Mustaine

by Dave Mustaine

  So we adopted a new and ever-changing business model, one that divided the royalty pie into ever-smaller pieces. Here’s the way it had worked in the early days. If you wrote the music, you got 50 percent. If you wrote the lyrics, you got 50 percent. If you wrote both, you received 100 percent of the royalties on that song. If you wrote the lyrics and collaborated with another band member on the music, then you would receive 75 percent of the royalties on that song; the person with whom you collaborated on the music would receive 25 percent. If you wrote nothing—if you were just a musician playing in the studio and going out on tour—well, you got nothing in the way of royalties. You received a very high salary and a cut of the gate at live events. For someone in Megadeth, at its peak, that wasn’t exactly chump change, especially when endorsements and merchandising revenue were factored into the equation. For all of us, it was a better life than we could ever have imagined.

  This was about as complicated as I ever wanted the formula to be. Unfortunately, each time a zero was added to the back end of a royalty statement, envy and jealousy increased accordingly, prompting further intervention and retooling of the accounting process. If one person wrote the lyrics, everyone else would have a chance to add or change a few lines, effectively creating a three-way or four-way split on the lyrics alone. The same would be true of the music. It was maddening.

  “Can’t one of you guys just write a fucking song by yourself?” I would say.

  There was a pivotal moment while touring in support of Youthanasia where we discussed this subject in all its inane glory. It happened at a ramen shop in Tokyo. All four of us were there: me, Nick, Marty, David. As it usually did in those days, talk centered not on music or stage shows or anything that might have been beneficial, but rather on money.

  “You know what?” Nick said. “I think we should have a collaboration fee.”

  “A what?” I had no idea what he was talking about, although I didn’t like the sound of it.

  “You know—a system for making sure everyone gets paid when we’re writing music.” Nick’s face lit up. He was about to say something important, something that would drive his point home. “It’s like Kenny G. He says he can’t write unless his whole band is in there collaborating with him.”

  There was a long, stultifying pause. Then I erupted.

  “You think I’m going to pay you to be my muse or something? That’s ridiculous!”*

  Lunch went on in silence after that, and we all returned to our hotel rooms. Somewhere along the way I made a mental note that Megadeth had changed forever. We were now, first and foremost, a business entity.

  DESPITE THE INFIGHTING and bickering, the machinery of Megadeth chugged along. I was less concerned with healing those relationships than with trying to figure out why the hell I was so drawn to self-flagellation of one type or another. Call it a spiritual quest, a psychological walkabout that brought me in contact with an assortment of mystics, shamans, and priests, virtually all of whom had something interesting, if not downright crazy, to offer on the subject of my inner turmoil.

  I went to a woman who was a spiritual healer and whose “gift” was much like that of anyone who says that they have a gift: it could have come from God, or it could have come from Satan, or she could have been full of crap and nothing would happen at all. However, when I first went to see her, she knew stuff about me and did work on me that left me feeling better. I went through every procedure she told me to do. I trusted her. Until she had a guru come work for her. This guy did acupuncture on her and stuck a needle in her vaginal area that triggered uncontrollable multiple orgasms. She left her husband for this Indian rajah, who performed a “clearing” on me using needles and cupping. So stressful was the procedure that the little fellow fainted, but not before reporting that he had seen a spectral image of a man in a silver turban who proclaimed to the rajah, “I will release him now.” This, supposedly, was the beginning of my being freed from the satanic influence that had been impressed upon me as a kid. Then there was the Filipino priest whose cleansing procedure included the vision of a demonic bull’s head emerging from my stomach.

  Okay . . . I would be the first to admit that all of this could be bullshit, but I was willing to experiment. I was searching. For what? I didn’t really know. Answers, maybe. Peace. The power to change my life. I studied Mary Ann Williamson’s A Course in Miracles. I joined a men’s group and tried to embrace all that Iron John nonsense. I did everything except turn to God, because, frankly, that was the last place I wanted to look.

