MEGADETH frontman Dave Mustaine discusses his new book, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir, in an interview with Jessica VanZalen at AZCentral.com. An excerpt is available below.

Q: How does it feel to be a New York Times best-selling author? Did you ever think you would accomplish something like that?

Mustaine: "No, and I imagine my teachers didn't think I could either. It would be great for me to go back to high school and wag my finger at some of these guys and show them this new title. I did a lot of things that have made me proud in my career, but this is something totally different. For me, this has been just the neatest thing in the world. I think the irony of someone saying 'reading' and 'Megadeth' in the same sentence is really fun. It's one that you never thought you'd hear a parent say, 'Stop reading that Megadeth book!'"

Q: Why did you decide to do the book?

Mustaine: "There's a difference when someone writes a story about you versus when you write one about yourself. I wanted it to be the truth and I wanted it to be kind of like a testimony of my life and how I've become a victory over all of the setbacks that I've had growing up."

Q: Why did you want to do this now?

Mustaine: "I'm almost 50, and a couple of years from now, I'm not going to matter to young people and I want to make sure I can share all of these personal victories I've had with these kids before what I say or do doesn't matter anymore. Regardless if it's me or not, it's a human trial and it's personal victory and I love sharing that with people. I'm just like the next guy. I get happy, I get sad, I laugh, I cry, I get pissed. In my business, the problem was that because of all of the drug and alcohol use and mismanagement, you make a lot of bad decisions and bad decisions are followed by bad people, and you start to really plummet in your mind, and mood, and attitude."

Go to this location for the complete interview.