Mustaine

by Dave Mustaine

  Fortunately, no one was hurt. The Jeep was hauled away and we drove the truck to another U-Haul center, where we were given a replacement vehicle. But the mood had changed. There was less laughter, more hostility. It could have happened to any one of us. We were all stoned or drunk, and we all lacked the expertise to drive the truck through snow-covered mountain passes. Unfortunately, I was behind the wheel at the time, and so the weight of the incident—the blame—fell on my shoulders. For the rest of the journey I felt like an outcast.*

  One night while I was sleeping in the back of the truck, we hit a bump and some shards of rust were shaken loose from the ceiling. I could feel them falling onto my face, and when I looked up to see what was happening, rust fell into my eyes. The pain was excruciating. That, combined with the fact that I was growing delirious from a diet of alcohol and potato chips, provoked a bit of a panic attack.

  Ron Quintana, James, and me.

  Photograph by William Hale.

  “Guys, we have to stop,” I said. “I need to get to a hospital, right away.”

  They would have none of it.

  “You’ll be fine, man,” Lars said. “Go back to sleep.”

  We fought for miles. At one point, when we pulled over for gas, I even called my mother and told her it looked like things weren’t working out; I asked if she would send me the money to come back home.

  That sounds crazy, I know, but it’s how I felt at the time. I’ll take responsibility for my part in all of this. I wasn’t always the easiest guy to get along with. But I know that if the roles had been reversed—if it had been Lars or James who wanted to see a doctor, for any reason, I would have steered the U-Haul to the nearest hospital. Immediately. Booze obviously played a big role in all of this. But I wasn’t the only one who drank. That’s why they called us “Alcoholica.” A name that endured, incidentally, long after I had departed.

  AFTER A WEEK on the road, we arrived in Old Bridge, New Jersey, at the home of Jon Zazula. I have no idea how Jonny Z sold himself or what he had told Lars prior to our leaving San Francisco. If what we expected was some hot-shit promoter or rising record company executive, what we got was something else entirely. Jonny Z and his wife lived in a little two-story home in an unappealing suburban neighborhood. Aside from a rusted-out car and other white-trash detritus, the yard was free of any sort of landscaping.

  In reality, Jonny Z had little in the way of a résumé. But he had balls, and obviously he was smart enough to see something in Metallica that was worth pursuing. Still, what a letdown. Jonny Z had promised a hero’s welcome.

  “Wait till you get to my house,” he had said. “We’ll have a full bar and a big steak dinner to celebrate.”

  It may sound like a small thing, but the thought of that steak had kept us going for much of the previous week. I imagined Jonny Z out on the patio of his mansion, next to the in-ground pool, grilling away on a giant Weber. There would be top-shelf liquor and silk sheets in the guest suite. When we got to Jonny Z’s house, I figured, there would be no doubt that Metallica had arrived.

  What we got instead was a single hunk of low-grade sirloin cut into strips and split among the entire gang, and a handful of walnut-sized roasted potatoes—washed down with seven-ounce bottles of Michelob. I remember being embarrassed by the entire affair and almost feeling sympathy for Jonny Z, who clearly was something other than what he purported to be. Just when I thought the evening couldn’t get any worse, Jonny Z stood up from the table and excused himself.

  “Sorry, boys, I have to leave now.”

  I looked at the clock on the dining room wall. Six P.M.

  You’ve got to be kidding! We just drove across the country, I’m almost blind from getting rust fragments dumped in my eye, we’re all starving and sick and exhausted . . . and you’ve got someplace better to be?

  I wondered if perhaps Jonny Z had another meeting, maybe with a more important client. Another band, perhaps. That wouldn’t have been such a terrible thing—at least it would have given the impression that the guy actually had some juice in the industry. Maybe we were in good hands after all.

  No such luck. The truth was far more disconcerting.

  Jonny Z said he had a curfew. He was due at a halfway house.

  “I got busted,” he explained with a shrug.

