WHAT DO YOU do when you’re a lonely kid, a boy surrounded by women, with no father or even a father figure? You make shit up, create your own universe. I played with a lot of plastic models—miniature replicas of Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, whose rivalry was re-created nightly on the floor of my bedroom; tiny American soldiers stormed the beach at Normandy or invaded Iwo Jima. Sounds weird, right? Well, this particular world, the world in my head, was the safest place I could find. I don’t mean to sound like a victim, because I’ve never felt that way. I think of myself as a survivor. But the truth is, every survivor endures some shit, and I was no exception.
Sports provided a glimmer of hope. Bob Wilkie, the chief of police in Stanton, California, was married to my sister Suzanne. Bob was a big, athletic guy (about six foot four, two hundred pounds), a former minor-league baseball player, and he was, for a time, something of a hero to me. He was also my first Little League baseball coach. Bob’s stepson Mike (my nephew—how weird is that?) was the team’s best pitcher; I was the starting catcher. I loved baseball from the very beginning. Loved putting on the hardware, directing the action from behind the plate, protecting my turf as if my life depended on it. Other kids would try to score and I would beat them down. I wouldn’t do anything illegal, but I would put the fear of God into them if they tried to get past me. And I could hit—led the league in home runs that first season.
I don’t mean to imply that I was destined for greatness in baseball, but I do think I could have been a jock if I wanted. Unfortunately, there was no stability in my life, and whatever extracurricular activities I chose to pursue, I did so largely without help. We would live with Suzanne for a while, until Dad would find us, and then we’d move out on our own, until the money ran out and we got evicted, and then we’d move in with Michelle or with my aunt Frieda. That was the cycle. One move after another, one home after another.
I wasn’t lazy. Far from it, actually. I picked up a paper route to pay for some of my baseball gear and registration fees, and then I added a second route so I’d have some extra money for food and whatever else I might need. During that period we moved from Garden Grove down to Costa Mesa; both of my paper routes were in the Costa Mesa area, but my baseball team was in Garden Grove. So I’d routinely spend the afternoon on my bike delivering papers and then ride my bike up to Garden Grove—a distance of some ten miles—for baseball practice. Then I’d ride back home and fall asleep. The end of that insanity came near the end of the season, when our coach, having exhausted all pitching options during one particularly ugly game, ordered me to the mound.
“But I’m not a pitcher,” I said.
“You are now.”
I wasn’t trying to be an arrogant prick or anything. It’s just that I was exhausted and in no mood to play a new position; I didn’t want to deal with the learning curve or the embarrassment and then have to pedal all the way back home, dejected and pissed off.
So I played, and I walked in several runs. And that, as it turned out, was one of my very last baseball games.
MUSIC WAS ALWAYS there, sometimes in the background, sometimes inching forward. Michelle had married a guy named Stan, who I thought was one of the coolest guys in the world. He was a cop, too (like Bob Wilkie), but he was a motorcycle cop, and he worked for the California Highway Patrol. Stan would get up in the morning and you’d hear the leather squeaking, the gestapo boots smacking against the floor, and he’d get on his Harley, fire it up, and the whole neighborhood would rattle. No one ever complained, of course. What could they do—call a cop? I liked Stan a lot, not just because of the Harley and the fact that he was clearly not someone you’d want to mess with, but also because he was a genuinely decent man with a real fondness for music. Every time I went to Stan’s house, it seemed that the stereo was roaring, filling the air with the sounds of the great crooners from the sixties: Frankie Valli, Gary Puckett, the Righteous Brothers, Engelbert Humperdinck. I loved listening to those guys, and if you think that seems odd for a future heavy metal warrior, well, think again. I don’t doubt for a second that the sense of melody that would inform Megadeth took root back in Stan’s house, among other places.
Even as a preteen, I was into staring people down, like here after a Little League victory with my team.
