“I SOMETIMES THINK HOW MUCH BETTER THINGS WOULD HAVE BEEN IF WE WOULD’VE ALL TRIED A LITTLE BIT MORE WITHIN THE BIG FOUR” —DAVE MUSTAINE
LESS THAN 20 MINUTES INTO A LENGTHY CONVERSATION with Dave Mustaine, Megadeth’s mercurial frontman has revealed multiple sides of his complex personality. His greeting is warm and sincere, and it isn’t long before he’s cracking dry, self-deprecating jokes. There are some comments about religion, thoughts on space travel and an informative aside about a new street drug called Krokodil (Desomorphine).
“It’s supposed to be like some kind of super-heroin,” he says. “It’s made from a drug that’s been approved, but when you mix it with something else and inject it, it makes your skin rot until your bones stick out. Now, why on earth would anybody do that? It’s cheaper than heroin and the high lasts way longer. And the life expectancy of somebody who uses it is two years. Jesus, knowing that just makes me think about how precious life is.”
Though it mostly hides under the surface — like a crocodile — there’s something irking Mustaine a little more than the thought of kids injecting flesh-melting junk, and while he keeps his cool for a while, he gets a little cranky when asked about the title of Megadeth’s 16th album, The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead! He doesn’t object to the question per se; it’s the misinterpretation of those who automatically think they know the answer that ticks him off. The song is clearly about the black plague and was written long before the Covid-19 pandemic. And the album cover depicts band mascot Vic Rattlehead standing on a street in an age before electricity, dead bodies lying at his feet, a burning church steeple in the background. Yet some gossip mongers still wrongly assume the album title and song have got to be about Coronovirus or Mustaine’s recent battle with cancer. “The lyrics are about infected rats and fleas on a ship of people going from the Black Sea to a port of Sicily [in 1347],” he says with a slight growl. “It just frustrates the hell out of me when people write about stuff and they don’t do any research.”
Mustaine has good reason to be a little irate. Decades after he stopped drinking, drugging and picking fights, and learned to turn the other cheek, naysayers still look for openings to poke and prod him. Strictly from an artistic standpoint, however, it’s worked for him. As he’s proven throughout his 40-plus-year career, adversity stokes his creative flames and inspires his edgy, angular, attitude-laden songwriting. There’s some truth to the idea that Megadeth’s main man is at his best when he’s at his worst. He has created some of the band’s greatest riffs, solos and songs — and Megedeth’s most trenchant albums — when dangling over the precipice, a snapped thread away from a fatal fall. Early in their career, when Megadeth were penniless, practically homeless and battling and A a few years later, when wrangling with internal friction, pills and the pressures of success, he conjured the seminal technical thrash albums and. And after recovering from an arm injury he was told would end his guitar-playing career, he lashed back with a string of records that showcased his exceptional syncopated riffing and rapid-fire lead guitar work. He thinks about this for a moment. “You know, sometimes the best things for me come after I’m told I can’t do something,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah? Watch me!’”
