Mustaine

by Dave Mustaine

  He did the best he could, and obviously he deserves credit for stepping in on such short notice. Still, I never really warmed to Mike. For one thing, he wasn’t nearly the guitar player that Chris was. Second, he had trouble keeping his mouth shut. Now, I understand this particular character flaw, as I’ve been accused of suffering from it myself. But you really should have the ability to back up your words with actions, a fact that seemed to have eluded Mike.

  We were in Tucson one night when security guards for some reason allowed fans to enter the club while we were still doing our sound check, which proved to be disruptive and counterproductive. During the show I made some comment about how much better our performance would be if security hadn’t interfered with our sound check. The audience loved that, of course—a shotgun blast of rage from the pulpit always goes over well with young metal fans; however, the club’s management and security staff were not amused. Before we’d even left the stage, security guards had gone into our dressing room and removed all food and alcoholic beverages. When we finished playing and walked into the dressing room, we found only a few half-gallon containers of milk.

  I had no intention of backing down. Our agreement called for specific services, including adult beverages, and I was going to hold them to the letter of the contract. I didn’t get loud or angry, but neither did I cower. Diplomacy might have prevailed if not for Mike Albert’s interference. He shot off his mouth, and the next thing I knew, Mike was surrounded by a tightening circle of security guards and bouncers, all of whom looked like they’d been sprinkling steroids on their Cheerios in the morning.

  Oh shit . . . this is going to be ugly.

  As I approached the group, I could see Mike digging through his wallet, fishing frantically for something.

  “H-h-hold on,” he stammered. “It’s right here. I’ll show you!”

  The bouncers looked at him with bemusement, the way a cat might look at a mouse.

  “If you take me down, I’m taking one of you with me!” Albert squealed. “I have a black belt, and I’ve got a card right here to prove it.”

  Shit came burping up out of his wallet: receipts, money, plastic. But no card. I presume there wasn’t one. I mean, I hold three different black belts, but no one ever gave me a card to carry in my wallet or told me I was required to display anything before defending myself. This was an idle threat on Mike’s part, a painfully embarrassing display of false bravado. I don’t think any of the gorillas surrounding him were even slightly concerned that he might suddenly go all Bruce Lee on their asses. In fact, it probably had exactly the opposite effect: it just pissed them off even more.

  I thought for a moment about letting them have their way with Mike—he kind of deserved it—but instead decided to calmly intervene. We ended up getting paid for that show and left with our dignity and health intact. But the entire tour, although it definitely had its high points, was less than it might have been with Chris in the lineup. Then again, considering our propensity for fighting, maybe his temporary absence was a blessing in disguise, since it delayed the inevitable fracturing of Megadeth by at least a few extra months.

  Familiarity, after all, breeds contempt, especially when you’re fucked-up on heroin or cocaine . . . or both.

  WE RETURNED FROM the tour with no real concept of what Megadeth was onto. Things had changed—that much we knew. We’d show up at various places—clubs, parties, restaurants—and suddenly people were treating us differently. We were getting seated in places where you didn’t necessarily get seated, places that didn’t really even have seats, just the velvet rope or chain. It was, I must admit, a great feeling. Just imagine: you’re at the Rainbow Lounge, where everyone is the flavor of the month, and you’re hanging by the cigarette machine, at the bottom of the stairs, like every other schmuck. Wait a minute! No, no you’re not. That’s not you anymore. You’re being whisked upstairs to a private party, with all the blow and babes you can handle. And when you get bored, you hop in a limo and find another party. And all the time you’re thinking, Wow! How did this happen?

  I loved The Punisher comics and wrote at least two songs that were inspired by the series: “Killing Is My Business and Business Is Good” and “Holy Wars: The Punishment Due.”

  Photograph by William Hale.