  So, for comfort, I turned to the warm familiarity of alcohol and drugs. There was a drug dealer living in our neighborhood, and the two of us got to be friendly, started hanging out, getting high once in a while. Pretty soon it became more than once in a while, and before I knew it, I was back in rehab. I wouldn’t call it a full-blown relapse (yes, there are degrees of addiction, hard as that might be to comprehend). This was a period in which I was, once again, drifting in and out of sobriety; I was the newcomer to AA meetings and support groups on numerous occasions, although I was hardly a neophyte. I just kept bouncing back to the starting line.

  Photograph by Daniel Gonzalez Toriso.

  The funny (or sad) thing was, I had begun to carve out a niche in the overpopulated, sanctimonious twelve-step universe. I would attend meetings, memorize platitudes, sponsor other drunks and junkies, all the while acting as though I had something of substance to add to their lives. I’d walk into a room, stand up and tell my story, try to sound either profound or funny, or both: “Hi, I’m Dave, and I am a recovered addict and alcoholic; I mean . . . I’m more like a dope-seeking missile, and for those of you who have done inner-child work, well, I have an inner weasel.” Everyone would oooh and aaah and give me a big round of applause. For a while it actually went to my head. I developed a sense of spiritual superiority (again, this is not uncommon among recovering addicts and alcoholics) that was completely unwarranted and unearned. But all that went away when I began hanging out with my neighbor—hard to do much proselytizing when you just bought an eight ball of coke and a gram of heroin.

  SOMEHOW THE RECORD got made. We started at a place called Phase Four Studios in Phoenix, but technical problems necessitated a move to another venue early in the process. Logic and financial prudence dictated a return to Los Angeles, where studio time was plentiful, but there was no way I was leaving Arizona at that point. I liked the desert, and I took comfort in being some distance from the craziness of L.A.

  Anyway, on the advice of Max Norman, we built our own studio in a rented Phoenix warehouse and went to work.

  At Milton Keynes backstage by the trucks.

  Photograph by Ross Halfin.

  On October 31, 1994—Hal-loween, appropriately enough—Youthanasia was released. At the same time, the very first Megadeth website went up on the Internet, giving fans a chance to interact with band members through live chat sessions and e-mail as well as keep up with various promotional activities and band news.* With Max and I coproducing, Youthanasia was, in many ways, the most polished and accessible Megadeth record to date. A bit more melodic and radio-friendly. Still true to our thrash metal roots—with snarling vocals and buzz-saw riffs—but clearly inching toward a stylistic change that would soon become uncomfortably aspirational (in a mainstream sort of way). This went over well with some critics, not so well with others. Fans seemed to have no problems whatsoever. Youthanasia opened at number four on the album charts—basically shipping at platinum levels, it was the fastest-selling record in the band’s history.

  The pace of life naturally quickened. For much of the next year we worked virtually nonstop, touring in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America (twice). We contributed songs to soundtracks, put out a compilation of previously unreleased tracks and a documentary called Evolver: The Making of Youthanasia; we filmed the obligatory music videos. This proved to be more trouble than it was worth, since the video that accompanied the single “A Tout le Monde” was stricken fr
om MTV’s rotation, thanks to a controversy surrounding the lyrics, which supposedly advocated suicide. It didn’t. I wrote it, so I should know. Here’s what really happened. We had performed the song live on MTV in 1994, the day Youthanasia was released, at an event known as Night of the Living Megadeth. At one point I screwed up the set list and delivered a brief monologue before what I thought would be “Skin o’ My Teeth.”

  “This next song is about how many times I’ve tried to kill myself!”

  Only it wasn’t. The next song was “A Tout le Monde,” which isn’t about that at all (although it is about death and dying). At that point I had two choices: do a new intro and admit my mistake, or just play “A Tout le Monde.” Changing the set list and playing “Skin o’ My Teeth” was not an option. We were on live television and everyone else was ready to dive into “A Tout le Monde,” so that’s what we did. Predictably, the shit hit the fan, and “A Tout le Monde” was dubbed a “suicide song” and Megadeth a band that advocated suicide. Didn’t help, of course, that the album was called Youthanasia, although any idiot could figure out the title was merely a play on words, intended as a sly reference to the numbing effect of societal influences on the youth of America. Kids got it. Kids dug it. Adults flipped out. Pretty typical.

