Jurdin was gone within days, replaced by Mike Clink, whose credentials were strong, if not impeccable. Clink and I got off on the wrong foot as well when, early in the process, he said, “Listen, bro, if Axl calls, I may have to take off for a little while.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I’m doing the Guns N’ Roses album, too, so if Axl needs me . . . well, you understand.”
“Yeah, I understand. You better hope he doesn’t call.”
He didn’t. Clink made it almost to the very end, until he started bringing his new puppy to work with him, and the damn dog ate a hole in the wall and then knocked over my guitar, and we just had to let him go. But I want to be fair here. Mike Clink has always gotten credit for producing Rust in Peace, and I certainly wouldn’t deny his contributions. It’s a terrific record, start to finish.
THE TOUR TO support Rust in Peace stretched out over several months, beginning with our participation in the Clash of the Titans tour, which also featured Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies. I remember this as a particularly exciting and often entertaining time, as the infusion of new blood—Marty and Nick—combined with the fact that we were promoting a really strong record made touring seem far less mundane than it often did.
Of course, it helped (if that’s the right word) that we had a guy like Dominick (I will not divulge his real name) on the crew.
Dom was Marty’s guitar tech. He’d previously worked with Guns N’ Roses—when they were functioning and we were hanging out with them, there was a lot of sharing of crews. We borrowed their sound guy, Dave Kerr; their security director, John Zucker and Dominick. Dom had a generally cavalier, disrespectful attitude toward his work.
With sharp, lizardlike features and an eighth grader’s sense of humor, Dominick was not the most appealing guy in the world. But there was never any shortage of entertainment when he was around. If you spotted Dom chewing a wad of gum and asked if he had any extra, here’s the way he’d respond:
“Yeah, hang on a second.”
Then he would pull a testicle out of his shorts, stretch his scrotum, and add, “Just let me knock the hair off it.”
Dominick clashed with everyone on Clash of the Titans, but his primary target was Marty. When Marty fell asleep in an airport, Dominick drew a swastika on his forehead, a particularly nasty prank when you consider that Marty is Jewish. Knowing of Marty’s fondness for Japanese culture, Dominick had scrawled the word Cat-eater on Marty’s Game Boy. I thought that was pretty fucking funny, actually, but Marty was so incensed that he decided to fight back. As Dominick slept one off on the plane, Marty withdrew Dominick’s brushed aluminum Zero Halliburton suitcase from an overhead storage bin and wrote on the top:
DRUGS INSIDE—PLEASE CHECK!
When we landed in Australia, Dominick grabbed his suitcase, but was too drunk or hungover to notice it had been vandalized. It took him a little longer to get through customs that day; when he finally emerged, sweating and shaking, he threatened to kill Marty, who wasn’t even slightly apologetic.
Me and Max Norman at the console in the studio we built in Arizona. Max also produced the first two Ozzy records: Diary of a Madman and Blizzard of Oz.
Photograph by Ross Halfin.
“That’s what you get for drawing a fucking swastika on my head!”
By the end of the tour we had all started ganging up on Dominick. On the final flight home, as we boarded the plane, Dominick staggered aboard, blind drunk, and promptly passed out in his seat, which, as luck would have it, was right next to a Catholic priest. I can’t imagine what this poor man was thinking as he watched us go to work on Dominick. Taking turns with a Sharpie, we blackened the tip of Dominick’s nose, so that he looked like either the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz or a victim of frostbite. Then someone wrote “6 6 6” on his cheeks (I’m sure the reverend found this amusing). By the time it was over, the flight attendants had even joined in, offering the use of their lipstick to make Dominick look like the world’s ugliest prostitute.
Eventually, he woke up and commenced one of those alcoholic walks from the front of the airplane to the lavatory in the rear. Staggering, moaning, clearly in a great amount of discomfort, Dominick lurched along, and as he did so, we could hear the laughter building. By the time he got to the bathroom, having passed a couple hundred passengers, the plane was practically convulsing.
And then the laughter stopped.
All of a sudden you could hear the sound of footsteps, louder and louder, as Dominick ran from the bathroom, his face covered with red lipstick and black ink. He stopped at my seat and leaned over.
“All right, Mustaine, you fucker! Who did this?”
I shrugged, tried to stifle a laugh. “Don’t ask me. I didn’t see a thing.”
WITH SUCCESS CAME pressure, and when we entered the studio, on January 6, 1992, to record Countdown to Extinction, there was no question that the bar had been raised. Once you sell a million copies, anything less is deemed a failure. That’s just the reality of the music business. This was, for me, a rather extraordinary period. Pam was pregnant with our first child, and for the first time I felt as though I had achieved a degree of balance in my life. Our house was only a few blocks from Enterprise Studios in Burbank, where we were recording, so I could actually walk to work most mornings.
To produce Countdown to Extinction, we turned to Max Norman. Max had worked previously on the Ozzy Osbourne records Diary of a Madman and Blizzard of Oz, which in turn led to his doing the final mix of Rust in Peace. We hit it off, the record did great, so I figured, why not just let Max take over the controls on Countdown?
