Mustaine

by Dave Mustaine

  I will admit that I did not bring the greatest attitude to this venture. Hell, I was a junkie, and going out on the road is a challenge for any junkie. This was a two-man job—just me and Paul—and I had only a small stash of heroin to take on the trip, so I knew I was going to run out quickly. Flying across the country and holing up in some remote locale meant facing the reality that eventually my supply would dwindle to nothing and I would get very sick. And as soon as I got sick, everything would fall apart. I’d lose my ability to focus, to concentrate, to work.

  Mainly, though, I would lose my patience with Paul. Everything about the guy just rubbed me the wrong way, from his insistence on offering lessons in etiquette at mealtime (“Dave, this is the proper way to hold a spoon”) to his maddeningly persnickety approach to the mixing process. Within a few days annoyance had turned to disdain, to the point that I couldn’t look at the fucking guy without feeling a little bit nauseous.

  As luck would have it, there was another band recording at Bearsville Studios at the same time, and it happened to be a band with a similar sensibility: Raven, another of the bands influenced by the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. We started hanging out a little bit, and when they left, for some reason that I can’t quite explain, everything became crystal-clear to me: Paul Lani was the wrong guy.

  Every other time that we had made changes during the production or mixing stage of the process, the decision had come from the record label. This time, however, it was up to me. I’d have to fight for what I wanted, and it wasn’t going to be pleasant. But it had to be done. The very next morning—as if on fucking cue—I woke up and made myself a pot of coffee. As I stood in the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I looked out the window, and what I saw defies belief. There was Paul Lani, esteemed major-label record producer, traipsing through the woods in his underwear. The sight of this little Pillsbury Doughboy of a man, half-naked, hand-feeding an apple (cored and peeled, incidentally) to a deer, was more than I could take.

  I need to leave. I need to leave right now. Today.

  Within a few hours I was on a flight to L.A. By the end of the week we had fired Paul Lani and brought in German engineer Michael Wagener to do the mix. Michael had worked with a slew of rock and metal bands, including Metallica, but he turned in a pedestrian effort on So Far, So Good, burying everything under reverb and generally giving the record a muddy feel.

  Although eventually it would reach platinum status, critical response to the album was mixed. I took some hits for screwing up the lyrics to “Anarchy in the UK,” and in general the music press wasn’t quite as complimentary as it had been following the release of our first two records. No surprise there—we weren’t rookies, after all, and there is a tendency for any new band to be treated more gently than an established group. For Megadeth, the stakes were higher. As were the expectations.

  It was after So Far, So Good that I began to develop thicker skin. I’d been king of the sound bite up to that point, and while I tried not to let a few bad reviews color my view of an entire industry or affect my attitude with regard to marketing and publicity, they certainly had an impact. I began to tune out the reviews and focus more intently on the fans of Megadeth and how they responded to our music. For me, reviews have always been a bit of a bipolar experience: “Great guitar player, but his singing sounds like two cats fucking.” Even if it’s true, it gets old after a while. And anyway, I’ve never understood critical analysis that strives for meanness above all else.

  I’m not a guy who likes to keep score when it comes to the media (talk about an unwinnable game). It is, after all, an artist’s role to be judged. Ultimately, his work will rise or fall on its own merit; it speaks for itself.

  Chapter 10

  The Traveling Carnival

  Opening for Dio in 1988. Listening to the crowd cheer at the Long Beach Arena–a childhood favorite of mine.

  Photograph by Robert Matheu.

  “This one is for the cause! Give

  Ireland back to the Irish!”

  I love the United Kingdom. It is, after all, the birthplace of heavy metal. First time Megadeth toured there was back in 1987, following the release of Peace Sells. I was still fairly naïve and full of ambition, and ready to conquer the world. But there were a few things I had yet to learn. Like how to drink Strongbow Super cider.

