REBEL MEETS REBEL: MARK MORTON INTERVIEWS DAVE MUSTAINELamb of God’s gruff guitarist not-so-sheepishly interviews Megadeth’s manic main man 
By Dan Epstein
Illustration by Ed Repka“I’ve had a career that’s longer than most,” says Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine. “It’s obviously sordid and checkered, but would I have ever thought it would last this long? No way.”
Since his unceremonious dismissal from Metallica in 1983, Mustaine has indeed carved out quite a colorful career for himself and Megadeth, one punctuated by various addictions, physical setbacks (like when compressed radial nerves in his left arm and hand forced him to temporarily retire the group in 2002), and acrimonious relations with a revolving cast of bandmates. But he’s also responsible for creating some of the finest, most sophisticated, and enduring thrash metal ever recorded, and it’s hard to find a metal musician these days who hasn’t been influenced in some way by such classic Megadeth albums as 1986’s
Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, 1990’s
Rust in Peace, and 1992’s
Countdown to Extinction.
Lamb of God’s Mark Morton is one guitarist who’s more than happy to acknowledge his debt to Megadeth. “As a kid, I went from punk to Megadeth,” he explains. “Megadeth never really got the tag of a ‘crossover’ band, but to me it was a perfect channel for a punk-rock kid to get into heavy metal. Megadeth was dangerous in the way that Bad Brains and Black Flag were dangerous, but it was way more realized on a technical level.” From 2000’s
New American Gospel to their new album,
Sacrament, Lamb of God have actively strived to attain that same balance of menace and proficiency.
Given that Lamb of God are currently supplying direct support to Megadeth on this fall’s Mustaine-curated Gigantour, and that Morton and Mustaine are two of the more intelligent and articulate ax-slingers out there, we figured it would be fun to watch the former interview the latter. As you’ll see, sparks flew. And even when Mustaine, who is by his own admission "tangential sometimes," fails to directly address Morton’s questions, his answers are no less illuminating.
MARK MORTON Looking back on the creative evolution of Megadeth, do you feel like the music progressed in specific stages or phases of development? Or was it more of a fluid, continuous stream of consciousness?
DAVE MUSTAINE Wow, what a question! [
Laughs] For me, the creative process has just been kind of going with the flow. There was a period where I kind of strayed a little bit from what was true to my heart, but I’m doing what I like again now.
MORTON Can you specify why you might have strayed?
MUSTAINE Yeah, of course! Real simple: It’s called domestic harmony. When you’re in a band, it’s like being married—you know that! [
Laughs] Things were great in the beginning, when no one questioned anything. Then people started to question things, and then they started to question me, and then I started questioning me, and then I thought, “Fuck you all!” [
Laughs] And that’s basically when everything ended, and I started again. In a nutshell, I was pretty disappointed with the way that [1999’s]
Risk was received. If it didn’t say Megadeth on it, it would have been a successful record. But because it said Megadeth, people expected something, you know? Marty Friedman [Megadeth lead guitarist from 1990 to 2000] was in the band, and I said to Marty, “Man, we gotta go back to our roots!” And that’s when he quit. And now Marty’s been doing his own thing. He’s happy, which is cool, and I’m playing with people that I really enjoy playing with. When you pick up the guitar, if you are listening to too many other people, you run the risk of confusing what you do. During that period in the Nineties, my management and Capitol [Records] were trying to groom Megadeth into crossing over and becoming an “alternative metal” band. And I resisted and I fought all the way. But the bottom line was, I agreed. So I can say that I didn’t want to do it, but I did it. And that sucks.
MORTON How big a role did the various lineup changes have in the development of the Megadeth sound? Were you ever apprehensive about letting the new members influence the sound of the band?
MUSTAINE Well, I think a good leader is going to allow whoever he’s leading, whether it’s in music or life or battle, to show you what they’ve got. Like, in the studio, if someone was doing a solo, I’d say, “Go ahead, give it a whirl!” And if I didn’t like it, I’d say, “Okay, let’s try this.” And then, if I didn’t like that, I’d say, “
This is what I need you to do.” Which is pretty fair, because it’s your way/our way/my way, and a lot of times these guys came up with really great material. Sometimes it was a little harder, but I think each guy gave the different lineups some color. The funny thing is that anybody can play any one of those songs, and it still sounds like a Megadeth song. It’s never been like, “Ah, smurf poo, ‘Peace Sells’ doesn’t sound like ‘Peace Sells’ because Marty Friedman is playing the solo!’”
MORTON In the post–Kurt Cobain Nineties, when metal really seemed to fall out of fashion, there were a few bands that you could still go to for metal, and Megadeth was one of them. How did you weather that storm?