Less than one month after we entered the studio, on February 11, 1992, my son, Justis, was born. Pam and I had done everything we could to prepare for his arrival, but like most new parents we were thoroughly unprepared. Not for the actual birth but the aftermath. You know—the part where they let you take the kid home. Pam had gone on a ridiculously clean regimen of diet and exercise and nutritional supplements, so she was in fighting shape the day her water broke. She stubbornly refused painkillers and anesthesia for the longest time at the hospital, until, finally, I yelled, “Honey, please, take the fucking Demerol! If you don’t want it, I’ll use it.”
Pam’s stridency in this matter stemmed largely from the fact that her mother, Sally, had often bragged about how she had given birth to Pam without any anesthesia at all. She had made the whole process seem heroic. It was only after we’d been at the hospital for a while, watching Pam contorting in the throes of labor, that her mom finally admitted that maybe they had in fact given her a little something after all.
“Like what?” I said.
“I don’t know, Dave. It was so long ago.” She paused, reached around, and rubbed her lower back quizzically. “I do vaguely remember a little pinprick there.”
“Oh, that’s just great, Sally. They gave you an epidural.”
Fifteen minutes later, Pam was receiving her magic needle, and not long after that, Justis slid into the world. The next day, while I was sleeping in a chair next to Pam’s bed, some kid came into the hospital room to deliver a bouquet of flowers. Before leaving, I was told, he stopped by the nurse’s desk and exclaimed, “Ma’am, do you know who you’ve got in there? Megadeth!”
To which the elderly nurse replied, “Oh, no, young man. This a wonderful hospital. We haven’t had any deaths here in a long time.”
True story . . .
WITH APRIL CAME the verdict in the Rodney King trial and subsequent rioting that set the entire city of Los Angeles on edge. It was a strange and surreal time, with tanks and national guardsmen lining the streets for days on end—you almost expected to see Sarah Connor rounding the corner at any moment, Terminator in hot pursuit. A curfew was put in place, which meant suddenly I was working banker’s hours, ten A.M. to six P.M. Good for the family, especially with a new baby in the house and a wife who was enormously stressed out and suffering from postpartum depression; not so good for making a record, a process th
at typically involves nearly round-the-clock devotion.
Nevertheless, the record was delivered on time, and we knew before it was released that we were sitting on something special. We knew the songs were good, we knew our playing was good. We were tight, fast, loud, maybe even a little melodic in spots. And sober. Did I mention sober? For the first time in a long time, we had become a real band, with writing contributions from all four members. Nick Menza supplied the album title and most of the lyrics to the title track, ostensibly an indictment of that particularly ugly breed of “sportsman,” the kind who enjoys a canned hunt. Political statements were all over this record, from “Architecture of Aggression” (about the Gulf War) to “Foreclosure of a Dream,” a song about economic upheaval that includes a famous sound bite (“read my lips”) from President George H. W. Bush. This was a song that grew out of David Ellefson’s frustration with Reaganomics when the family farm back in Minnesota was foreclosed upon.* Additionally, there were songs about my struggles with addiction (“Skin o’ My Teeth”), the brutality of prison (“Captive Honour”), and the fallout from war (“Ashes in Your Mouth,” “Symphony of Destruction”).
On the eve of the record’s release, in July of ’92, I was about as excited as I had ever been. I knew we had a record that could alter the landscape of heavy metal.
So what happened? Well, Countdown to Extinction was a monster of an album, debuting at number two on the Billboard pop charts in July of ’92. I can remember getting the phone call and sucking in a big breath of air, and thinking, Fuck, yeah!
And then, after all of about five seconds, saying, “Who’s number one?”
“Billy Ray Cyrus.”
“What?! Are you fucking kidding me? The ‘Achy Breaky’ guy?”
“Yeah . . . sorry.”
I swear to God that’s the main thing I remember about the summer of 1992: Megadeth’s greatest accomplishment getting overshadowed. “Achy Breaky Heart” was everywhere (I know—remember, my wife loves country music), and the album that spawned the wretched single was nearly as ubiquitous. Some Gave All debuted at number one on the pop album charts and was still entrenched when Countdown to Extinction was released a month and a half later. It seemed to me that it would have been sufficient for Billy Ray Cyrus to settle for dominating the country charts, but the guy was obviously on a mission to rule the music world.
So befuddling was his ascendency that I actually took my eye off the Metallica ball for a moment, stopped wondering how I was going to surpass Lars and James, and simply tried to comprehend the awfulness of a system that spectacularly rewarded crap like “Achy Breaky Heart.” Megadeth sold a shitload of records that summer, but nothing compared to Billy Ray Cyrus. I just couldn’t figure it out. Someone once asked me if our paths ever crossed, us being chart toppers at the same time and all, and I joked, “Yeah, I told him I had this idea for a sitcom about a guy whose teenage daughter leads a double life and becomes a big pop star. Fucker stole my concept.”
Truth is, we never met, and I’m sure I would not have been particularly gracious if we had. I had no respect for his music. Still don’t. But I wouldn’t take it quite so personally now. There is, after all, no accounting for taste.
