It didn’t help matters any that Lars Ulrich had goaded me in the press by suggesting that I was afraid to take chances with my music. He addressed the issue cleverly, offering compliments as well as criticism, but I came away feeling like he’d thrown down the gauntlet:
I respect Dave as a musician; I just wish he’d take more risks, really push himself.
Rather than shrug it off, I let those words burn a hole in my psyche.
I could accept the challenge with our next record. And I could call it Risk, just in case anyone didn’t get the message.
Not that I wanted it to turn out the way it did. It just sort of . . . happened. There was no intent on my part, but I will admit to some negligence. I knew something was wrong while we were writing the record. Bud stopped by my house one day and suggested we make some changes.
“You know what I want to do?” Bud said. “I want to do a record that will make the guys in Metallica say, ‘Son of a bitch! Why didn’t we think of that?’ ”
He pushed the right buttons. Even though I knew it was an unhealthy attitude—backtracking to that old head space that had caused me so much pain, trying to get even with my former bandmates—I acquiesced. Bud was already determined to keep nudging Megadeth away from metal and toward the edges of pop. The final step on this journey would be a song unlike anything we’d ever done.
“Maybe bluegrass,” Bud suggested. “Or disco.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But he wasn’t kidding.
“Look, we had a Top Ten record with Cryptic Writings. We had a bunch of hit singles.” He paused to let that sink in. “Am I right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Do you trust me?”
“Yeah, Bud, I trust you.”
We finally settled on something that was based on a synth-pop disco sound. The song was called “Crush ’Em,” and it was written as a paean to hockey and hockey fans. I love hockey, and I thought it would be cool to write something that might be played at games as a way to pump up the crowd—something to give us all a break from that inane Gary Glitter song you hear at every sporting event in the world. It wasn’t like I was writing it for Megadeth fans or even for radio. I was writing it for hockey. And it got on the record.
The day we recorded the demo for “Crush ’Em” was one of the worst of my professional life. No sooner had we finished than I walked out of the studio, marched straight into a bathroom, and threw up. Basically just the dry heaves—I’d been so upset about the whole process that I hadn’t been able to eat that morning. I knew I’d made a big mistake. Bud had convinced the whole band that we needed another hit, and “Crush ’Em” was going to be that song. I could have pulled the plug. But I didn’t. I wanted to make everyone happy. I wanted to be a good soldier. If things went bad, at least no one could say that I had been a malcontent. But it felt all wrong. I kept picturing Kiss doing that video for “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” and thinking that this was, for Megadeth, a similarly unfortunate miscalculation. I could actually hear the scissors of emasculation.
Oh, this is bad. Bad, bad, bad.
And it was. “Crush ’Em” was featured on the soundtrack of the movie Universal Soldier: The Return and became the NHL staple that I’d hoped it would be. Still, I took little comfort in any of that. Risk was rightfully rejected by Megadeth fans (who felt betrayed) and panned by critics (who were handed a gift-wrapped opportunity to crap all over us). Although there were elements of Risk that worked and lyrics I don’t mind claiming as my own, it was largely a failure, an artistic and commercial miscalculation.
In the wake of Risk, I vowed to regain my artistic integrity, which meant, first and foremost, taking control of Megadeth. That meant firing Bud Prager, which was not easy, since I liked Bud and have to admit that he did for Megadeth precisely what he was hired to do.* It also meant leaving Capitol Records for a new label, Sanctuary, and convincing the other guys in the band that it was time to get back to our metal roots.
Unfortunately, not everyone agreed.
Chapter 16
Some Kind of God
Check out the hydraulics on the back of my right hand!
Photograph by Daniel Gonzalez Toriso.
“I hate my life. I hate my job. I hate my band. I hate my kids. I hate you. I wish I could fucking hang myself right now.”