  After throwing back about a dozen cans of this stuff one night at the hotel bar, I staggered up to my room to go to bed. Ellefson and I were roommates on that tour, but he’d gone out for the evening to catch a Deep Purple show. I knew I was in trouble by the time my head hit the pillow. Strongbow Super looked like beer, tasted like sweet vinegar, and had about twice as much alcohol as beer typically sold in the States. At some point between passing out and waking up in the middle of the night, I’d become completely inebriated. Adding to my disorientation was the fact that I couldn’t see a fucking thing. Hotels in England are often ancient castlelike structures, with thick, soundproof walls and heavy, floor-to-ceiling drapes that inhibit all light. So when you wake up at three A.M. with your bladder screaming for relief, you’d better be able to find your way to the bathroom in the dark.

  Letting it rip during a solo from the night in Long Beach in 1988.

  Photograph by Robert Matheu.

  The journey can be challenging when you’re drunk off your ass.

  I sat up in bed and tried unsuccessfully to find a lamp or a wall switch. Why? Because they didn’t have wall switches in this hotel (or in most of England, as I discovered); instead, the lights were operated by tiny buttons that barely protruded beyond the surface of the wall. In the dark, you could spend all night running your hands along the plaster and not get lucky enough to find one. I lurched around the room, unable to see anything at all, not even my hands in front of my face. Finally, I found what seemed at the time to be a lid of some sort. Presuming it was a toilet seat (but not really caring one way or the other) I lifted it up, then dropped my shorts and began to piss.

  Ahhh . . . success.

  Then I stumbled back to bed and passed out. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized what had actually happened. I woke to the sight of Junior standing over my bed with a look of disgust on his face.

  “Hey, man. Did you pee in my suitcase?”

  A YEAR AND a half later, in August of 1988, we returned to the UK as part of the Monsters of Rock tour, which also included Kiss, Iron Maiden, Guns N’ Roses, and David Lee Roth. It began spectacularly, with a show in front of 114,000 fans at Castle Donington. Strongbow cider was the least of my worries by this time. Moments before going out onstage I was sitting in my dressing room, trying to make a hash pipe out of a tin can using a funky little cheese knife I’d picked up at the complimentary preshow meal. The next thing I knew, there was blood running down the back of my hand.

  “Fuck me . . .”

  I grabbed a towel, fashioned a tourniquet, and applied pressure for a few minutes. I’d been lucky. Could have been a lot worse. As it was, a few bandages staunched the bleeding and I was able to go out and play. The show must go on, right?

  The thing is, I was pretty strung out already by the time we got to Castle Donington. I knew enough about drug use to anticipate the worst: the road, after all, was a brutal place for the cocaine and heroin addict, and there was no way around the unpleasantness. No one (well, almost no one) was crazy enough to pack a pile of smack in his baggage, so basically you just accepted the fact that when you left the country to tour, you were going to have to endure withdrawal for a few days. To ease the pain, you’d self-medicate in whatever fashion suited your needs. You drank, you smoked pot . . . you ingested hash through a tin can. Whatever worked. In time, after three or four days, maybe a week, you’d start to feel better. You could always tell the junkies on tour: they were the ones shuffling around, sniffling, hacking, looking like they were suffering from the flu. And then, miraculously, they’d all get better at once.

  Or not.

  If you were desperate, you
could always turn to more dangerous tactics. Find out where the rough neighborhoods were, the red-light districts, and proceed accordingly. If you lacked the balls for such an adventure, you could try a more sane and subtle approach: seek out the assistance of a pliable member of the medical profession.

  It was a fairly common technique employed by guys who just couldn’t handle being sick on the road. And there were more than a few of them on the Monsters of Rock tour. Shit, between Megadeth and Guns N’ Roses alone, you had enough drug addicts and alcoholics to open a rehab facility.