There’s also no way to adequately rationalize or explain my obsession with success, recognition, respect. It was what it was—and still is, to a degree, although I think I have a better handle on it now. With Countdown to Extinction, Megadeth went from being a flavor of the month to a bona fide supergroup. The album sold half a million copies (gold record status) very quickly, then a million (platinum), and it just . . . kept . . . going. Suddenly we had influence on a level we’d never known. A major tour was planned. The rock press knelt before us. Money was about to come pouring in. I had the career I’d always dreamt of and a terrific family as well. I should have been one of the happiest guys on the planet. But, of course, I wasn’t. Instead, I was speeding toward . . . well . . . death.
By autumn we were out on the road and once again I’d become obsessive about catching Metallica. As big a hit as Countdown to Extinction was, it had fallen short of Metallica’s latest release, the self-titled Metallica (also known as the “Black Album”), which had hit number one a year earlier, in the summer of 1991, and continued to spawn hit singles. Among these was “Enter Sandman,” a song that nearly gave me a heart attack the first time I heard it.
A little backstory . . .
Around the time that Metallica was recording the Black Album, Megadeth was offered a chance to record a song that would be used on the soundtrack for the sequel to the film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. We had been offered the title track, actually, and leaped at the opportunity.
“What’s the movie called?” I asked.
“Bill and Ted Go to Hell.”
Cool enough, I figured, and went about the job of writing a song called “Go to Hell.” When I finished, Tom Whalley, an executive at Interscope Records, which was releasing the soundtrack, offered only tepid approval.
“It’s not dark enough,” he said.
Okay . . . so I changed some of the lyrics, made it darker, recorded the vocal track, and delivered the song. Everyone loved it. A short time later I found out that the name of the movie had been changed to Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, a “creative” (i.e., marketing) decision that not only cost us the title track but also put me in the unfortunate position of having to explain why I would write a song that had the same title as a song written by Alice Cooper—my godfather, for Christ’s sake. It was awful. Obviously I didn’t really want anyone to go to hell. And obviously I wouldn’t disrespect Alice by ripping off his title. I was simply following a Hollywood directive. Unfortunately, I got burned for it.
The song opened with the following lyric, voiced by a child:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the lord my soul to take
At the end of the song, a snarling, mutated version by yours truly is offered:
Now I lay me down to sleep
Blah, blah, blah my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
I’ll go to hell for heaven’s sake!
Then the Black Album came out, and “Enter Sandman” became Metallica’s biggest single. Forget for a moment that James and Lars had a history with my songs. Forget that the opening lick to “Enter Sandman” sounded eerily like the intro to a little-known song called “Tapping into the Emotional Void” (recorded by the band Excel in 1989). What really got to me was the creepy spoken interlude midway through the song:
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
Pray the lord my soul to take
Granted, it’s not like I wrote the children’s prayer from which it was lifted (by both of us). And maybe it was just pure coincidence. I have no way of proving otherwise. Both “Go to Hell” and “Enter Sandman” found their way into the public consciousness in the summer of 1991. I don’t know which song was written first. I don’t know if James or Lars heard about “Go to Hell” while they were in the recording studio. I just know that when I heard “Enter Sandman,” I freaked out. The coincidence was mind-boggling and served as another reminder that I would never escape Metallica’s shadow. It would always be there, looming long and dark.
I have developed at least some sense of humor about all of this in my middle age. You can tilt at windmills for only so long, after all, and with much work and assistance from those who know me best, I have learned to appreciate all that I have in my life. But at the time I was fucking enraged. I’ve taken a lot of verbal abuse over the years for never quite letting go of Metallica. Some of it is justified. I know some people look at me—and I include Lars and James in this camp—and say, “Why can’t you just be happy with what you’ve achieved?” And they’re right. Selling twenty million albums is no minor accomplishment. But it’s about half wha
t Metallica has sold, and I was supposed to be part of that.
You had to be there to understand what it was like, to feel like you’re changing the world. And then to have it pulled out from under you and to see and hear reminders of what might have been every single day, for the rest of your life. And you know—you just fucking know—whatever you accomplish, somehow it will never be quite good enough.
Our stage clothes and image were seriously in disarray, as was the whole industry during this era.
Photograph by Ross Halfin.
That was me.
I was like the guy driving a BMW 5 Series and hating the damn thing because his neighbor went out and bought a 7. You never win those battles. You just make yourself miserable trying.
BY THE TIME we got deep into the Countdown to Extinction tour, I was well on my way to becoming a mess. It’s never just one thing that provokes a relapse. Addiction is much more complicated than that. I can point to numerous factors that contributed to what ultimately became a near-death experience: clashes with other guys in the band, pressure to feed the gaping maw that Megadeth had become, the loneliness of life on the road, the self-loathing I’d known as a kid that periodically kicked my ass as an adult. Take your pick.
For whatever reason, or combination of reasons, I found myself cracking open a hotel minibar one night and throwing back a few beers. The rationalization was right at my fingertips: I was working hard, missed my wife and my son; I deserved a drink. And anyway, my real problem was cocaine and heroin; a few beers wouldn’t hurt.
Wrong again.
Before long I was stumbling around like Mickey Rourke in Barfly.
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