Profile of Dave Mustaine on Famous Like Me

Dave Mustaine (born September 13, 1961) is a heavy metal guitarist, songwriter, and singer. As the central figure of Megadeth, he is one of a handful of people considered to have pioneered Thrash Metal and Speed Metal.

Beginnings

Mustaine was born September 13, 1961 in La Mesa, California, United States. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he grew up bouncing around various low-income Southern California suburbs. As a teenager, he was often left on his own or with his sisters and their (sometimes abusive) husbands.

Metallica

In 1981, he left the band Panic to join Metallica, serving as lead guitarist for the young thrash band for two years. According to the story, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich had posted an ad in a local newspaper called "The Recycler", looking for a lead guitarist. In his own words, Mustaine remembers his first meeting with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich: "I was convinced that I should be in the band and went to rehearsal. I was tuning up when all the other guys in the band went into another room. They weren't talking to me, so I went in and said, 'Well? Am I in the band or not?' and they said, 'You've got the gig.' I couldn't believe how easy it had been and suggested that we get some beer to celebrate."

Mustaine relationship's with Metallica, however, wasn't settled to last. Brain Slagel, an early former manager of the band, recalls in an interview: "Dave was an incredibly talented guy, but he also had an incredibly large problem with alcohol and drugs. He'd get wasted and become a real crazy person, a raging maniac, and the other guys just couldn't deal with that after a while. I mean, they all drank of course, but I guess they could all hold their liquor better than Dave, and I could see they were beginning to get fed up of seeing Dave drunk out of his mind all the time."

One of the final straws for the band was on the road trip from San Francisco to New York to meet up with producer Johnny Z. The band nearly didn't make it: a crash with a jeep during a snow storm near Wyoming left the band's touring van in a ditch. Nobody in Metallica's van was hurt, but since the incident occurred while Dave Mustaine was driving punch drunk, the others members silently agreed that as soon as they started the new phase of their career, they had to get rid of Mustaine.

In April of 1983, Mustaine was fired, officially for his drug use and personality clashes with founding members Ulrich and James Hetfield. The band packed up Mustaine's gear, drove him to a Greyhound bus station, and put him on a bus back to Los Angeles, leaving their former bandmember returning home with a trauma that stuck him into a severe depression for years.

During his short time in Metallica, Dave Mustaine (lead guitar) toured with the band, co-wrote several songs which were later featured on the albums "Kill 'Em All" and "Ride The Lightning" and recorded several songs with the band, including the "No Life Til Leather" demo tape.

Megadeth

Mustaine was extremely angry after being kicked out of Metallica and his only goal in life was to create a band more sucessful than Metallica so he returned to Los Angeles after departing Metallica and formed Megadeth with bass player Dave Ellefson, Kerry King on guitar and Gar Samuelson on drums. Kerry didn't last long and was replaced by Chris Poland. The band then released their first Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good, wich suffered from poor production due to the band spending half of their production money on drugs. The album still received good reviews.

After recording Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good!, Mustaine approached Jackson Guitars for a custom built guitar. Jackson built him a modified Randy Rhoads series King V with 24 frets. After creating the guitar for Mustaine, the company began mass-producing a Dave Mustaine series flying V. This line continued into the early 2000s, when Mustaine switched to ESP guitars.

The band carried on by releasing Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? in 1986. Amid drug problems and suspicions of stealing the band's equipment for drug money, both Poland and Samuelson were fired.

In 1988, Mustaine co-produced the album Refuge Denied for the band Sanctuary.

Mustaine acquired new muscians for his next album. Megadeth's new line-up featured Chuck Behler on drums and Jeff Young on guitars, they recorded "So Far, So Good... So What!" in 1988. Mustaine soon underwent drug rehabilitation and the band was disbanded for a short while.

After returning from rehab, Mustaine enlisted Marty Friedman (of Cacophony fame) as lead guitarist and Nick Menza on drums. They worked on a new project and the result was Rust In Peace (1990), a landmark album in Thrash Metal. Two years later, Megadeth released Countdown To Extinction, their biggest commercial success, which went double platinum.

Their next album was Youthanasia (1994), which also sold well. Some hardcore fans critized the album for being too commercial, as it was a bit of a departure for their fast-paced thrash sound.