  By the time we got to the Monsters of Rock festival in Brazil, in September of 1995, we were all exhausted and in a perpetual state of agitation. This should have been a highlight of the Youthanasia tour—playing with Ozzy and Alice Cooper, among others—but I just wanted to go home and clear my head. Maintaining the energy and goodwill needed to sustain a tour of this magnitude is challenging under the best of circumstances; for Megadeth it was almost impossible. Sure, we had some fun, played a bunch of places we’d never played before, but it got to the point where we were going through the motions, and that’s a soul-sucking experience. I was neither strung out nor sober, but rather somewhere in the middle. I do know that I was growing weary of band politics, to the point that I had begun looking for other creative outlets. I had come to detest the sight of my own bandmates because all they seemed to care about was money. I now feel differently about most of them, of course—time and sobriety will do that. In that moment, however, I had a difficult time accepting the fact that I was paying for everything and bearing the burden of responsibility for Megadeth’s success or failure, and these guys were constantly complaining about money.

  I needed something different—a breath of fresh air. I just wanted to be happy, to make music in a way that was simple and fulfilling. And I wasn’t getting that with Megadeth at the time.

  One of the first people with whom I discussed a possible side project was Jimmy DeGrasso, who was down there playing drums for Alice Cooper’s band. Jimmy was open to the idea, and we agreed to talk more after the tour, when we got back to the States. It was all kind of nebulous at the time, just something I kept in my head as a necessary distraction from the routine of Megadeth. I thought about getting Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play bass, but he was unavailable, so I went after Robert Trujillo, who was then playing in Suicidal Tendencies. Robert was terrific, but he was more of a funk player, and he was too busy anyway, so he referred me to a protégé of his named Kelly LeMieux, who was barely eighteen years old but a really promising bass player. I met Kelly, heard him play, invited him to join the project. He accepted.

  All that remained was to find a singer, since I wanted to focus on writing, producing, and playing guitar. My first choice was Jello Biafra of the seminal punk band the Dead Kennedys. Jello had a reputation for being a bit cranky and antagonistic, and in our first meeting he didn’t disappoint.

  “What label?” he asked.

  “EMI.”

  He frowned, shook his head disdainfully. “Ah, fuck those guys! They make nuclear warheads.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  Over the course of the next five minutes Jello launched into an impressive, if incomprehensible, political screed about Thorn EMI and its connection to the military-industrial complex, and how General Motors offers financial support to companies that produce automatic weapons that end up in the hands of white supremacists, and Coca-Cola does this, and Anheuser-Busch does that . . . and on and on, until my head was spinning.

  I finally cut him off. “Whoa, wait a minute, bro. I just want to do some songs. I didn’t come here to get beat to death with propaganda.”

  We never came to terms, but I left that encounter with a healthy dose of respect for Jello, who more than lived up to his legend. He was using crutches that night, for example, and when I asked him what had happened, he explained that he had been out to a punk rock club one night recently and had gotten into a little altercation with some of the patrons. As he related the story, I laughed out loud.

  Beautiful, man. The fucking grandfather of punk getting beat up by a bunch of punks! How awesome is that?

  With Jello out of the picture I was left with few choices. I envisioned a band that would combine elements of punk rock, metal, and classical musicianship, and I needed a punk singer who would understand what I was after. The only other person I knew who fit the profile was Lee Ving, a soulful and talented singer for the L.A. punk band Fear. Lee signed on right away, and I began writing the songs that would appear on the record. It all came together rather quickly. The band would be called MD.45, based on a combination of our initials: MD (Mustaine, Dave) and VL (Ving, Lee), the Roman numeral for 45. Or so I thought anyway; not technically correct, as it turns out, but what the fuck? It’s still a cool name for a band.