  There was so much tension and excitement in the air as the tour opened, and on that very first day, at Castle Donington, the excitement turned to tragedy, as two fans were crushed to death when the crowd surged toward the stage during Guns N’ Roses’ performance. There is no way to put a positive or cynical spin on something like that. It was sad and horrible, and even though Megadeth was not directly involved, it took a toll on all of us. Then, just a few short hours after the concert, David Ellefson came out of the closet, so to speak, saying that he would be leaving the Monsters of Rock tour to seek treatment for a heroin addiction. Now, it would not have come as much of a shock to anyone who followed heavy metal to learn that a member of Megadeth was entering rehab. But just about everyone would have assumed that band member was me, not David Ellefson.

  A number of factors contributed to the timing of this decision, including input from David’s then-girlfriend, Charley, as well as a feeling of overwhelming anxiety stemming from the pressure of playing in front of more than a hundred thousand people. More than anything else, though, I think David’s epiphany was sparked by a desire to end the pain of withdrawal. Simply put, he had run out of heroin and needed to get well.

  As a result, Megadeth was compelled to pull out of the Monsters of Rock tour, a decision that had far-reaching implications. We had to cancel performances at seven soccer stadiums, which affected somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-million fans. We’re talking about some very serious money. Everything about the scenario pissed me off—from David’s issues to the public relations fiasco that ensued. Everyone on the tour knew what was happening, but for some reason our agent and manager chose to concoct some ridiculous Spinal Tap version of the truth, in which Megadeth reluctantly was forced to withdraw from the tour after the band’s bass player . . . slipped in a hotel bathtub and sprained his fucking wrist!

  “Are you kidding me?” I said. “That’s the best you can do? No one will believe it. Absolutely no one.”

  They didn’t, of course, and the fallout was instantaneous, not just in terms of revenue from our share of the gate but also record sales, exposure, and reputation. This was one of the biggest tours in the history of metal, and Megadeth had pulled its own plug. Within no time at all, the real story had trickled out and fingers were being pointed in my direction. People had long speculated about my drug use, but I hadn’t spoken of it in public. I never said anything, and I certainly never said anything about David. So when he entered rehab, people just naturally assumed it was my fault. I’m not big on assigning blame for bad behavior, whether it’s my own or someone else’s. Accountability is paramount when it comes to evolving as a human being, so I’m fairly quick to cry bullshit when I hear people whining about their misfortune. It would be easy for me to say that I became a skilled heroin addict under the tutelage of Chris Poland and Gar Samuelson, but that wouldn’t be fair. It’s equally unfair to suggest that David Ellefson would have remained clean and sober if not for his friendship with me. We were all passengers on the same roller coaster. No one held a gun to our heads and made us get on the ride.

  No one told us when to get off, either. Each of us made that decision on his own, with varying degrees of success.

  I followed suit not long after David, checking in quietly and voluntarily to a little place in Van Nuys, California. To say that I was invested in the rehabilitation process would be laughable. I went in part because I knew that I had a problem, that my drug use was becoming unmanageable and more painful than fun, but mainly because others were suggesting that it would be a good idea. My girlfriend Diana had repeatedly suggested I get some help, and her intervention, such as it was, came from a place of honesty and love. Others were more pragmatic. The music industry, I had been warned, was becoming less enamored of outrageous, unpredictable behavior. If you wanted to protect your career, you supposedly had to get sober.

  Supposedly.

  I remember checking in at the front desk, filling out the questionnaire, and feeling mainly sadness. I was so fucked-up that all that mattered anymore was living to get loaded. And it wasn’t like I was getting loaded between concerts or rehearsals; I was rehearsing between getting loaded, I was doing concerts between getting loaded. I had put myself in a very bad place. I had hurt myself and my fans. It was time to address the situation.

  Except it wasn’t. Not even close.

  After a couple days in treatment I called up a friend and asked him if he could maybe bring something to the facility to help cut the pain and boredom.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “You know what I need.”

  “Okay, no problem.”