The band went on to release Cryptic Writings (1997), after which Nick Menza left the band and was replaced by Jimmy Degrasso and Risk (1999), which was followed by the departure of Marty Friedman. Adding new guitarist Al Pitrelli (Savatage) to the band, Dave recorded The World Needs A Hero (2001).

Mustaine also had a solo side project, MD.45, with Lee Ving of Fear.

Injury, retirement, and conversion

In January 2002, Mustaine suffered a compressed radial nerve in his left hand and arm, making it impossible for him to play guitar. In April of that year, Megadeth was disbanded.

Mustaine went through physical therapy for his injury, and began to explore other areas of the music industry, including production. However, he fully recovered from his arm injury following successful therapy, and following his recovery, all of Megadeth's albums were remixed and remastered on Capitol Records.

During this time also, Dave Mustaine became a born-again Christian and may have gained more conservative political beliefs (despite elements on earlier Megadeth releases that were quite the opposite). This position is theorized with a quote from October, 2004: "Now I'm gonna vote for Bush ... Kerry is a mistake. He will ruin our country." In the same article, however, he claims he's voting for the lesser of two evils and shows that he has a problem with all politicians because they are all on the cover of "The System Has Failed."

Megadeth's return

In a move that surprised many, Mustaine enlisted one of Megadeth's 1980s-era guitarists, Chris Poland, to join Vinnie Colaiuta (drums) and Jimmy Lee Sloas (bass) and release a new Megadeth album called The System Has Failed in September 2004. The album was very well received by music critics and was hailed as a return to Megadeth's successful late-80s/early-90s albums such as Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? and Rust in Peace.

Mustaine was determined to tour again. He contacted many former members of Megadeth, however all the former members (with the exception of former drummer Nick Menza) were unable or unwilling to participate. Auditions began, Mustaine hired former Iced Earth bassist James MacDonough and former Eidolon guitarist Glen Drover. Menza was eventually fired for undisclosed reasons (some sources say he could not adequately play any material, even his old stuff) and was replaced by former Eidolon drummer and brother to Glen, Shawn Drover. Shawn Drover said that he was literally hired 5 days before his first show with Megadeth without having to audition.

The tour was named "Blackmail The Universe." It was a world-wide tour and sold-out most of its venues.

Feuds

Besides his work with Metallica and Megadeth, Mustaine has fueled many a feud throughout his career in heavy metal.

The most well-known of these is his feud with Metallica, most notably with drummer Lars Ulrich. Mustaine claims to have written several Metallica songs, most notably "Leper Messiah". Metallica refuses to recognize this. Many Megadeth fans believe that "Master of Puppets" was Mustaine's work and that Metallica ripped it off without paying proper credit or royalties. Mustaine is given minor credit for his work on "The Call of Ktulu" but there are arguments between the Mustaine and Metallica fans on how much of the song he actually wrote. In 2004, the Mustaine-Metallica feud re-ignited when footage of Mustaine was used in the documentary Some Kind of Monster. Mustaine claims that the video segment was edited in an effort to show him in an unflattering manner. In an interview with Metal Maniacs magazine, Mustaine called Ulrich a "treacherous little man"; Mustaine also wrote the song "Something I'm Not" on The System Has Failed about Ulrich.

Mustaine also had a verbal feud with MTV's Rikki Rachtman from Headbanger's Ball. Rachtman stated on air that he would like to settle his differences with Mustaine and move on. Mustaine eventually cleared the matter up stating that, in reality, he really liked Rachtman. Recently on the VH1 40 Least Metal Moments, interviews were shown with Rachtman wearing a shirt saying "Dave Mustaine for President."

Mustaine has a long-standing feud with Slayer guitarist Kerry King. He has stated that there is no actual feud; rather King hates everyone in general.

In addition

In 1992 Mustaine covered the Democratic national convention for MTV. Furthermore, he hosted MTV2 Television Network's series Headbanger's Ball on two occasions: once on a tribute to Dimebag Darrell in December of 2004, and the second time as a special guest (on an episode which aired Saturday, August 27th 2005).

In the summer of 2005 Mustaine launched a traveling North American metal festival. He named it Gigantour after a favorite childhood cartoon of his, Gigantor. It would span 6 weeks and be headlined by Megadeth and co-headlined by Dream Theater, with a great variety of other supporting metal acts. Mustaine has been quoted saying that his main intention when conceiving the tour was to bring the American metal audiences an eclectic and affordable alternative to Ozzfest.

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