My sister Debbie, for example, had a terrific record collection, mostly hook-laden stuff by the pop stars of that era: Cat Stevens, Elton John, and of course the Beatles. That kind of music was always in the air, sinking into my skin, and when Mom gave me a cheap acoustic guitar as a present for graduating from elementary school, I couldn’t wait to start playing. Debbie had some sheet music laying around, and before long I had taught myself some rudimentary chord progressions. Nothing great, of course, but respectable enough for the songs to be recognizable.
For a long time Debbie was my best friend, the person with whom I spent most of my time. She’d come home from school and we’d hang out together, watch TV, play music (Debbie on piano, me on guitar). We leaned on each other when things got hard; we also fought like siblings do, with Debbie usually getting the better of me in our disagreements. She could be a nasty fucker when it came to fighting, using whatever was nearby as a weapon of destruction. At the end of one particularly ugly battle, I remember her digging her nails into my forearm, ripping the flesh right off. Then she emptied a tube of Vaseline on my hair, and as I tried to squeegee it off, Debbie picked up my guitar and smashed it over my head—a musical version of being tarred and feathered.
As Debbie grew up and began dating, and eventually fell in love with a guy named Mike Balli, I was left behind. She was seventeen years old when they married. I knew even then it wouldn’t last, and of course it didn’t. Anyone who met Mike and saw him with Debbie knew it was a relationship doomed to fail. Whatever chemistry there was quickly evaporated, and they were left with an unbalanced union just waiting to die. Debbie was strong and dominant; she basically called the shots—a Big Momma kind of thing.
My best friend growing up, my sister Deborah K. Mustaine.
But Mike had his positive attributes, especially to a fourteen-year-old aspiring guitar player. For one thing, his mother was in some way related to Jack Lord, who at the time was the star of the hit television show Hawaii Five-O. In 1974, it didn’t get a lot cooler than Steve McGarrett, and Mike didn’t mind dropping the guy’s name in casual conversation: “Dude, McGarrett’s like . . . my second cousin or something!” Can’t say I blame him. I would have done the same thing. Mainly, though, what I liked about Mike was the fact that he could play electric guitar, and he didn’t mind playing with me. Admittedly, his guitar was a complete piece of crap; it was called a Supra, and it was a ridiculous sunburst red, with three pickups, but it served its purpose. To my still uneducated ears, he seemed to be a fairly decent player.
Mike’s little brother Mark was also a musician. He played bass in a band with a guy named John Voorhees (who later did a stint with a fairly successful band called Stryper). Mark and John heard me playing, asked if I might be interested in joining them.
“Sure,” I said. “Just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t have a guitar.”
No problem, Mark said. I could borrow his acoustic. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just knew I liked the feeling of having a guitar in my hands, making music, being part of . . . something. I was a smart kid but an indifferent student, even as far back as elementary school. I’d get in trouble for fooling around or failing to have my homework completed, and sometimes I’d have to stay after school. Frankly I found this embarrassing. But I knew in my heart that I was a natural learner, especially if it was a subject that captured my interest.
Like music.
I loved having that secret weapon, that bond—where you sit down with another musician, and you start talking, and everyone else at the table immediately takes notice, because you’re speaking a language they don’t even understand, can’t hope to comprehend. It’s like they think
the conversation is going to be empty-headed, but it’s not. It’s just . . . different. And if you don’t play music (as opposed to just listening to music), you really can’t possibly know what I’m talking about.
So joining a band was about camaraderie as much as anything else, I suppose.
And sex, of course. Ultimately, when it comes to rock ’n’ roll, it’s always about sex.
ONE AFTERNOON WHEN I was about thirteen years old, we went over to Mark’s house to rehearse. There were a bunch of people hanging out, including one of Mark’s buddies, who lived across the street, and his girlfriend, whose name was Linda. When I walked into the house, Linda caught my eye. I wasn’t exactly a player, even by junior high standards, but I noticed right away that Linda was giving me a hard look. She hung out while we jammed for a bit, and afterward, having seen that I was the new lead guitar player, she introduced herself to me. Within a matter of days, Linda had chucked her old boyfriend for me. Why? Not because of my looks or dynamic personality, but simply because I played guitar. And I recall thinking, as Linda sidled up to me and took my hand in hers, Hmmmm . . . I kind of like this.