  My friend showed up the next day to visit, guitar case in hand. I told the nurses that playing music would be relaxing; it would ease the discomfort and anxiety. They smiled compassionately. As soon as they were out of sight, I ripped off the front panel of the guitar and withdrew the balloon of heroin that was hidden inside. It was no more difficult to smuggle smack into rehab than it was to smuggle pizza from Domino’s (which I also did). Eight days after signing in, I walked out, no less a drug addict than I’d been when I arrived. They made me sign a release acknowledging that I was leaving “against medical advice.”

  I looked at the form and laughed. “You know what? If anybody should leave this place, it’s me, because I was bringing drugs into this place, and you didn’t even care. You’re not serious about helping people.”

  The truth, of course, was that no one could have helped me at that time. Or for quite some time afterward.

  THE MEGADETH LINEUP responsible for So Far, So Good . . . So What! survived for less than a year, succumbing ultimately to personality conflicts fueled primarily by drugs and alcohol. Chuck Behler’s baggage included a reckless guitar tech buddy nicknamed “Gadget.”

  I was with Gadget one night when we went down to score heroin on Ceres. One of the hard and fast rules regarding the purchase of smack was that you never carried the shit on your body. You carried it in your body. As soon as the transaction was complete, the balloon went in your mouth. That way, if you were stopped by the police, you could swallow the evidence. But what did Gadget do? He stuffed his balloon in between the seats of my convertible Z28. We hadn’t even pulled away when the guns came over the top of the car.

  A still photo during the filming of the video “Wake Up Dead” from Peace Sells. It was a photo shoot inside an airplane hangar at the Burbank Airport , and the fans vandalized the planes after the shoot.

  Photograph by Robert Matheu.

  “Put your fucking hands up!”

  I froze. There had been no lights, no sirens. I didn’t even know whether these guys were law enforcement or just dealers shaking us down. But they were indeed cops. I swallowed my balloon and immediately began thinking about the consequences of what was happening. They would search the vehicle, probably impound it, and I would go to jail. Remarkably, though, that isn’t what happened. Instead, they arrested Gadget, for he had been the one who was outside the vehicle, making the purchase. The cops didn’t want Gadget, though. They wanted the guy who had sold us the heroin. So they let me go and took Gadget back to finger the dealer. He ended up going to jail for a few days, sharing a cell with the guy he’d ratted out. I paid more than five grand in legal fees to clear up the problem, but after that I wasn’t sure we’d be able to keep Chuck in the band. There was just too much craziness, too much drama.

  Chuck w
as rendered replaceable by the spring of 1988; in a cruel twist of irony his departure was facilitated by his own drum tech, in much the same way that Chuck had slid into Gar’s job.

  It’s a two-day story, actually. We were playing in Antrim, in Northern Ireland, and I was backstage before the show, getting loaded on Guinness, when I heard that someone was selling bootleg Megadeth T-shirts in the crowd. This was verboten; at a Megadeth show, the only people allowed to sell T-shirts were authorized vendors. So I said, “Someone has to stop that guy and get those shirts.” I will confess that the details at this point begin to get a little fuzzy. I remember a heated conversation in the dressing room, and someone trying to explain to me something about T-shirt sales raising money for “the cause,” and I remember barking at the guy, “I don’t give a fuck about the cause; no one is selling shirts at my concert!”

  The guy went on talking, something about organized religion and oppression and bigotry. In essence, he was summarizing the ongoing dispute between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, although I didn’t realize it at the time and didn’t know much about the issue to begin with. And I was too drunk to give a shit. By the time I got onstage, I was completely out of control. I remember getting hit in the head by an English pound coin that some kid had tossed. I tried to find him, wanted to drag him up onstage and beat him over the head with my guitar. I was no stranger to onstage ruckus, having already kicked out a video screen during a show in New York and beaten up a fan in Minnesota after he rushed the stage. Drunk as hell both times, obviously, so when I spotted this kid trying to scale a barricade and come after me, I was eager to tangle.