After 17 years, four platinum albums, and revolving lineups, heavy-metal titan Megadeth had ventured into a new direction — and pissed off old fans.
Bending Metal
On the grounds of Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, on a muggy 90-degree Saturday afternoon, the Arizona State Fair is in full swing. The Ferris wheel slowly rotates, offering festivalgoers a panoramic view the surrounding desert. The Tilt-A-Wheel tilts and whirls, and the carnival booths teenagers deal out dollar bills like playing cards in the hopes of winning miniature stuffed animals. But the fair’s main attraction is currently resting backstage inside the arena. Megadeth, titan of all that is heavy-metal music, is about to perform the first show if its American tour, and the first of three gigs scheduled in two different states over the next 24 hours.
The band takes the stage around 4pmand delivers and explosive set featuring four songs from its new album, Risk, and a dozen from its back catalog. Front man Dave Mustaine clad in a black muscle T-shirt and faded jeans, snarls and spits as he claws at his Jackson guitar, switching off between gravelly, hummable vocals and primal howls. Lead guitarist Marty Friedman approaches his craft with more finesse, caressing unearthly wails from his fret boars, while bassist David Ellefson stands stage left, looking decidedly un-metal with newly shorn locks. Recently recruited drummer Jimmy DeGrasso (ex-Suicidal Tendencies, Alice Cooper, Y&T) keeps the rhythms solid, bashing at his kit with the precision of a marksman,
While the requisite number of tattooed, body-pierced head-bangers speckles the area, there are just as many clean-cut wide-eyed teens, and a surprising number of them are girls. These are kids not angry enough to embrace the hateful rhetoric of Korn but to savvy and iconoclastic or dog the Backstreet Boys or Ricky Martin. And instead of thrashing their limbs and violently colliding into one another, as Megadeth fans have done in the past, these kids are shaking their asses and wiggling their bods to the beat.
No doubt if Megadeth were still specializing in the thrashy, combustive metal that garnered it four platinum albums over its first 12 years of existence, these wiggling youngsters would be elsewhere. It is the group’s musical evolution over its last two albums, Cryptic Writings ( 1997) and Risk ( 1999), that has attracted the new breed to the party. No longer relying on rage and volume, Megadeth now emphasizes melody and experimentation. Risk is sprinkled with electronic beats and samples, strings and bubble-gum hooks alien to most metal bands.
The change has won over not only new young fans but also legions of jocks, drawn by the song “Crush ‘Em,” Mustaine’s mixture of sports and rock. The surging anthem was used last year in Universal Soldier: The Return, which starred martial-arts heavyweight Jean-Claude Van Damme, and was then adapted as the theme song of World Championship Wrestling champion Bill Goldberg, who appeared in the “Crush ‘Em” video alongside Van Damme. “Crush ‘Em” has also been played by numerous sports-stadium music programmers during various N.H.L., N.F.L., and Major League Baseball games.
Relaxing backstage after the Phoenix gig, the ever-voluble Mustaine muses on his band’s new direction and new fans. “Our audiences don’t come to our shows to get all aggroed out anymore,” he says. “They just want to forget about their troubles and have a good time. It’s kind of like sex. It’s about making love, not getting impaled. I think the music should be like a really good orgasm. We think of ourselves as orgasm donors.”
Perhaps, but not everybody is experiencing aural ecstasy thanks to Megadeth’s new sound. To hard-rock programmers who regularly play Limp Bizkit, Rob Zombie, and Korn, Megadeth is passe. Meanwhile, alt-rock stations reckon the band isn’t alternative enough, and MTV and VH1 continue to be put off by the group’s name. In fact, MTV has screened the “Crush ‘Em” video only once, and that time only because Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich requested it while guesting on Total Request Live.
“It’s unfortunate that the world still judges a book by its cover,” says Mustaine, running a hand through his untamed blond hair. “ ‘Megadeth’ is a very raunchy word, but it doesn’t mean for a million people to die; it represents an extreme amount of power. It comes from a comment about nuclear disarmament made by [the former Democratic] California Senator Alan Cranston in 1982. He said, ‘The arsenal of Megadeth can’t be rid.’ I thought, What a fantastic name. So, with extreme lack of foresight, I decided to go with that, not knowing what a professional setback it would be.”