  The second Megadeth record, Peace Sells . . . but Who’s Buying?* upped the ante by a considerable amount. The songs were better, the musicianship more accomplished, the production values more polished. When we started recording at the Music Grinder, in Los Angeles, we were still under contract with Combat Records, which had driven such a far-reaching, wartlike root into the existence of Megadeth that they owned a piece of the band for years to come. I wasn’t happy about this, but I tried to focus on the music. That wasn’t always easy. There were times where we would come into the studio and Poland (who had extricated himself from his legal problems) would be there in the lobby, shivering and unshaven, waiting for us to show up. When we saw him like this, we didn’t even have to exchange words. We just got in the car, drove downtown, scored some heroin, and then went back to work.

  You had to forgive a lot with Chris simply because he was so incredibly talented. You’d look past the shit that he pulled, forget about the fighting and the lying, just so you could get him to sit down and play guitar; he was one of the best.

  Gar was a different story. He was a terrific drummer but not as indispensable as Chris, and his behavior, while not violent at all, was seriously disruptive. On those occasions when we’d have to go retrieve Gar’s pawned cymbals in some shitty neighborhood just so we could commence with rehearsal, he’d invariably suggest a side trip.

  “Hey, what do you say we stop by Ceres?”

  Ceres was the name of the street where we typically scored dope, mainly heroin. This suggestion was usually followed by a moment of awkward silence, shrugs all around, and then laughter. The party was on.

  So you see, I was not an unwilling accomplice to the debauchery. I went along for the ride, sometimes enjoyed it enormously. The truth is, I looked down on Chris and Gar even as we lay next to each other, passed out in the gutter. Why? Because I didn’t see myself as an addict. Chris and Gar were hard-core drug users, shooting heroin into their veins. I hadn’t yet reached—or fallen to—that level, though I was certainly on my way.

  The days took on a comfortable if slightly bizarre routine: find Chris and Gar, get them well, deliver them to the studio, get their parts on tape, and get them the hell out of sight. That’s how it was, or at least how it became. Ellefson and I lived together, hung out together, handled most of the mundane tasks of making Megadeth a viable creative force. As far as we were concerned, Gar and Chris were lesser partners. Not in terms of their musicianship, necessarily, but in terms of their behavior and attitude toward Megadeth. Both of them, particularly Chris, had joined the group with cynical intentions: they were jazz musicians to the core, hardly enamored of heavy metal, but saw Megadeth as an opportunity to escape the poverty and obscurity that most musicians endure. It was a decision born of practicality, not passion. I understood that from the beginning, and I accepted it, because they really did bring something unique to the process.

  Junior and I pressed flesh with record company executives and publicists. Believe it or not, we were the professional face of the band. Think of it this way: if Megadeth were a military unit, Ellefson and I were the officers, and Gar and Chris were the enlisted men. It eventually became a rather sad dynamic, with lines between the two camps clearly drawn. Chris and Gar began to question the financial standing of the band. They openly suggested that we had more money than they did and wondered why income seemed not to be divided evenly. For some reason they could not grasp one of the fundamental tenets of the music business: if you write the songs, you get paid the money; if you don’t write the songs, the only way you get paid is by making some kind of arrangement with somebody who does get paid the money—either by negotiation or manipulation. I know, because as the primary composer o
f Megadeth’s music over the last twenty-five years, I have frequently been subjected to both.

  I don’t mean to suggest that it was all a slog or that there weren’t good days. Because there were—lots of them. Even in the studio, half-baked, Megadeth was capable of extraordinary musicianship. The twin guitar attack on “The Conjuring,” the guitar harmony line in “Peace Sells”—these were achieved not only through careful composition, but through the camaraderie that comes when a band is really clicking. “Peace Sells” became one of the most recognizable Megadeth songs, thanks in no small part to MTV, which, for nearly ten years, used the song’s distinctive bass line as an intro to MTV News. Not that anyone got rich off that exposure. MTV cut the song about one note short of the point where it would have been legally obligated to pay a royalty fee.