On my fortieth birthday, somewhere between Vancouver and Phoenix, during the course of an eighteen-hour bus ride down the Pacific coast, I found myself on the phone, chatting with my old friend and nemesis Lars Ulrich. I had time on my hands, time to reflect. Two days earlier we had canceled a show in Seattle, in deference to the victims of the tragedy of 9/11. On the night of September 12 we had played in Vancouver before an extraordinarily grateful and well-behaved crowd. Shortly after the show, with air travel in North America at a virtual standstill, we boarded a bus for the long ride home. Pam had planned a big birthday celebration in my honor, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.
But then came a conversation with Lars and an invitation to meet him in San Francisco. The idea, as I understood it, was that Metallica was undergoing some sort of group therapy session—not a bad idea—and perhaps there would be some benefit to addressing my dismissal after all these years. Lars had told me there would be a counselor present. He neglected to say that our meeting would be filmed and used as part of a documentary. I wasn’t informed of that until I showed up at the Ritz-Carlton.
You might reasonably wonder why I would subject myself to such painful probing, why I would further delay arrival at the home front in order to satisfy a request from Lars, with whom I was not exactly close. Well, it’s hard to explain. Maybe it had something to do with the vulnerability that followed 9/11. Maybe it was just a feeling that old wounds ought to be healed. Maybe—and it pains me to admit this—I still harbored some hope of a reunion, one in which I would share the stage with Metallica. I don’t really know. Regardless, I was willing to participate in the process. I figured I’d endured enough counseling because of Metallica, I might as well go through counseling with Metallica.
When I arrived at the hotel, Lars introduced me to the counselor and said, “Hey, man, are you okay if we film this? Because it’s going to be part of a movie we’re doing.”
I’m not stupid. Masochistic, maybe. But not stupid. I realized instantly that I’d been ambushed. That said, I thought there might be some value to taking part in the project. My only stipulation was that I be given the right to approve any scenes that included me: if I didn’t like the movie or my role in it, then the producers would not use any footage involving my meeting with Lars.
So we did the interview, and it was really candid and heartfelt. I tried to be completely open, the result being that both of us ended up crying and sharing sentiments that had never been expressed. I did more talking than Lars. I unburdened myself of all the things I had wanted to say: the regret over how I had behaved in the months prior to my firing (“I . . . fucked . . . up!”); the anger over the betrayal I felt; the sadness of that long bus ride home. I wanted him to understand that even after all these years, the pain was still there—palpable and inescapable.
The interview lasted about a half hour. Lars and I said good-bye and I went home. Some time passed before I gave any thought to it again. Then, when I saw the footage—along with samples of material that would appear before and after my scene—I decided that I no longer wanted to be part of the documentary, and not merely because I didn’t like the way my segment had been edited. Context is everything, of course, but what I saw felt false and manipulative. It was Lars’s contention that I should reconsider—that my appearance in the documentary would actually help my career. To me that seemed cynical and wrong. I wanted nothing to do with it.
In the end, despite the fact that I never acquiesced, my conversation with Lars became a pivotal scene in the documentary, which was called Some Kind of Monster. I have never seen the entire film, start to finish, and I don’
t have any desire to see it now. I will admit that the passage of time, combined with positive feedback from many people I respect, has prompted me to view my experience with the documentary in a more flattering light.
BY THE END of 2001 Megadeth had become, more than ever, my band, although I wouldn’t say the autonomy was liberating or enjoyable. It was a time of tremendous flux and stress rather than freedom. Marty Friedman, burned out on heavy metal—both the lifestyle and the music—had left the band in the middle of a tour in 2000. His replacement, Al Pitrelli, was a competent musician and decent fellow who never quite fit in. Al quickly discovered that he preferred the quiet anonymity and low expectations of his previous gig with Trans-Siberian Orchestra to the fame and pressure that came with playing in Megadeth. And Jimmy DeGrasso soon brought the clichéd baggage of a girlfriend who thought she knew how to run a band—and wasn’t shy about voicing her opinion.
