I had intended to make a brief visit to the dope house—just pick up enough stash to last a few days and then get back to work. Instead, I hung out for a while. And then a while longer, until eventually I lost track of time. I preferred smoking or snorting, which still seemed to me a less queasy and creepy method of delivery. But on this particular journey I was completely out of my mind: stoned, depressed, suicidal. Whatever inhibitions I might have had, they melted away in that apartment, until pretty soon I was pulling liquid heroin into a syringe and injecting it into a vein.
How long did it last? A few days, I think. Less than a week. We sat around in a perpetual state of intoxication, listening to music, eating, ignoring the outside world. At some point there was a phone call. My dealer answered. Knowing Pam would eventually figure out where I was hiding, I had told him I didn’t want to talk with anyone. He stood there for a moment, phone in hand, listening. Then he cupped the mouthpiece.
“It’s someone at the studio. They’ve got some mixes for you to approve?”
I nodded, motioned for him to hand me the phone. “Yeah, this is Dave.”
“You asshole!”
Oh, shit. Pam. “Hey, baby,” I cooed, trying to turn on the charm.
“Fuck you! I’m out here right now with Hadar, and we’re coming up to get you.”
“No, no, no. That’s okay, I’ll come down.”
So I walked outside, where Hadar and Pam were waiting, along with a phalanx of security vehicles filled with Hadar’s commando buddies, prepared, it seemed, for a firefight of epic proportions.
“Jesus, man. Relax,” I said. “This ain’t New Jack City.”
Pam didn’t laugh. “Get in the car,” she said. “We’re leaving. Right now.”
“Yeah, okay, just let me go inside and get my stuff.”
Hadar was standing next to her now. He shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re coming with us.”
They had reasoned—correctly, I might add—that if I’d gone back inside, I would have shot up again. One for the road, as it were. Given the fact that I was already completely fucked-up, with toxic levels of heroin and cocaine coursing through my body, I’m not sure I would have walked back out of that apartment. I might have died. Frankly I didn’t care one way or the other.
They put me in a car and drove to a rehabilitation facility in Santa Monica called Steps. Along the way I asked if we could stop so that I could get some candy. We pulled off the highway, and when Pam and Hadar got out of the car, I proceeded to get loaded, using a small amount of heroin wrapped in tinfoil—essentially a smack-filled joint. It’s a simple method of delivery: you light the tip of the foil, the heroin begins to scald, and you inhale the smoke. Presto: instant high. By the time Pam and Hadar returned to the car, it was filled with smoke.
“Can’t take it in with me,” I said. “Might as well not let it go to waste.”
They didn’t even try to stop me at this point. They just rolled down the windows and pulled out of the parking lot. Wind quickly filled the car, threatening to extinguish the fire, so I rolled the windows back up. And so it went. They rolled the windows down, I rolled them up. Up, down . . . Up, down.
Finally, Hadar began to laugh. “Hey, Pam,” he said in a thick Israeli accent. “I think I have a contact buzz.”
Pam didn’t even smile, just stared out at the open road. She’d been on this trip before, and it had long since lost its humor.
TO SAY I knew the rehab drill would be an understatement; by this time I could have worked the nurse’s station. I checked in, went to my room, had something to eat, and then went about the business of detox. The first week or so is always the same: ridding your body of toxins and easing the sting of withdrawal. Then the unpleasant work begins: therapy.
I took some comfort in knowing that Steve C. (as they call him in AA), one of the administrators I’d gotten to know and trust at the Meadows, was now program director at Steps. At the same time, it was a little weird and demoralizing to encounter Steve again in this fashion, knowing that it signaled such a complete and utter failure on my part. That’s one of the many challenges of addiction and rehab: you leave a facility, everyone pats you on the back and wishes you well, but you always kind of sense that after you’re out of sight, someone says, “He’ll be back.” In my case, they were usually right. Moreover, my relationship with Steve had devolved since I’d been at the Meadows. For a time, we had been friends. We even went on a Mediterranean cruise together, with our wives. Unfortunately, Pam and Steve’s wife, Chantelle, did not get along particularly well (I attribute this to jealousy on Chantelle’s part), and the trip became something of a disaster. I had hoped that the lingering ill will wouldn’t spill over into my experience at Steps, since I still had considerable respect for Steve’s work, but it did.