“A lot of bands have controversial names, but ours is pretty extreme,” agrees Ellefson, who formed Megadeth with Mustaine in 1983. “People can get upset about a name like Bush, but every guy looks forward to getting some bush. No one wants to get death.”
The name may be an obstacle on radio and TV, but it doesn’t explain why many old schoolers are fleeing the Megadeth camp like rats from a sinking ship. “I think Mustaine lost his mind or something,” gripes Jeff Wagner, associate editor of Metal Maniacs magazine. “Risk is like a diet-Megadeth album, and as far as I know, there’s zero demand for a ‘lite-metal’ metal subgenre.”
Fightin’ words for sure, but some fans have reacted even more violently. Two days before the Phoenix show, an Indianapolis audience member beaned Mustaine with a full cup of beer during the band’s opening number. The singer toweled off, rinsed his hands, and returned to the stage — only to be pelted by another beer. “Sure, I’m disappointed by some people’s reactions and behavior, but, fuck, there are idiots everywhere,” snaps Mustaine, his penetrating brown eyes fixed on his interviewer like those of a cat on a small bird. “Anyway, I’d have been disappointed even if we would have made it to number one on Billboard and the record didn’t stay there forever. Everything’s relative. It all has to do with your happiness and if you’re okay with yourself, and I am for the first time in years.”
Mustaine may be okay with his new direction, but in the insular metal community, audiences deify, champion, and stick by their favorite bands-as long as they’re credible. The minute a group takes a step perceived as a “sellout,” its fans react as emotionally against it as when they cheered it. “Some people say that what we’re doing now isn’t in our hearts, that we’re not being real and true to ourselves,” says Ellefson. “Maybe people who have been our fans for ten or 15 years see us now and think, ‘Oh, they’re not being who they are.’ Well, guess what? We are not who we were in 1985. The world keeps turning, and if you don’t grow and change and evolve, then you basically become obsolete.”
For Mustaine, who has been a card-carrying member of the heavy-metal community since he helped form the original lineup of Metallica in 1982, being accused of going soft is a harsh blow. A few years ago the musician would have ranted and raved that anyone who thought he’d sold out should meet him in a dark alley, ready for combat (Mustaine holds black belts in tae kwon do and ukidokan). These days, however, Mustaine controls his temper and restrains his massive ego, at least for brief periods of time.
“I think there comes a point in everyone’s life where you have a reckoning with yourself, and I got to that point recently,” he says, referring to Cryptic Writing and Risk. “Am I making music that’s controlled by the past, letting the past control my future? Or am I making music because it makes me feel good? And the answer is the latter. I think people confuse crossing over with selling out. But we want to sell out. We want to sell out venues. We want to sell out record stores. Only a dumb-ass would say that he doesn’t want to sell out. Do you think when the guys from Coca-Cola put the stuff on the shelves, they’re thinking, ‘You know, you gotta have your integrity, so let’s not sell out’?”
Ironically, Mustaine decided to overhaul Megadeth’s sound and to name the new album Risk after reading a 1997 interview with Lars Ulrich, who suggested that Mustaine should take more musical risks. Ulrich, of course, had been the party responsible for firing Mustaine from Metallica in 1983 (more on that later). At first, Mustaine was offended by Ulrich’s comment, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized his ex-bandmate might be right.
“Lars is way more successful with his group than I am with mine,” Mustaine concedes. “So I thought, Okay, you have to look at it like you’re a guy who’s just starting playing in the major leagues. If Cy Young comes up to you and says, ‘Look, here’s how you throw the perfect curve,’ you would be an asshole not to listen. At that point, the respect and recognition of Lars’s talent started to really seep in.”
After a decade-long feud, Megadeth and Metallica are mending fences, and these days they behave like members of a mutual-admiration society. As previously mentioned, Ulrich was responsible for getting “Crush ‘Em” aired on MTV. And Megadeth is now taking DDT — a band Ulrich signed to his new label — on the road. In keeping with his and Mustaine’s new positivity pact, Ulrich has nothing but praise for Risk. “I really, really like the record,” he enthused at an exclusive after-show party for DDT in New York last October. “I think the stuff Dave is doing is really exciting and courageous. I have a lot of respect for him.”