  As was the case on Killing Is My Business, we were given an opportunity to add a cover song on the second record. Jay Jones suggested “I Ain’t Superstitious” by the legendary blues singer Willie Dixon. Not an obvious choice, by any stretch of the imagination, but an interesting one, to be sure. I liked the idea of pushing the envelope and surprising people. It had worked with “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ”; no reason it couldn’t work with “I Ain’t Superstitious,” which was an undeniably great song.

  “Picture it with really big drums,” Jay said. “And at the end, you shift gears and give it that Megadeth treatment.”

  That’s exactly what we did, and it worked beautifully. The song gave us a chance to show off Chris’s guitar playing and once again challenge listeners by presenting a song that opened with a jazzy feel and closed at a breakneck, speed metal pace. Best of all, Willie Dixon gave it his stamp of approval; unlike Lee Hazlewood, he loved what we had done with his work.

  IN MANY WAYS, Peace Sells . . . but Who’s Buying? was a hit even before it was released. “Buzz” was a different thing twenty-five years ago than it is today. It relied less on technology than on old-fashioned word of mouth. Megadeth had a reputation for putting on blistering live performances, and as word of our latest studio effort began to spread, we became a hot commodity. So hot, in fact, that our contract was sold to Capitol Records, which brought in recording whiz Paul Lani to correct problems arising from Combat’s sloppy engineering and minuscule recording budget. Practically speaking, this was a deal with the devil. From that moment on, Megadeth was no longer a feisty little indie band with a cult following. We were a major-label act, and with that designation came responsibility and expectations (and the implication of compromise) unlike anything we’d ever known. Not that we were concerned. We were too busy doing lines of coke at the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood to worry about creative control. The perks outweighed almost everything.

  Here’s another example: the release party for Peace Sells was held at a place called the Firefly Bar, which was famous for, among other things, a tradition of setting the bar afire. Really. The actual bar. Several times a night one of the bartenders would grab a bottle and squirt some sort of flammable liquid down the length of the bar top, give the patrons a quick warning, and then toss a match on the surface.

  Whoosh!

  Everyone would applaud reflexively and then go back to drinking. I suppose it got old if you’d seen it a few times, but I was new to the Firefly and was duly impressed.

  The guests of honor were dressed in appropriately irreverent rock ’n’ roll attire: formal from the waist up—black jacket, white shirt, black tie, cummerbund—and decidedly informal from the waist down—stretch denim blue jeans and high-top sneakers. The record company had also given us militant armbands with PEACE SELLS . . . BUT WHO’S BUYING? printed across them. We had arrived in full metal swagger, disgorging from a pair of stretch limos: one for the guys in the band, another for our bitches.* Somehow, even this night, which should have been nothing less than a celebration, turned ugly along the way. As we left the club at the end of the party I noticed that there was only one limo parked outside. We piled in, just the guys, and I inquired as to the location of the second limo.

  “Lana took it,” Chris said, referring to his girlfriend.

  I could feel the anger building.

  “Why the fuck is your bitch running off with the limo?” I said.

  And that was all it took. Chris, never one to back down from a fight, even when he knew he was going to lose, told me to fuck off. I responded by kicking him in the face. Gar jumped in, tried to break up the fight—and protect his buddy—by pinning my arms down, but I broke free and started whaling on him. By now the limo driver was screaming at us. These guys put up with a lot of shit, but I guess we’d managed to raise the bar. He jerked the car to the curb and put it in park.

  “You want to fight? Then get the hell out of my car!” he shouted.

