Metallica parted ways with now-Megadeth mastermind Dave Mustaine in 1983 and people are still weird about it. Mustaine addressed the weirdness in an interview with Tom Reardon of the Phoenix New Times, chalking up some people’s animosity to jealousy. Because really folks, it’s been 41 years since the split.

“People get their ya-yas when they see people struggling for some crazy reason,” said Mustaine. “There’s the people out there who love you and want you to do good and the people out there, for whatever reason, who don’t want you to do good. You ask yourself, ‘What did I do to you? Are you that fucking jealous?’ There’s a lot of people like that. You just have to learn to avoid them.”

Mustaine later noted: “Once we broke up with James and Lars and we went our separate ways, it was really weird with all the animosity from people I didn’t even know.”

Mustaine also addresses his own penchant for saying inflammatory things over the years, noting that everyone is indeed entitled to their opinion.

“I do believe that people are entitled to their opinions. There have been numerous times where people had a right to take exception with something I’ve done because there have been some things that I did or said that I look back now and I think, ‘Wow, that was a little over the top, Dave,’ but sometimes things just need to be said. There were no people that had the balls to say anything, but that ain’t me. If someone was trying to pull a scam with us, that’s not going to happen.”

And at the end of the day, it’s not like Mustaine‘s name has been erased from the halls of thrash. Dude has plenty of absolute classics with Megadeth and even has a handful of writing credits on Metallica‘s first two albums. So unsung hero, Mustaine is not.