In one of our first meetings Steve began talking shit. Now, in itself, this is not cause for concern. In fact, it’s pretty common in rehab. There’s a certain attitude and pose counselors adopt when they want to use a negative motivational treatment:
“Hey, hope your mortgage is paid up, asshole, because you’re gonna be dead soon and it would be a shame for your wife and kids to have no place to live.”
That sort of thing.
Generally speaking, the more seasoned the addict, the less likely this approach is to have any effect. It sure as hell didn’t work with me. Steve tried it anyway, but it was pretty clear that his antagonism—which included several unkind references to Pam—was rooted in genuine anger. He didn’t seem to me to be particularly concerned about my treatment or rehabilitation. He was just pissed.
We got past it eventually. I did my time and embraced the program to the best of my ability (which wasn’t much). Rehab, for me, has always been primarily a place to heal my body rather than my psyche. It has been, quite literally, a lifesaver. But it’s never done much for my spirit. Steps was supposed to be one of the best of the high-end treatment centers—the kind of place known for catering to a celebrity clientele. Really, though, it seemed pretty typical.
There’s a weird dynamic in rehab—people gravitate toward like-minded folks as soon as they check in. These arrangements are not discouraged and in fact often are facilitated by program administrators. Everyone in rehab is looking for a surrogate spouse, mother, father, brother . . . whatever. Everyone is broken in some fashion, and you reflexively seek out others who have cracks in the same places so you can compare notes, try to heal each other’s wounds. Experience has taught me to question whether this is the healthiest approach (especially with the sex addicts, who end up fucking each other in bathroom stalls), but it is what it is. I’d been at Steps about a week and a half when a kid showed up. He was tall and wiry, with light skin and hair and a compulsion for scrawling graffiti on the walls. It turned out he was a musician and we talked a little, got to know each other, swapped stories—all the usual shit. He was a nice enough kid and I sympathized with his problems, but still . . . the idea that we were suddenly best buddies, just because we were both junkie musicians, didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And that dynamic, so common in rehab, is one of the reasons the process has never quite taken hold with me.
Although I will say this: when I left Steps, after thirty days in residence, I was clean and sober.
Again.
Chapter 15
Soul for Sale
Photograph by Daniel Gonzalez Toriso.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?!”
Ron Laffitte is one of the most polished and professional people you’d ever want to meet. I offer that as both compliment and criticism, for it reflects Ron’s ability to rise through the music business, seemingly without effort, as well as his uncanny knack for a certain type of diplomacy. He is the type of person who can look straight into your eye, or into the eye of a camera, and offer a litany of compliments, even if he really thinks you’re just a piece of shit.
This is an extraordinarily valuable skill, especially if you’re playing in the upper le
vels of the entertainment industry. it’s also one I neither possess nor understand. Ron and I had our share of disagreements, some personal, some professional. In the end, the unraveling of our friendship was as inevitable as the termination of our managerial arrangement. Ron provided much of the impetus behind the group therapy sessions that nearly drove me mad while I was in rehab in Arizona. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, I noticed that he seemed to be taking a lesser role in the day-to-day activities of Megadeth. Phone calls would sometimes go unanswered; promotional opportunities would be missed. That sort of thing. While we were out on tour in support of Youthanasia, I found out that Ron had accepted a position with Elektra Records. He hadn’t told me and I received a call from a friend who told me, rightly or not, that he had no plans to give up his position as manager of Megadeth. If that was true, then that would mean he was going to work both sides of the street. That couldn’t happen, obviously. A manager has to fight for his clients; he has to be willing to kick record company executives in the balls, if that’s what it takes. Hard to do that when you’re taking a paycheck from a record company.