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  For all I know, it was nothing more than Jonny Z’s idea of a joke; more likely, he thought it would somehow impress us. Either way, that initial meeting left much to be desired. I couldn’t believe that this guy was now responsible for the success or failure of Metallica.

  THE FIRST FEW days in New Jersey passed in a blur. We partied relentlessly, grabbed free food whenever it was offered, and generally pursued decadence with a fervor we hadn’t known even in San Francisco. The partying was ferocious and at times dangerous. I remember one night being at one of those little upstairs/downstairs houses that looked like the house where Amityville Horror took place. We were listening to music when all of a sudden the evening took a twist and alcohol and cocaine gave way to crystal meth. Even back then, when I thought I was virtually indestructible, this was one of the few drugs that actually scared me; it was evil shit. I had tried it a couple times while partying in San Fransico, but found it completely unappealing. Some people really liked crystal meth. It was considered a poor man’s cocaine, with roughly the same pulse-pounding effect at a fraction of the cost. But what nasty side effects. To me, crystal meth was like a line in the sand that you did not cross. Coming from a guy who has been addicted to both cocaine and heroin, that might sound strange. But it’s the truth. When it came to provoking aberrant behavior and placing the user’s life at risk, crystal meth was in a league of its own. People talk about a lot of different drugs, and it’s true that each carries its own particular metaphorical warning label. But methamphetamine’s should be the most graphic. The shit that goes into it, and the people cooking it? You’re talking about twelve-year-old kids mixing it up in their bathtubs. Or worse.

  Lars and James doing an imaginary Captain Morgan rum commercial, yet soon to become very real treasure chests.

  Photograph by William Hale.

  Anyone with half a brain should know better. And yet, crystal meth was everywhere. James met some girl almost as soon as we got to the East Coast. I could tell right away that she was a meth junkie. She had the bad complexion—ruddy, pockmarked skin, boils and other lesions—that comes with habitual meth use. It isn’t so much the drug itself that causes the eruptions; it’s the toxic shit that fills out the recipe.

  “Ladies and Gents …Cliff Burton!” I was proud of playing with him.

  Photograph by William Hale.

  Frankly, I did not understand the appeal. I preferred organic partying—I tried not to put anything into my body that hadn’t been distilled or harvested. What can I say—we all have our standards.

  DESPITE HIS OBVIOUS lack of clout in the music business, Zazula had done his homework where Metallica was concerned. Say what you want about the guy—he saw an opportunity and seized it. Shortly after we arrived in New Jersey, we did a promotional gig at his store, which was housed in a big indoor flea market in nearby East Brunswick. I can’t say that the idea of performing at a flea market made us feel like rock stars—it seemed like a comedown after what we’d experienced in San Francisco. But my opinion quickly changed when we got to the store. There were hundreds of kids lined up, buying our demo tapes and waiting for an opportunity to meet the guys in the newest, heaviest, hottest heavy metal band in the world: Metallica.

  I have no idea how much money changed hands that day, and I certainly never saw any of it. It really didn’t matter. I know only that we stayed for hours, signing T-shirts, tapes, posters, albums . . . whatever. By the time we left, I realized there had been a huge paradigm shift. Standing in that flea market, surrounded by adoring fans, I felt like a rock star.

  It was all incredibly exciting and disorienting and vaguely unsettlin
g. We’d been starving for days, and all of a sudden people were throwing food at us. I remember looking at myself in a mirror when I woke up one morning and noticing that my stomach was grotesquely distended. Of course, that could have had something to do with the fact that I was drunk or stoned virtually every waking moment. The party never stopped. Booze, cocaine, pot, meth—it was everywhere, and it was mine for the asking. Along with groupies, the quality and volume of which seemed to be improving by the day. We’d do an appearance or a gig, or just show up at a party, and everyone wanted to hang with us.

  One of the last times that I ever played in San Francisco with Metallica.

  Photograph by William Hale.

  “You’re a bad motherfucker!” they’d shout.

