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Megadeth / Testament / Exodus, Thursday, March 18, 7 p.m., Scranton Cultural Center Grand Ballroom (420 N. Washington Ave., Scranton). Tickets: $39.50, sold out at press time. Info: 570.346.7369, megadeth.com
There’s no mistaking Dave Mustaine. That snarl. That curled upper lip.
And that’s before you hear what comes out of his mouth.
On stage, it’s a trademark gritted-teeth vocal delivery. Off-stage, it’s a no-holds-barred conversational style that often gets him into hot water. Controversy always seems to find Mustaine and his thrash metal band Megadeth. Or maybe Mustaine seems to find controversy, dating back to his firing from Metallica to his drug addiction, subsequent recovery and born-again Christianity.
This year, Mustaine is reclaiming his past while maintaining Megadeth’s status as a viable band. Its new album, “Endgame,” is a return to form and earned a Grammy nomination as well as accolades from critics. And “Rust In Peace,” Megadeth’s landmark 1990 album, is getting another run. On the band’s “Rust In Peace” 20th Anniversary Tour, Megadeth — Mustaine (lead vocals, guitar), Chris Broderick (guitar), David Ellefson (bass) and Shawn Drover (drums) — is playing “R.I.P.” in its entirety for the first time in its storied career. This summer, Megadeth will tour Europe with fellow Big Four thrash metal bands Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax and then will play U.S. dates with Slayer.
In advance of a sold-out show at the Scranton Cultural Center this Thursday, Mustaine spoke with the Weekender about recreating “R.I.P.,” the current state of heavy metal and original bassist Ellefson’s return to the fold.
WEEKENDER: “Rust In Peace” is considered to be a historic metal album. What’s your opinion of it?
MUSTAINE: (Laughs) I like it. It’s peculiar when people say that, because it’s not one of our more challenging albums. It also reminds me of a very dark period in my life and my career. David Ellefson and I were living together, and we didn’t really have a band at the time. We were putting all of the pieces together, and we were living with strangers. Every chance we would get, we would shack up some place and find some unsuspecting victim to take us an emotional hostage. So the record has a lot of different feelings for me.
Being on stage and playing it is fun for me, because a lot of the fans are mesmerized watching it happen. I think a lot of people don’t think that this record could be played live, and I mean for Pete’s sake, I wrote the damn record, so why couldn’t I play it?
WEEKENDER: How have Chris and Shawn taken to this material?
MUSTAINE: Well, Shawn was pretty much dyed-in-the-wool, so he knows the stuff pretty well, and Chris is an incredible student of the guitar and that’s what he lives for, so he was able to learn all of the notation of the music. So then it was just a matter of moving pieces around, phrasing-wise, and just getting some of the hand shapes and the nuances of my right-hand picking patterns, my left-hand fretting technique and stuff just to make this record sound right, because some guy could play the same exact thing that I’m playing, (but) it won’t sound the same. That’s fairly obvious, but I’m talking about they could play it almost exactly like I play it and still not sound the same because of little teeny tricks that I have. When I show that to Chris and say, ‘Does that make sense,’ (he says), ‘Yeah, totally, man,’ and it’s much better now. Whenever we clamp down on a part and we get into that pocket, everybody knows. This record has a very cold, jazzy kind of swing to it.
WEEKENDER: Are there plans to bring any Big Four shows to the U.S.?
MUSTAINE: No. That’s up to people that organize this. But I think that’s going to require a lot of stuff to take place with some other people. If it happens, and it’s good for us, like the thing happened with the Big Four overseas so far, great. Ya know, we’re on a really good run right now, and inasmuch as the Big Four thing is super-successful, if it’s successful it’ll be great for all of us. The same can be said right now for the ‘Rust In Peace’ tour — it’s successful, and it’s great for us. I take the same kind of commitment to this performance as I would to the performances this summer.
WEEKENDER: I see you’re only playing one song from “Endgame” on this tour.
MUSTAINE: Just one. We don’t have a lot of time to play. We’ve been contracted for 75 minutes, which is not very long, and we actually play over that contracted period because it feels like it’s cheating the fans. But that’s just the way of the world right now, ya know? They’ll book the band for 75 minutes, and if we play 75 minutes, then they’ll get what they want and we get what we’re paid for. But who gets cheated? Well, I do, because I don’t get to play as much as I want, and the fans do, because they don’t get to hear as much as they want. That’s kind of one of the ugly sides of this business that people don’t see. We’ve got to make the decision ourselves. Do we compromise and give more than what we’re contracted for? And the answer to that is always a pretty resounding “yes.”
WEEKENDER: Do you get the sense that there’s a resurgence in interest in heavy metal?