MUSTAINE You know what’s sad, Mark, is that I never really had the opportunity to stop and enjoy my success on the way, because I was always trying to explain myself, because somebody always picked up the smurfing chalice of bitterness between me and some of the other people that I had problems with in the music business. If I could give you any advice right now, it would be, “Look out the side window—don’t look out the windshield so much, because you’re going to miss a lot.” Going back to your previous question about lineup changes, that didn’t hurt anything. It certainly didn’t hurt Ozzy, it didn’t hurt Bowie, it didn’t hurt a lot of people who have used supporting casts. And all those guys who were band members [of Megadeth], essentially they’ve been a supporting cast to an idea that I’ve had—and that was, basically, to
get revenge. There’s a lot of stuff when you’re growing up that you just kinda want to get out of your system. And for me, playing metal music was the best way to “blood let” myself.
MORTON But as you grow up and your band becomes successful, how do you tap back into that energy?
MUSTAINE Well, I don’t know if I should say it, but a lot of Eastern philosophy has influenced my life, and there’s one statement that makes a lot of sense: “Behind every mountain, there’s another mountain.” You get to the top of the peak with one record, and you’re demoing in a couple of months for the next record. You could be drinking champagne, getting blown in your hotel room, and wondering, “Oh, my god—what do I do next?” Not being “in the moment,” you know? Each one of those journeys is going to be an effort and a struggle. Because when this record’s done and you’re ready to put out a new record, you’re going to go to the record company and people are gonna be gone. You go to the radio stations, and people are gonna be gone. Either they’ve quit or been fired, moved on, they don’t like you anymore, or they’ve passed away. And then you realize, at the end of the day, you’re in this journey alone. But when you get married and have kids and stuff like that—it does start to change. It’s kinda hard to be a rock bastard when you’ve got pictures of kids in your wallet. [
Laughs] You’re up there onstage, saying, “Hey! Smurf you! Anarchy!” And then you’re driving a Mercedes and going home to your mansion—like, how believable are you? You don’t even know what it’s like to eat Top Ramen or macaroni and cheese anymore. Because that’s how we start—not very many metal guitar players come from wealthy families, I can tell you that right now!
MORTON Yeah, that’s what I mean. When you’re sleeping at a truck stop in Jersey, it’s easy to be pissed and write dark thoughts. But when you cut the grass at your house and then go in and work on your record, it’s harder to be pissed. I guess that’s part of the challenge.
MUSTAINE Yeah, but there have been really hard decisions to make over the years, and it’s cost me. It’s cost me my personal blood family. It’s cost me the family that I created. It’s cost me friends. It’s cost me a lot of fans. The way I’ve tried to stay true to what I’m doing, people misinterpret that kind of focus and dedication to your cause as your being an sfincter. In order to start something great, sometimes you have to make some sacrifices. Sometimes you have to say goodbye—you have to walk away from the stuff that you love, and it’s really hard. That’s what it’s like in war; that’s what it’s like in business. In order to be successful, you’ve got to make those hard decisions, and then you get vilified, and people think you’re a smurfer because of it. And you’re going to have to make those decisions—maybe not with your personnel, but sometimes with agents, sometimes with attorneys, sometimes with managers. It’s really smurfing hard to let people go. You walk away and think, There’s a bridge I just burned, and now they’re going to go off and slag me. But you know what? You’ve gotta do it.
MORTON What can be done in metal that hasn’t been done already? What can metal bands do to break new ground in the genre?
MUSTAINE You’re kidding, right? A cappella metal! [Laughs] It’s like David Gilmour versus Yngwie—what Yngwie can do with 12 notes, David Gilmour can do with one. It all depends on how you decipher the guitar—whether you look at it as being an extension of your body or as an extension of your spirit. Because if it’s an extension of your body, you’ve gotta work it. But if it’s an extension of your spirit, it pretty much plays itself. I don’t think I was born a guitar player, but I know that I was born to do what I’m doing right now, to be true to myself and not look back with any regrets.
MORTON What do you want to do next with Megadeth? How do you approach the next body of work?
MUSTAINE Well, it’s been pretty rewarding going through this last 10-year cycle, from
Risk to back where I’m at right now. If I do the math on this, I’m 45, and I’m past the halfway point of my life—there’s no way I’m going to live to be 90. And I look at where I’m at right now and say, How do I continue to go to the well? Well, right now, I’m living up in L.A., and my family’s in San Diego. So, you gotta do what you gotta do. If you don’t have somebody that understands that you’re a troubadour, if you don’t have somebody that understands that you’re a nomad… That you can sleep on an amplifier in a van, that you can go into a truck stop and take a shower, when you know that Bubba has just been in there with his
Fat Girls magazine. That you can see a deli tray in a dressing room and say, That’s cuisine!
That’s what it takes to be able to make it in this business. I didn’t get signed because I had an outrageous image. I got signed because there was something there, and it was different. You’ve gotta adapt and improvise. You’ve gotta get in the trenches and fight it out, and see who’s left standing.
Subject: Great Megadeth interview 
Thu Jan 22, 2009 3:20 pm