  Hostilities instantly ceased. I think we all were more than a little embarrassed. We each apologized for our behavior and then went about the all-too-familiar task of patching things up. And how do you do that after trying to rip your friend’s head off? Well, you do what any seasoned junkie would do: you go downtown and buy a bunch of heroin. I sat in the back of the limo, right next to Chris, looking at his swollen, bruised face, and got stoned out of my mind. And it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

  PEACE SELLS . . . but Who’s Buying? was released in November of 1986, nearly a year after we first went into the studio. The album was hailed as both a critical and commercial breakthrough, and it eventually went platinum. I think it holds up well even today; it feels raw, powerful. I’m proud of it. I still love the jacket art, which arose from a lunchtime conversation at a rib joint in New York, across the street from the United Nations. Ellefson and I were there with our agent, Andy Summers, and we just started brainstorming. By the end of that conversation, we had come up with the idea of Vic standing in front of the UN, shortly after a nuclear holocaust, trying to sell property—along with a message, of course. That became the quintessential Peace Sells image.

  Touring in support of Peace Sells, however, was an exercise in self-abuse. I kept one eye on Metallica, whose third album, released just a few months before Peace Sells, had launched the band into superstar territory. I didn’t obsess about it, but neither did I shrug it off. I can’t say that I was oblivious to their success. This would be a theme throughout my career. It wasn’t enough for Megadeth to do well; I wanted Metallica to fail.

  While schadenfreude may be a perfectly reasonable, human response, it also tends to be loaded with the potential for karmic backlash. In September of 1986, as we were putting the finishing touches on Peace Sells and I was preparing to overtake Lars and James in the race for heavy metal supremacy, I got a phone call from a friend in New York whose nickname was Metal Maria, who worked for Jonny Z. I’d gotten to know her during my East Coast trip with Metallica. Over the years, we’d stayed in touch, and sometimes she’d come out to L.A. and we’d see each other. Now, though, she was on the phone, crying hysterically.

  “It’s Cliff,” she sobbed. “He’s dead.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. At first I thought she meant Cliff Cultreri at Combat, but then I realized Maria didn’t even know him.

  “Cliff who?” I asked.

  “Cliff Burton,” she said. “There was an accident.”

  Maria told me all about it. Metallica had been on tour in Sweden, and the band’s bus had tipped over after hitting a patch of ice. Cliff had been thrown through a window and crushed when the bus fell on top of him.

  I had no response to any of this. I just stood there, clutching the phone, feeling like someone had punched me in the stomach. I hadn’t talked to Cliff in a while but still considered him to be a friend. If I harbored some lingering anger toward Lars and James, well . . . it was impossible to work up the same degree of animus toward Cliff. He was just too decent a person.

  For whatever reason—guilt, anger, sadness—I hung up the phone, got in my car, and went out and scored some heroin. I got loaded, sat around and cried for a while, th
en picked up my guitar and started writing. In one brief sitting I wrote an entire song: “In My Darkest Hour,” which wound up on Megadeth’s next album. It’s an interesting song, for the lyrics were as much about the struggles within my relationship with Diana at the time as they were anything else. But the music—the sound and feel of the song—was inspired by the pain I felt upon hearing of the death of my friend. Cliff and I hadn’t exactly been swapping Christmas cards or anything like that, but I still felt close to him. We had that time together in San Francisco, all those days commuting to rehearsal, and I’d never felt anything but affection for him. Cliff was transparent, and I mean that in a good way. He wasn’t enigmatic; he was precisely as he appeared to be, with no pretense whatsoever.

  A few months later, at a show in San Francisco, Cliff’s parents showed up, and we got a chance to talk for a while. At one point I introduced them to the audience, which responded with genuine warmth and heartfelt applause. Then we performed “In My Darkest Hour.”

  “This one,” I said, “is for Cliff.”

  YOU STRIKE WHILE the iron is hot, right? For a band that has just released a critically acclaimed and commercially successful record, that means one thing: hitting the road. I lived out of suitcases and hotel rooms for the better part of four years in the second half of the 1980s, and with Peace Sells, the grind began in earnest. Not that it was much of a burden. It was actually easier to be on the road than to be at home. I had no home; none of us did. Coming home meant finding someone to sponge off. Life on the road was simpler, if no less forgiving.