The defining moment of the Mustaine/Metallica reconciliation took place last summer at the annual Big Day Out music festival in London when Mustaine ran into Ulrich and his toddler son, Myles, backstage. Ulrich asked Mustaine to take an Ulrich family photo, and when Mustaine picked up the boy to place him next to his dad, the kid didn’t want to let go of Dave. “That was a good sign,” asserts Mustaine. “Puppies and kids know what’s good and bad inherently, and when Lars saw that his kid wanted to stay with me, it kind of helped make things right between us. Now everything’s great-like a really bad dream that’s finally ended.”
In fact, much of Mustaine’s early life resembles a bad dream. He was born in La Mesa, California, in 1961, son to a housewife and the West Coast division manager of Bank of America. When he was four his parents divorced, and his mom took a job as a house cleaner to support Dave and an older sister (two other sisters had married earlier and moved out ). “We went from being wealthy to having nothing at all,” recalls Mustaine. “We had food stamps, Medicaid, hand-me-down clothes, broken toys. I never celebrated Christmas until I got married.”
“I couldn’t fuck just one girl. I had to have two fucking each other for me to even get excited.”
In addition to struggling with borderline poverty, Mustaine’s mother was trying to keep her whereabouts secret from his father, an alcoholic she feared would become abusive. Every time the father tracked them down, the mother and her two kids would move. By the time he was 15, Mustaine had bounced among homes in California, Arizona, and Idaho, and wound up attending 20 different schools. When his mother was really broke, she would send him to live with one of his married sisters. Then, when Mustaine turned 15, his mom handed him the keys to their tiny Los Angeles apartment and left for good.
“Any insecurity I suffered when I was growing up disappeared at that point because suddenly I was in total control,” Mustaine says. “It was either sink or swim, and I think that’s where a lot of my confidence came from. I had a car, and I had the phone and lights and cable and all the utilities in my name. Sadly, I was selling drugs to pay the bills. And there aren’t really many opportunities for 15-year-olds with no guidance.”
With no vocational skills besides drug dealing, Mustaine spent an ever-increasing amount of time practicing guitar and writing songs. He joined several metal bands that didn’t go anywhere before responding to a MUSICIANS WANTED ad Ulrich had placed in a local L.A. paper, the Recycler. Through the same ad, the two musicians met guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield, and Metallica was born. The group quickly became renowned for its hard-core tempos and precise metal attack, and in 1982 recorded the now legendary demo “No Life ‘Til Leather.” But in April 1983, shortly after Metallica signed a deal with Megaforce Records and moved to Queens, New York, to record its debut album, Ulrich ousted Mustaine, who was prone to aggressive outbursts and unpredictable behavior. “In a nutshell, I was a violent drunk, and I was more drunk than sober,” Mustaine admits. “I jeopardized their safety, and looking back, I would have asked me to leave too. When you’re around a lot of people [who] like to drink and get silly, they want to drink and have fun. I would drink and have fun until someone would refute something I had said. And then that was war, baby.”
The ejection hit Mustaine like a tire iron to the groin, and he didn’t even have time to recover. Metallica had purchased the penniless exile a bus ticket from New York back to California, and the three-day coach ride was scheduled to leave mere hours after his dismissal. It took many months for Mustaine to get his wind back, but in mid-1983, around the same time that Metallica released its seminal first album, Kill ‘Em All, Mustaine met Ellefson, who lived downstairs from Mwstaine’s shabby Los Angeles apartment, and formed Megadeth. The band’s original lineup featured Mustaine, Ellefson, Slayer guitarist Kerry King, and drummer Lee Rash. King and Rash soon were replaced by Chris Poland and Gar Samuelson. It was the first of many future dismissals. In 1986, Poland and Samuelson were fired and replaced by Jeff Young and Chuck Behler. Then, in 1989, heads rolled again when Mustaine axed Young and Behler, and hired drummer Nick Menza and Marty Friedman. Menza remained with the band until 1998, when he was canned, and Jimmy DeGrasso took the drum seat.
(As this story was being prepared, the Megadeth revolving door rotated again, with Marty Friedman unexpectedly leaving the band mid-tour, citing creative differences with Mustaine. Ex-Alice Cooper and Savatage guitarist Al Pitrelli was tapped to fill in for the remainder of the tour dates, but Megadeth management says he will probably not become a full-time member.)