The hormonal inspiration for picking up a guitar is a cliché; it’s also fundamentally true, as pure and honest as any other muse. And it doesn’t change, even as you go from gangly, pubescent teen to full-grown adult male. That was one of the things that surprised me most about the music business: you hear all this stuff about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll . . . and you laugh it off. Then you get to peek behind the curtain, and guess what? It’s real! You go to Salt Lake City, the pristine capital of that most morally upright of states, and discover there’s a reason the rock stars call it Salt Lick City. You discover the cliché is based on truth. It’s absolutely real, and pretty soon you’re trying to decide which of the two proverbial bulls you want to be: the one that charges down the hill, full speed, and fucks the first cow he meets, or the one who saunters down the hill slowly and fucks them all.
MARK’S HOUSE BECAME a place of inspiration and experimentation. One of the very first songs I learned to play was “Panic in Detroit” by David Bowie, followed by Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes.” There was a pot dealer who lived up the street, and he introduced us to a variety of great stuff (in more ways than one): Johnny Winter; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Triumvirate; and, of course, Led Zeppelin. I mean, if you played guitar, you wanted to be Jimmy Page, right? And if you sang in a rock ’n’ roll band, you wanted to be Robert Plant. Everyone was trying to learn “Stairway to Heaven,” which I actually picked up pretty quickly. But you know what really got me hooked?
KISS.
Man, I really dug the early KISS stuff—not just musically but stylistically. I was not a Gene Simmons guy, either; I liked Ace Frehley, because he was a lead guitar player. I liked the whole rock star thing, and KISS seemed to have taken it to a new level.In the same way that Axl Rose made people hate rock stars, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley made rock stars seem kind of decadent and megalomaniacal—which wasn’t a bad thing at all, so far as I could tell. KISS was one of the first bands I saw live, and I couldn’t help but notice that a disproportionate number of their fans looked like Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders: they all had blond hair and wore tube tops, and they seemed to be throwing themselves at the band. And if the band wasn’t accessible, well, then the guy next to them in the audience would do.
My love for music, and especially my fascination with the lifestyle it promised, was viewed skeptically by some members of my extended family. My mother, of course, was forever conflicted: on the one hand, I know that she loved me and supported me, and wanted to see me happy and successful. On the other hand, there was no reconciling her son’s drinking, drugging, and “devil music” with the tenets of the Jehovah’s Witnesses; they were fundamentally incompatible. Similarly, my brother-in-law Bob Wilkie grew increasingly disenchanted with my changing interests. He liked me when I was a baseball player or an aspiring martial artist (I first took lessons at the YMCA in Stanton, which was located directly across the street from Bob’s police station). Those were pursuits he could get behind. But playing in a band? Listening to heavy metal music?
Uh-uh.
One day when I was not quite fifteen years old, Bob came home and discovered me hanging out in his house, listening to Judas Priest’s Sad Wings of Destiny. He walked in the front door, marched over to the turntable, and turned down the volume.
“What the hell is this?” he said, waving the album jacket in disgust.
“Judas Priest,” I answered, somewhat sheepishly.
“Who does it belong to?”
I shrugged. “It’s mine.”
And with that Bob dropped the jacket, took two big steps in my direction, and punched me in the face.
“No more of that shit in my house! You understand?”
I stood there, stunned and dazed, holding a hand to my cheek, fighting back tears.
“Yes, sir.”
What else could I do? I respected Bob too much to fight back. He would have kicked my ass anyway. I mean, the guy was a professional athlete—and a cop! Not only that, but Bob had come into our family—and into my life—as a good guy. He’d married Suzanne, adopted her son, and generally conducted himself in an old-fashioned, chivalrous manner. This seemed completely out of character.
But as I retreated to the kitchen to get some ice out of the freezer and applied it to my swollen jaw, I had to wonder: Who the hell punches a fifteen-year-old?
And . . .
What the fuck does he have against Judas Priest?