By the time we began making our next record, Cryptic Writings, in the fall of 1996, we had separated from Ron and hired Mike Renault of ESP Management. Mike had helped me out while I was working on the MD.45 project, and while that record (The Craving) did not do as well commercially as I had hoped (a fact attributable mainly to anemic promotion on the part of Capitol Records) there was much to like about it. Enough that I thought it warranted revisiting several years later. At that time we remastered The Craving and replaced Lee Ving’s vocals with mine in an effort to entice interest from Megadeth fans who might have overlooked the original.
The late 1990s, it’s fair to say, was a time of artistic and creative overhaul for Megadeth. It’s also fair to say the changes produced mixed results. Cryptic Writings was recorded in Nashville, with Dann Huff producing. I had first met Dann a few years earlier, around the time Marty Friedman came into the band. We were holding auditions at a place called the Power Plant, where a band called Giant was rehearsing in a studio down the hall. Giant was comprised of Dann and his brother, David Huff, and two other musicians whose names escape me. Doesn’t matter. Despite the fact that he was primarily a session player, Dann Huff owned this band, a fact made abundantly clear the first time I heard him play guitar. I was so impressed that I had one of my guys talk with Dann about the possibility of sharing a lesson or two.
“Dann doesn’t give lessons,” I was told.
The response caught me off guard. I bristled. “Well, fuck him! Doesn’t he know who I am?”
“Yeah, he does. He still doesn’t give lessons. But he’ll be happy to jam with you.”
“Tell him to fuck off!”
That was my mistake, one born of equal parts arrogance and ignorance. Session cats are a different breed. When they say, “I’ll jam with you,” here’s what they really mean: “Have a seat, dude, and I’ll show you everything I know.” I didn’t understand the rules at the time. By the time we made Cryptic Writings, I’d figured it out.
I am adjusting to Arizona life and the tranquillity of the desert.
Photograph by Ross Halfin.
Mike Renault’s boss at ESP Management was Bud Prager, whose lineup in the 1970s and 1980s included Bad Company and Foreigner. For all practical purposes, Bud and Mike were our co-managers, and their résumés—Bud’s in particular—mitigated any reservations I might have had that Megadeth might be compromising its thrash metal heritage. Under Bud’s guidance Foreigner had sold eighty million records in America alone, evolving from a middling rock band to mainstream pop superstars. You could debate endlessly the quality of the music, but there was no questioning Foreigner’s success. They dwarfed Megadeth. Hell, they dwarfed Metallica. That sounded pretty good to me. And I’ll admit it now: I did not go in with my eyes closed. Bud was a hit maker. He wanted us to work in Nashville, slick-city center of the country music industry (and, increasingly, pop music as well), with Dann Huff, a guy most notable for producing crystalline session pop for the likes of Reba McEntire, Michael Jackson, and Céline Dion. Shit, the dude played on “My Heart Will Go On.” It doesn’t get any more mainstream than that. I knew when we left for Nashville that changes would be made and that as coproducer I would be expected to nudge Megadeth in a direction it had never traveled before. I went there anyway—knowingly, willingly—because I wanted a number one hit. I wanted what Metallica had, even if it meant selling a piece of my soul to the devil.
Fuck it, I figured. It had worked for Robert Johnson, maybe it would work for me. At the very least, I’d get that long-awaited guitar lesson from Dann Huff.
The work atmosphere in Nashville was intense and professional, if somewhat unnerving, with a constant, unwavering eye on creating something that would transcend the boundaries of thrash and heavy metal. For better or worse, Cryptic Writings from the outset was positioned as a record that would feature at least a few melodic, pop-friendly songs. Not an entire album’s worth, though. One need only read the lyrics to “She-Wolf” and “The Disintegrators” to find some of that old Megadeth cynicism and political commentary. Granted, some of the most biting songs (“Evil That’s Within” and “Bullprick”) were left on the editing room floor because Bud deemed the lyrics to be offensive, and the edgier songs that remained were often bathed in shimmering melodies and sweet production, thus softening the blow. Not quite ear candy, but uncomfortably close.