Because of Mustaine’s pedigree, Megadeth didn’t have to pound the pavement long before signing a record deal in 1984 with indie label Combat. A year later it released the well-received Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good. However, business was bad. The record company wasn’t quick to fork over royalty payments, and to date denies Killing even went gold. Unable to afford to pay rent, the Megadeth guys took turns living in Ellefson’s old Ford van when they couldn’t find some ditzy chick to take them in. Even then, the accommodations were far from sublime. “Dave [Ellefson] was living with the girl singer from this band one time,” says Mustaine. “I remember him telling me how she made him sleep on the floor while she had sex with another girl.”
In early 1986 Megadeth started working on its second album, Peace Sells… but Whos Buying? Mustaine, Ellefson, and then-members Poland and Samuelson moved into a small Los Angeles practice studio without windows or a bathroom. The only time the musicians could shower was when their manager took them to a local gym. “We’d go there high on whatever we could find, in order to not feel the pain and misery of starving to death or actually acknowledge the lifestyle that we were living,” recalls Mustaine.
In November 1986 the band released Peace Sells… and suddenly found plenty of buyers. The video for the title. track became a staple on MTV ‘s “Headbangers’ Ball,” and the album quickly went gold, eventually scoring Megadeth’s first platinum record. But the fellows were blowing all their money on drugs, and before long Mustaine and Ellefson were out of control. “I can remember copping bags of heroin, and having to swallow them because the cops came along,” says Ellefson. “I’d get interrogated and get away with it. And then I’d stop off at a Mobil station and puke my guts out, and weed through my barf to get the balloons of heroin out. Then I’d immediately pop them open and get high, and celebrate the victory of not getting busted. There are a million stories like that-it was almost an everyday occurrence.”
Ellefson managed to kick drugs for good in 1991. Mustaine needed a bit more convincing. He first tried to curb his vices in 1988 by delving into Asian and Middle Eastern philosophies and the Bible. But in 1989 he was arrested for driving under the influence and was ordered to enter a 12-step program. The treatment seemed to work, and Mustaine stayed clean for two years. In March 1991 he married his girlfriend of six months, Pam, a swimsuit model who also worked at the Arbitron ratings company. A year later she gave birth to their son, Justis. (Today the Mustaines also have a daughter, Electra, two.)
On the surface, all seemed blissful. But while touring in Eugene, Oregon, in February 1993, Mustaine not only relapsed, he overdosed. “My wife didn’t like the smell of alcohol on me, but I was too clever to be defeated by something as simple as the smell of alcohol, so I started taking Valium instead,” he says. “I took too many, and my heart stopped. The hospital actually called my wife to say I had died —‘so don’t bother coming.’”
“Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, and spirituality is for people like me who’ve been there.”
That brush with death had a profound effect on Mustaine. Although he didn’t sober up for another two years, he did start reevaluating his life, and decided he was setting a bad example for his fans and family. He began calling to a higher power to help guide him through his troubles. “Some force intervened,” says Mustaine, “and said, ‘We’re not ready to see you yet’ — and that’s when I went, ‘Okay, whatever you want me to do, I’m gonna do it.’ Whatever this force is, it has given me an opportunity to help other people who are going through what I’ve been through.”
This past October, Dave Mustaine celebrated four years of sobriety. He maintains a regular regimen of exercise, nutrition, and spirituality. And since meditation has replaced medication in his life, he says he feels better than ever. “I’m so in tune with my body that I can feel a cold coming on days before it hits. I can be sitting down outside, and I can tell when the tiniest bug has landed on my skin. I can sense when people are watching me. I can also sense when someone’s uncomfortable around me, and that’s almost always.”
Mustaine says the most important thing in his life right now is his “relationship with God and sobriety.” Yet he stops short of touting religion. “It’s not religion I’m driven by,” he insists. “For me, religion and spirituality are two totally different things. Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, and spirituality is for people like me who’ve been there.”
After the Phoenix show, the musicians and their families slip into a stretch limo and zoom off to the airport. Here, a chartered plane is waiting to take them to San Diego, where they’re scheduled to take the stage a mere three hours later. En route, Mustaine, who’s well versed in a variety of topics, lectures about the local real estate, geography, and political climate before commenting on how the whiskey in the car-bar looks like “hepatitic urine.” Then he cracks a few off-color jokes, including one about a biker wearing a T-shirt that reads on the back, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THE BITCH FELL OFF. As Mustaine says the word “bitch,” he covers his young son’s ears.
