MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine spoke with Michael Lello from Theweekender.com recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Weekender: Rust In Peace is considered to be a historic metal album. What’s your opinion of it?

Mustaine: "(Laughs) I like it. It’s peculiar when people say that, because it’s not one of our more challenging albums. It also reminds me of a very dark period in my life and my career. David Ellefson and I were living together, and we didn’t really have a band at the time. We were putting all of the pieces together, and we were living with strangers. Every chance we would get, we would shack up some place and find some unsuspecting victim to take us an emotional hostage. So the record has a lot of different feelings for me. Being on stage and playing it is fun for me, because a lot of the fans are mesmerized watching it happen. I think a lot of people don’t think that this record could be played live, and I mean for Pete’s sake, I wrote the damn record, so why couldn’t I play it?"

Weekender: Are there plans to bring any Big Four shows to the US?

Mustaine: "No. That’s up to people that organize this. But I think that’s going to require a lot of stuff to take place with some other people. If it happens, and it’s good for us, like the thing happened with the Big Four overseas so far, great. Ya know, we’re on a really good run right now, and inasmuch as the Big Four thing is super-successful, if it’s successful it’ll be great for all of us. The same can be said right now for the Rust In Peace tour - it’s successful, and it’s great for us. I take the same kind of commitment to this performance as I would to the performances this summer."

Mustaine: "Well, I can’t speak for him, but all I can say is that the opportunity presented itself, and I prayed about it, and I asked him if he wanted to come play, and he said ‘Yeah,’ and we worked it out. Obviously, there were some things we had to work out because we had a very close relationship. When you’re really close to somebody and then the relationship takes a pause or even stops, there’s usually some hurt feelings, and we had to clear some of that stuff up. Now it’s just a matter of just catching up for all the good times we had. Every time we were looking to conquer the music industry and get on top, every time we got there something happened. It was just crazy. But right now everything is firing on all cylinders, and it looks like this is going to be our year."

Read the entire interview here.