It was not a particularly collegial atmosphere. After parting with Capitol Records in 2000, we had signed a deal with a new label, Sanctuary Records. Almost every word and note on The World Needs a Hero (released in 2001) was written by me, a fact that pleased the label but did nothing to encourage camaraderie among the band members. It was a lineup that simply wasn’t built to endure. And it didn’t.
In the fall of 2001, I was hospitalized after developing a kidney stone. While undergoing treatment, I was prescribed pain medication. For most people this wouldn’t be much of an issue. You take a few pills to get through the awfulness of passing a stone, and then you go home and get on with life. For me it was highly problematic. The introduction of opiates was akin to throwing a switch; after several years of sobriety, I relapsed.
The descent was swift and humiliating. I had been attending weekly AA meetings, and it was during one of those meetings that I was introduced to the concept of purchasing pain medication through the Internet. As I said, I had no real physical need for pain meds at the time, just a powerful desire to recapture some of the buzz I’d experienced while hospitalized, which, while not quite as intense as that produced by smoking heroin, certainly was capable of leaving me comfortably numb. This went on and off for a couple months in late 2001. I’d beat back the demons temporarily, only to have them regain control. The band suffered, my marriage suffered, my family suffered. I was miserable. Finally, as another year came to a close, I decided to get cleaned up; I couldn’t live this way any longer. Running Megadeth was difficult enough when I was on my feet. I couldn’t do it from my knees. Really, though, I had no master plan. I knew only that I’d allowed myself to become a junkie all over again, and I hated the way it felt. I just wanted the pain to go away.
That’s how I ended up in Hunt, Texas, at a treatment center called La Hacienda, nodding off in my chair and waking with a compressed radial nerve, an injury so fucking freakish that it almost defied credibility. Far worse than the injury itself was the prognosis: I’d never regain full dexterity and feeling. I’d never play guitar—at least not the way I’d played in the past. And when the doctor said those words to me—when he looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t think you should count on that”—a simple, devastating thought crossed my mind.
I’m ruined.
What was my life without music? It defined me. Creatively, spiritually, emotionally—and quite literally—music had fed me. It had kept me alive.
I’d like to be able to say that I took this news with courage and perspective, but what’s the point of lying? The reality is this: my life had become a frayed rope, unraveling before my eyes. As I sat in the orthopedic surgeon’s office, the main thing I felt was fear. I’d known pain and sadness; I’d known loneliness and defeat. Through all of it I could always count on my ability to play music. I knew that I was a very good guitar player, and no one could take that away from me.
Until now.
I withdrew impulsively from La Hacienda, and planned to go home and get as fucked-up as humanly possible. And then I made a mistake. I let drugs talk to my wife. This was something I’d never done before. Oh, sure, I’d been high around the house, and I’d been unpleasant on occasion, but never had I let drugs completely take over my personality during an interaction with the person I loved the most. The painkillers, combined with fear and insecurity, provoked a screed of uncommon meanness.
“My arm is dead,” I told Pam over the phone. “I can’t play anymore.”
“You’ll be okay,” she said in typically supportive fashion. “We’ll see the best doctors. You’ll have the best care. You can do it.”
None of it registered. I didn’t want it to register. I just wanted a place to deposit my hostility and self-pity.
“You don’t understand. You’re not listening. My arm is dead, my life is over.”
I looked at her—the one person who least deserved my bile—and then I cut loose.
“I hate my life. I hate my job. I hate my band. I hate my kids. I hate you. I wish I could fucking hang myself right now.”
Pam’s response was a mixture of panic and self-preservation. A mother’s instincts kick in at a time like this—the kids are a lot more important than the fucked-up husband. She talked with some of her close friends at church, and they suggested she consult a Christian counselor down in Tucson. This guy offered Pam some harsh advice, and the next thing I knew she’d slapped me with a restraining order and filed for legal separation. It’s fair to say that in the wake of this action I was not especially enamored of the Christian community. Indeed, the people to whom Pam turned are the kind of hypocritical extremists who make Christians look bad. The counselor even went so far as to suggest that I not be allowed to meet with my own children unless a representative of the church was present. I hated this man for offering such sanctimonious advice. And I was not terribly amused with my wife for listening to him.