Don’t get the wrong idea. Mustaine can stilr get pretty raunchy. Earlier, while he — is waiting backstage — at Veterans Memorial Stadium, he spits loogies at the walls like a pitcher on the mound and bitches about a pounding headache and queasy stomach. When DeGrasso — who was incapacitated in London the previous week with a stomach flu that left him vomiting into buckets by his drum kit — expresses concern, Mustaine replies, “I guess that’s what I get for letting you suck my dick.” To this, DeGrasso responds with his favorite new line, which he’ll repeat several times during the next 24 hours: “Awww, you suck one dick and suddenly you’re a fag.” And 15 minutes later, when he spots a bevy of hot blonde girls wearing smiley-face Megadeth T-shirts, DeGrasso says, “Man, I’d like to take turns with those chicks.”
Since all the members of Megadeth are married except DeGrasso (who is in a long-term relationship), these days the band must stop short at innuendo-for-saking sex and drugs on tour to dedicate itself wholly to the pursuit of rock ‘n’ roll. There was a time, however, when a Megadeth tour was a veritable orgy on wheels. “We took what we could wherever we could get it, and we got it a lot,” says Ellefson. “One time I had sex with some girl on a sidewalk outside of a gig in Austin, Texas, and she had to pull out her tampon before we could do it. But there’s a big price to be paid for doing that kind of stuff. Every time you do that, you leave a little bit of your soul behind. And, also, the potential for disaster is pretty great.”
Mustaine clearly rues his past debauchery. “I think if you take into consideration where I was spiritually at that time, it was not so much a release as it was paying the devil his dues. I was not happy, and I thought that’s where happiness came from.” He pauses to make sure his point has sunk home, then continues. “The act of procreation is good and therefore not to be used lightly. I enjoy getting a nut just like the next guy, but there was a time where, at the end, before I got married, I couldn’t fuck just one girl. I had to have two fucking each other for me to even get excited. And that’s when I started to think, ‘Man, I’m losing my perspective on things, because pretty soon it’s gonna take a whole Girl Scout troop in there for me to get an erection.’”
When Megadeth’s 20-seat, twin-prop jet arrives at a small airport outside San Diego, a dozen fans stand near the run-way, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite band. While they wait for their luggage to unload, Mustaine and Ellefson saunter up to the kids, sign autographs, and exchange pleasantries. Then the band’s vans arrive, and it’s off to the Coors Amphitheatre, where Megadeth is due onstage in a scant 90 minutes. As the van pushes through evening traffic, Mustaine turns to Ellefson and says, “It’s too bad I quit doing drugs because a speedball would feel really great right about now.” He’s only half-joking, but he’s come too far to allow himself to slip back into old habits, which is why he still regularly attends drug and alcohol programs. “I feel like I’ve got a commitment to myself and my fans,” he later says backstage. “When you’re in the public’s eye, people look up to you. A guy like Charles Barkley says, ‘Man, I ain’t a role model.’ I beg to differ with him. He needs to understand that he is a role model. He’s a shitty one, but people see what he does and they respond.”
Living up to his newfound good-guy image, Mustaine has worked with various charities, including Boys and Girls Clubs of America, has conducted food drives on tour, and has made himself available via phone to fans in crisis. “What I have is the ability to communicate the idea that if I can overcome adversity, so can you,” he says. “As bad off as I was, I was able to get help, which is really hard for a man to ask for-almost as hard as it is to ask for directions. A lot of people think that they need to go through life taking from other people instead of giving, and I found that when I give, I get paid back with heavy interest.”
Sitting on a couch, sipping bottled water next to his son, Justis, minutes before going onstage, Mustaine appears truly at peace for the first time all weekend. Since conquering addiction and befriending the ghosts of his past, to now confront irate fans and hostile radio programmers hardly seems a problem. “Being in this game as long as I have, I’ve learned that you can’t complain and agonize over things,” he says, tossing his empty water bottle against the wall and into the trash can below. “Basically, I just figure, fuck it. I’m happy. I’m not broke, and if it all ended today, it’s been a great ride.”