The transformation occurred mostly in the studio, where Dann and Bud assuredly pushed a pop approach. The biggest song on the album, for example, was “Trust,” a song that in the earlier Megadeth days might have sounded completely different. It was a hook-laden song made even more radio-friendly through repeated vocal takes. It began with my usual spit-and-snarl delivery, at a hundred miles an hour:
“Lost in a dream . . . nothing’s what it seems!”
“Slow down,” Dann said. “And try to stretch out the word ‘nothing.’ ”
“Lost in a dream . . . nuuh-thing’s what it seems.”
Dann rubbed his chin. “Good, good. Now try dropping the G.”
“What G?”
“At the end of nothing. And slow down just a little bit more, maybe pause after lost.”
“Lost . . . in a dream . . . nuuh-thin’s what it seems.”
“Yes! That’s it! Perfect!”
Whoa . . .
I realized at that moment I had delivered a vocal line that Tim McGraw would have been proud to call his own. So I took it back, retooled a bit, clipped the country twang, and settled for something that could fairly be described as pop metal. (Indeed, we went back and forth so many times on the word nothing that I said Dann’s tombstone would read DANN “DIED FOR NUTHIN’” HUFF.)
And that’s pretty much the way the entire process went.
One of my favorite, best fitting leather pants ever, which mysteriously vanished.
Photograph by Ross Halfin.
There were times when I walked into the studio to find Bud and Dann tinkering with the controls, playing with tracks, without soliciting my input. Normally this would have provoked my spider sense to such a degree that I would have unleashed a torrent of threats and accusations. But I didn’t. I suspected they were making modifications, softening the Megadeth sound, and I did nothing to stop them. There would be a payoff at the end, I reasoned.
I wasn’t wrong. “Trust,” a song about dishonesty, ironically enough, was the biggest hit single in Megadeth history, reaching number five on the Billboard rock charts; it was also nominated for a Grammy. Three other songs also became Top 20 hits. The album almost achieved platinum status but was in some ways less than I had anticipated. Rather than introducing Megadeth to a vast new audience, it was met with a degree of ambivalence by stalwart fans, who reasonably wondered, What the fuck is happening here? This isn’t my Megadeth! This is like my dad’s Megadeth or something.
I had a little trouble accepting all of this at t
he time, but in retrospect I can see clearly how it happened and what it meant. Sure, it’s possible to become more melodic while remaining essentially true to your metal roots. But it’s a delicate dance, especially for a band like ours, which was faster and harder than just about any band that had ever come along. Megadeth was a phenomenon based on raw energy and talent, and when you take that and water it down, it’s no longer phenomenal. It’s ordinary. By trying to expand your audience, you risk alienating your core fans, and I think we did that with Cryptic Writings, and even more so with our next record, the aptly named Risk.
A TURNING POINT with Cryptic Writings involved an appearance on the Howard Stern show. We had been approached about performing live at a special birthday show for Howard. We hoped this might be a musical breakthrough between us and WXRK, the station that carried Howard’s show. “K-Rock,” as WXRK was commonly known, was among the most influential album-oriented rock stations in the country; it could, quite literally, make or break a band. As an established multiplatinum band, Megadeth didn’t need K-Rock, but certainly its endorsement would have been beneficial in moving the band into a more mainstream position, which, admittedly, is what we were after.
Several months earlier Pam and I had gone to Europe with the twin goals of resting and reconnecting. The plan, stated quite specifically, was to conceive our second child in Paris. We stayed in the lovely Hotel Costes, and though I was not a religious man at this time, I got down on my knees and prayed with Pam for a successful conception and a healthy, happy baby. We actually knelt by the bed before making love and sought God’s blessing. This was a new experience for me. I’d prayed for sex (Please, God, let that blonde with the big tits in the front row be at least eighteen years old); I’d prayed during sex (Please, God, don’t let her have anything contagious); and I’d prayed after sex (Please, God, get her out of here—now!). But never right before sex.
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