  I’d nod approvingly. I was a bad motherfucker. And proud of it.

  For the first week or so we stayed in the basement of Jonny Z’s house. He tolerated the nonstop debauchery for a while, probably because he’d invested so much in our success. This way, at least, he could keep an eye on us. Soon, though, we became too much to handle. The proverbial last straw was the uncorking, and subsequent guzzling, of a very old and very special bottle of champagne that had been stored in the Zazulas’ liquor cabinet since the day they were married. After that, Jonny Z kicked us out. Well, he didn’t put it that way. Instead, he suggested that all parties might be happier if we just moved into a living space above our rehearsal hall, a place called the Music Building in Jamaica, Queens. I call it a “living space,” but it wasn’t an apartment or anything like that. It was just a big empty room, with no stove, no refrigerator, no shower. Just a single sink and a toaster oven. The five of us—Mark Whitakker was there, as well—lived out of a cooler, into which we stuffed beer and packets of bologna. That was the diet. We’d wake up in the middle of the day, eat, drink a little bit to take the edge off the hangover, hang out, and then go back to sleep. Sometime after sundown we’d wake again, like a pack of fucking vampires, and start playing. We’d rehearse for a few hours, then drink until we passed out. The next day we’d do it all over again.

  No doubt shredding, James is singing behind me.

  Photograph by William Hale.

  Lather, rinse, repeat.

  This was the rhythm of our lives.

  During this period we struck up a friendship with the guys in the band Anthrax. The Music Building was their home as well, although only during the daylight hours, when they were rehearsing. I’m friends with a few of those guys to this day, including guitarist Scott Ian. Anthrax was a very different band than they are today—less polished, less refined, with a vastly different lineup—but they were still interesting, and I remember watching them play a few times and thinking that things would work out for them. The camaraderie we’d known in the Bay Area was largely absent in New York, but we saw a glimpse of it with Anthrax. One day I walked into the studio and started talking with Danny Lilker, a bass player and a founding member of the band (along with Scott). I can still see the look on his face—a mixture of amusement and pity—as we talked. I can only imagine how I must have looked . . . and smelled.

  “Dude, you want to come over to my house and grab a shower?”

  He didn’t have to ask twice. On the way, we stopped at a pizza place and Danny bought me a couple slices. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but it was a gesture of kindness that struck me as completely genuine, and I’ve never forgotten it.

  Meanwhile, back at the Music Building, clandestine shit continued. I was completely oblivious to Metallica’s master plan, if there was such a thing. Certainly I had no idea that my tenure in the band was about to come to an end, and that indeed plans for my dismissal were already in the works. It is a testament to my naïveté—or perhaps to my alcohol-induced complacency—that even as strange things happened, I failed to take any action. One day we were driving around, drinking and smoking some weed, just keeping the party rolling (or so I thought), when we suddenly stopped at some guy’s house to check out musical equipment. This dude had a bunch of shitty, low-grade amplifiers, Fender Bassmans, and I couldn’t figure out why we had any interest in them. I had plenty of gear already—really high-quality stuff.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked Lars.

  He just shrugged. “You can never have enough gear.”

  James and Lars ended up borrowing a pile of shit from this guy. The first time we played a show in New York, suddenly my amps were on James’s side of the stage, and the lousy amps were on my side of the stage. They offered some bullshit explanation for it, and I swallowed it without a fight. But in my heart, I knew something was wrong. The pendulum was swinging back and forth, and it was only a matter of time before it cut into my skin.

  I played just two shows with Metallica in New York, on consecutive nights. The first was April 8, 1983, at the Paramount Theater in Staten Island. The second was April 9, at L’Amour in Brooklyn. On both nights we shared a triple bill with Vandenburg and the Rods. In my recollection, both shows went well. Steve Harris from Iron Maiden was in attendance, and he told me afterward how much he enjoyed the way I played guitar; considering the source, this was no small compliment.