  Around this same time, my drug use escalated considerably. I had problems with my band, problems with my manager and agent, problems with my wife. I had big fucking problems, and I dealt with them in the way I often had: by getting high. While we were out on tour in support of Youthanasia, Max Norman dismantled the Arizona studio and took everything back to California. I wanted Max to work with me on the final mix of the MD.45 record, so I began spending time in Van Nuys, where Max had reassembled the studio. While there I resurrected a friendship with my old buddies, heroin and cocaine. Very quickly my life began to spiral out of control.

  Pam knew all of this was happening but felt powerless to stop it. God knows she tried. One day she called my friend and martial arts mentor, Sensei Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, and asked if he could stop in and pay me a visit at the studio. Maybe, she thought, the mere sight of Benny would shame me into submission. It didn’t quite work out that way. I was ashamed, all right, but my response was one of flight rather than fight. I kept walking into different rooms, trying to avoid any contact with Sensei. He would follow me patiently, try to talk with me, and I would just ignore him. Playing it back now, in my mind’s eye, I can’t believe the way I acted. Here was this legendary man, at least as prominent a figure in martial arts as I was in heavy metal, reaching out to me, trying to save my life, and I was acting like a disrespectful fool: sneaking out back doors, hiding from him. Just talking about it, all these years later, still provokes a feeling of profound embarrassment.

  After I left the studio that day I went straight to my dope-man’s house and holed up for a while. Some guy came to the door and handed him a package. They shook hands, laughed, and then my friend opened the package and let the contents spill out onto a table. What I saw was remarkable: huge rocks of cocaine and heroin, which he immediately began breaking into smaller, more manageable pieces. Sirens should have gone off in my head, but in my twisted state of mind, all I could think was, Holy shit. This guy delivers!

  It was easy to be friends with my dealer because there were no expectations or responsibilities. We were junkie pals, bound by a craving for numbness, and that’s about it. I had a choice at this time. I could have gone back to Arizona and met with the band and with management, and confronted head-on all of the challenges we were facing. But I wasn’t willing to do that, and I wasn’t willing to tell them how I really felt, without fear of consequence. I couldn’t deal with the possibility that th
ey might quit and I’d be all alone, and then it would be just like when I was a kid, packing up in the middle of the night and running away from my father, leaving my friends behind and starting all over again. If you think that kind of experience doesn’t have an impact on a child, you’re wrong. It totally tripped me out as far as building any kind of meaningful relationships. I presumed that friendships weren’t meant to last; they were meant to be ripped apart.

  Some people, though, will surprise you. When you try to push them away, they don’t move. And when you need help, they’ll be there for you, even if you don’t want them to be there.

  I’d gotten to know Hadar Rahav in that way that people sometimes do as they approach middle age: through our children. Justis was attending the same school as Hadar’s kids, and we’d struck up a friendship based on that simple, timeless commonality. I liked Hadar right away. I was also somewhat in awe of him, for many of the same reasons that I was in awe of Sensei. Hadar was a serious man, a tough guy not merely in appearance but in actuality. His father, Nathan Rahav, was a national hero in Israel and that obviously left its imprint on Hadar, who grew up to become a commando in the Israeli army before eventually coming to the United States to work in private security. When Hadar and I would talk, and he’d share bloody tales of war and counterterrorism, I sometimes felt like the little kid who used to read comic books and dream about becoming a superhero. This was a guy who had actually done a lot of the things that most men only fantasize about doing.

  It’s not surprising that when Pam found out I wasn’t in the studio working with Max Norman, but rather hiding out, she turned to Hadar for advice and assistance. Actually, that wasn’t the first thing she did. Before calling Hadar, she called our business manager and instructed him to block access to any of my bank accounts. Practically speaking, this was not the most expedient manner in which to deal with my lost weekend, but she had to do something.