Chapter 2
Reefer Madness
Photograph by Harald O.
“He likes to pour A1 steak sauce on my pussy before giving me head.”
I was thirteen years old the first time I got high.
We were living in Garden Grove at the time, and a friend who lived down the street had introduced me to the magic of marijuana. This kid was one of those ingenious little fuckers who, if he had managed to channel his energy and intellect in other directions, might have earned a PhD somewhere. As it happened, he proved mainly to be good at finding ways to ingest pot.
We were hanging out at his house one day after school, and he suggested we smoke some weed. But not in any manner that I recognized. Rather than rolling a doob, this kid went to his room
and returned with a homemade bong crafted out of a Pringles potato chip can!
“What do I do with this?” I asked as he proudly showed me the tube.
And then he demonstrated. A half hour later I was staggering back down the street, red eyed and giggling, absolutely loaded. And that was it. Game on.
I liked smoking pot, liked the way it made me feel, and so I started experimenting with it. From there I naturally branched out into alcohol and other drugs, and before long I was skipping school, killing entire days at my friend’s house, sucking on the Pringles can. My grades quickly suffered, and I started to see how you could associate with the wrong people and make bad decisions, and pretty soon your life could be spiraling out of control. Not that I gave a shit. I’m just talking about awareness and the fact that as an adult, and a parent, I can look back now and see where it all sort of began. But you have to remember: there were no serious ramifications—none that mattered to me, anyway. Getting high on a regular basis did not make my life noticeably worse. In fact, it made life tolerable.
More than anything else (and this is true of most kids, I think), what I wanted was to feel as though I fit in somewhere. I wanted to belong. Music helped with that. So did smoking pot. Each time we moved to a new house, a new town, a new school, I endured an indoctrination period. I learned how to deal with this in a variety of ways—first through sports, then through music and partying, and eventually by breaking free of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There was no greater stamp of weirdness than to be associated with the Witnesses, and to escape that stigma I deliberately behaved in a manner that was inconsistent with the teachings of the church. My mom and my aunts
and all the other Witnesses would warn me that I was destined to burn in hell if I didn’t clean up my act, but frankly I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away from them. I wanted some semblance of normalcy, whatever that might mean.
There were times when I felt like the sad hero of some fairy tale. You know the kind—where the kids are left in the care of an evil stepmother or stepfather, or some other surrogate caregiver who really couldn’t give a flying fuck about the kids’ welfare. And the dreary circumstances of my life seemed less appealing than retreating to some make-believe world in which all I had to do was smoke weed, play music, hang out with like-minded slackers, and maybe try to get laid once in a while. Music, in particular, was my avenue of escape—everything else just went along with it.
THERE WAS, HOWEVER, one significant problem associated with cultivating a healthy appetite for drugs and alcohol.
Cash flow.
By the time I was fifteen we’d moved into an apartment at a place called Hermosa Village (which was actually located not in Hermosa or Hermosa Beach, but in nearby Huntington Beach), across the street from Golden West College, where I would eventually take classes. When we moved in there, I lost some friendships and the easy access to pot that came with them, and so I had to figure out how to keep the grass growing, so to speak. At the time, pot was going for roughly ten bucks an ounce. So, with no consideration whatsoever given to consequences or moral conundrums, I borrowed ten bucks from my sister, bought an ounce of pot, and went to work. I rolled forty joints and quickly turned around and sold them for fifty cents apiece. In a matter of just a few hours, I had doubled my money. Now, I was far from an economics wizard, but I knew a good thing when I saw it. From that moment on, I was in business: a low-rent pot dealer who made enough cash to stay high and to put food in his belly when the fridge was empty, which was more often than you might imagine. Before long, the going price for a joint went up to seventy-five cents. Then a dollar. Then Mexican weed gave way to the more potent and expensive Colombian, which in turn gave way to rainbow and to Thai. The culture embraced pot smoking with increasing fervor, which was good for my wallet and maybe not so great for my head. I didn’t really care. I was home. All I needed was some dope and music, and some buddies to hang out with.
Mustaine Page 2