I had only a few choices at this juncture, the most obvious being life or death. I chose life, though not in the manner you might expect. For the next four months I lived in a hotel. The majority of each day was devoted to physical therapy and rehabilitation at the Spire Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona. There was no silver bullet, no arthroscopic procedure that would magically inflate the radial nerve and pump life into my flaccid hand. There was only work and slow, painful, almost imperceptible progress.
There were days when I felt like a toddler, so mundane were the tasks I attempted to master. Imagine what it’s like to spend hours on end with a pair of tweezers between your fingers, trying to rearrange a pile of carpenter’s nails. I would sit at a desk and work out—literally—with a clothespin.
Squeeze . . . release.
Squeeze . . . release.
Another device looked like some weird, demented version of a dream catcher, with spokes constructed of rubber bands. My assignment was to spread my fingers through the spokes and attempt to make a fist. This was impossible at first; it also hurt like hell. The numbness in my fingers, combined with pain in the surrounding muscles of my hand and forearm, created a comic effect whenever I tried to work out on the dream catcher. Just as someone playing a video game will often contort his whole body when only the thumb and fingers are required, I would flail about in my seat, sometimes rising and moving around the room as I fought for supremacy against this simple little piece of equipment.
At the same time, I still had an issue with chemical dependency. Since I’d never completed the process of detoxing, let alone rehab and recovery, I remained addicted to painkillers. One could argue that now I actually had a legitimate excuse for obtaining prescription pain meds, but that would be twisted logic. Nerve damage doesn’t respond very well to narcotics, so my injury was not a reason to be using them. Pain wasn’t the primary issue; it was more a matter of inconvenience and embarrassment. There were times when I would be drinking some coffee, and I would pick up the cup, forgetting momentarily about the injury, and simply drop it in my lap. At the beginning of physical therapy it was all I could do to pinch a feather between my fingers. I was that weak.
&nb
sp; The traction device as prescribed by Dr. Raj Singh, who helped save my arm, and Nathan Koch, my physical therapist at the Spire Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, who worked every day until I could play again. It was painful, difficult to do, and embarrassing beyond belief.
In some strange way, though, it was comforting to find that my life had taken on such a narrow focus. There is peace in simplicity; for the first time in many years I wasn’t concerned with band politics or contractual obligations. I didn’t think about the next tour or the next record. I thought about nothing but getting well—physically, spiritually, emotionally. The physical part came first, because that was all I had at the time. Separated from my wife, estranged from my children, I took the early steps of this journey on my own. Okay, that isn’t entirely true. My neurosurgeon was the brilliant and supportive Dr. Raj Singh; my physical therapist was a man named Nathan Koch. Both were exceptionally good at their jobs, and I owe them a debt that can never be fully repaid. Still, professional support is one thing; personal support—also known as love—is quite another. I had the former. I did not have the latter.
After about a month of physical therapy I began to see significant results and realized I’d better do something about my addiction to pain meds. I decided to return to La Hacienda and finish the treatment program. There was no ulterior motive involved in this decision. Although I still loved my wife and missed my children, I was deep into the process of grieving their loss. Practically speaking, my marriage was over. Pam and I were no longer talking about reconciliation; we were working toward a settlement. So many people from Pam’s church were offering her advice, and much of it was ill informed or simply mean-spirited. They wanted me to put up hundreds of thousands of dollars as some sort of dowry, so that Pam would have financial leverage as we attempted to figure out the parameters of our rapidly dissolving relationship. In other words, they wanted me to establish a legal fund for my soon-to-be ex-wife. Additionally, I believe, they hoped to tap into the fund themselves. All of this left me bewildered and frustrated.
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