-packed with rare and never-before-seen photos from the bands’ archives.

Get your copy now before the issue sells out!!! At your local newsstand or online here.