MUSTAINE: I would say so. I’m not exactly sure what this all means to everybody, but I do know that I’ve watched the heavy metal business be a cute, quaint underground thing back in the ’80s to becoming successful to becoming completely exploited and having it have to go underground again because you had people saying they were metal bands, and they were completely confusing the fans, because they’re not metal, you know? Because the audience doesn’t know the difference.
I mean, think about it, the poor bastard that goes to the Best Buy to get a metal record, and they were told that Stryper was metal, and they go to buy a Stryper record, and they come home with a Slayer record. There’s a little bit of a difference between the musical styles, but they both call themselves metal, right? And I think what happened is that so many people began to hide under the moniker of metal that it became so fragmented that there were dozens and dozens of types of metal: heavy metal, speed metal, pop metal, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, white metal, hey diddle diddle metal, whatever the f--k. And to me, it’s silliness. If you’re really good, then stand up against your entire genre. Don’t start sub-sectioning just so that you can be alone in your mediocrity.
WEEKENDER: Who are some of your influences? We’ve read about Motorhead and Iron Maiden, but who are some others?
MUSTAINE: Well, I’m influenced by The Beatles a little bit. You didn’t say Led Zeppelin. I like bands that have real moving chord progressions. I like a lot of classical stuff. I really dig Paganini and Wagner. I also like, ya know, foreign pop bands. For example, this guy named Roddy Frame who wrote music for this band Aztec Camera. And not all their stuff is good by any means, for my taste, but they do have a couple songs that have some significance to me because I heard them at a part in my life during painful transitions.
Same thing with a band called Crowded House. They have that song “Don’t Dream It’s Over”? I can be anywhere and be totally sad and hear that song, and my mood will brighten right up. I don’t know why, but that song just cheers me up, and there’s not a lot of songs that do that. I know Neil and know Tim and I told them that I really dug their music and they were pretty surprised. We actually became friends, and I like Crowded House better as a 3-piece, but ya know they go back and forth with having four people, and with the drummer dying that kind of f----d everything up.
WEEKENDER: Your partying days are pretty legendary. These days, what do you do after a show?
MUSTAINE: Well, my partying was not very much different than everybody else, it just was publicized. I mean, there were people that partied harder than me. Fortunately for me, I saw the writing on the wall and got pretty well sorted out. There’s a mentality that goes along with our job that they push onto us, and unless you’re really spiritually in fit condition, you can fall into that mentality and start thinking you have to live like a rock star.
I saw a guy a couple days ago — and I’m not going to say who he is out of respect for him — but this is a guy I’ve known for a little while, and I know he’s got a drinking problem. And I saw him walking around with two O’Doul’s in his hands. Double-fisted, drinking non-alcoholic beer. And I’m thinking, Dude, that’s like faking multiple orgasms. Drinking an O’Doul’s, it’s obvious that you’re drinking it for the taste, but if you’ve got one in each hand. C’mon.
WEEKENDER: What do you do after a show now?
MUSTAINE: What are you asking me? Do I take drugs and get f----d-up anymore?
WEEKENDER: I’ve read that you don’t. I’m asking what you do after shows now that you’re clean and sober.
MUSTAINE: After we get done with the performance, we review what we did and everybody cools down. Most of us shower depending on how hot the venue is; sometimes you don’t break a sweat, and other times you’re completely soaked. And then we usually will get something to eat before bed. Myself, because I’m on a strict training regimen, I like to have a liquid meal at night, because I don’t want to have nightmares. Driving in the bus, I already have enough nightmares from what happened with Cliff. So I try not to eat. (Editor’s note: Former Metallica bassist Cliff Burton died in an 1986 bus crash.)
WEEKENDER: What’s your relationship like with the other Big Four bands these days? In the past, it’s been contentious.
MUSTAINE: I think it’s obvious, because we’re doing the shows. Are you sure you want that to be your last question?
WEEKENDER: I’ll ask about Dave Ellefson if you let me.
MUSTAINE: Well, that was your last question. But I’m going to give you another shot at it because that was not really a great question to part on.
WEEKENDER: OK. How did Dave Ellefson go from suing you for $18.5 million to you inviting him back into Megadeth?
MUSTAINE: Well, I can’t speak for him, but all I can say is that the opportunity presented itself, and I prayed about it, and I asked him if he wanted to come play, and he said ‘Yeah,’ and we worked it out.
Obviously, there were some things we had to work out because we had a very close relationship. When you’re really close to somebody and then the relationship takes a pause or even stops, there’s usually some hurt feelings, and we had to clear some of that stuff up. Now it’s just a matter of just catching up for all the good times we had.
Every time we were looking to conquer the music industry and get on top, every time we got there something happened. It was just crazy. But right now everything is firing on all cylinders, and it looks like this is going to be our year.
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