Ex-Metallica Bassist Ron McGovney just took a verbal swing at his former bandmate Dave Mustaine, after the Megadeth guitarist completely cut McGovney out of Metallica’s history during a recent interview. McGovney feels that Mustaine has continued to show him a lack of respect by “minimizing” his involvement during Metallica’s early stages.

In an interview with Alex Jones, as reported by Blabbermouth.net, when Jones asked Mustaine what it was like to perform with Metallica again, the axeman reminisced, “When we started off, it was three guys that, we didn’t know what we were gonna do. We just loved playing together, we loved fast and heavy music. If you would have told us we [were going to] change the world and that every guitar-playing kid from here to Timbuktu would be playng my style of guitar playing, I would have said you were out of your mind. But that’s how it started. We were a three-piece — James [Hetfield] sang, I played guitar, Lars drummed and we had a bass player at the time that we changed for Cliff Burton, who we really wanted.”

McGovney responded to his exclusion from Metallica’s history on his Official Facebook page. “I really don’t understand why a certain former lead guitar player of a band that I played bass in still disses me in interviews. Saying that they were a ‘three-piece’ is just ridiculous. I thought we got along well when we saw each other in December. We even shared a dressing room.”

The former Metallica bassist continued, “He can minimize my contribution to the band all he wants. Sometimes he doesn’t even mention my name. What he needs to realize is that he came to MY garage to try out for this band. The first song he learned was a song that the singer and I had already played in a previous band. He even got kicked out of the band when I was still a member, even though it only lasted a couple of days.”

McGovney concludes, “I wish he would just tell the whole story if he is going to talk about that part of his career.”

Both McGovney and Mustaine recently shared the stage with Metallica during the band’s last 30th Anniversary show in San Francisco.

More From Rock 108