  Afterward, as was our custom, we all went out drinking. This was our way of celebrating. It was also our way of consoling ourselves. We drank when we were happy, we drank when we were sad. We drank to fight boredom. We drank for inspiration and consolation.

  We drank. A lot.

  By now it had become a pattern. The more we drank, the more our personalities diverged. I mentioned this before, but Lars and James would get weird, and by weird, I mean silly—childish. The more they drank, the goofier they became. With me it was a different story. The more I drank, the more I sought an outlet for my rage and frustration. I wanted to get out and do some cruising and bruising. So this night was nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve thought about it many times, tried to recall a specific incident that might have provoked what followed, but I keep coming up empty. The night ended as it usually did, with the five of us passed out on the floor of the Music Building, drunk and sexually satiated, too numb to give a shit about the price we would pay the next morning.

  I find it interesting that the execution was delayed for more than twenty-four hours. I don’t know why, but for some reason they waited until Monday to give me the news. We hung around all day Sunday, recovering from our hangovers, patting ourselves on the back for bringing New York to its knees on consecutive nights. Then we rehearsed a little bit, drank some more, and passed out again. When I awoke on Monday morning (April 11), they were standing above me, all four of them, grim resignation etched on their faces. My bags were behind them, packed and ready to go.

  James and Cliff were inherently meek and nonconfrontational, so their role was mainly supportive. It was Lars and Mark who took the lead.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “You’re out of the band,” Lars said, without a trace of emotion. “Get your stuff; you’re leaving right now.”

  I didn’t know what to say. All previous foreshadowing notwithstanding, I was shocked. Everything I had worked for, everything we had accomplished—together—was crashing down in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I felt like I was back in grade school, when I had no control and every day was a vertiginous nightmare.

  “W-what, no warning?” I stammered. “No second chance?”

  They looked at each other, slowly began shaking their heads.

  “No,” Lars said. “It’s over.”

  Fighting seemed pointless. Anyway, I wasn’t willing to surrender whatever dignity remained with me by groveling for my job. If they felt that strongly about it—and obviously they did—there was no sense in trying to change their point of view.

  “Okay,” I said. “When does my plane leave?”

  There was a long pause as they exchanged glances. Lars handed me an envelope.

  “Here’s your bus ticket,” he said. “You leave in an hour.”

  There have been more than a few
bad days in my life, but this one remains right up there with the worst of them, right alongside the day my father died. In fact, this hurt more.

  “Okay,” I said. “But don’t use any of my stuff.”

  I was referring not to my amps or other equipment (all of which took weeks to make its way across the country), but to something more precious. Something more personal.

  My songs.

  They nodded in agreement and then slowly walked away. James had been named the designated driver, probably because he was my closest friend in the band. We threw my stuff into the back of the truck and drove out of Queens in silence, bound for the Port Authority bus terminal. We barely made eye contact as we drove through the city. James has cultivated an image of toughness and machismo over the years, but I’ve known him a long time. I know who he is deep inside. When he dropped me off at the bus terminal, there were tears in his eyes. We were both hurting.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  We embraced one last time, and then I pulled away and walked into the terminal. I didn’t look back. It wasn’t until I took a seat in the waiting area that I realized something important: I was dead fucking broke. Not a dollar to my name. I was looking at a four-day bus trip from New York to California with no food, no water, nothing. I had only a bag of dirty laundry and my guitar. Why they couldn’t have given me a few bucks—survival money—for the trip, I don’t know. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to them. Regardless, I spent the next four days in a hobo’s hell, panhandling for change, accepting whatever handouts my seatmates offered—a doughnut here, a bag of chips there. More than one person took pity on me. It’s interesting how nice people can be when they don’t even know you, when they have no reason whatsoever to help you or to trust you, when you are in the throes of a hangover and about to be suffering from withdrawal because you can’t even afford to buy a drink, and you reek of sweat and alcohol. But those people are out there, and when you run into them it can restore your faith in humanity.