MEGADETH's Dave Mustaine On United Abominations: "The Lyrical Content Is Going To Be Misinterpreted Immediately"
May 4, 2007, 17 years ago
Asbury Park Press has issued the following report from Mark Voger:
He was heavy metal's angry young man.
MEGADETH founder Dave Mustaine always seemed to be in a feud with a fellow musician. But some bad luck - a 2002 arm injury - turned into good luck for Mustaine.
"That changed things," he says. "I really started to do some introspection. I was brought up in the church. I just decided to recommit myself and straighten the way I do business and handle myself as a husband and a parent - to enjoy my career a bit more than just walking around with a chip on my shoulder."Mustaine is asked if this means he's forgiven METALLICA, from which he was fired in 1983.
"A long time ago," Mustaine says. "It's just like anything in life. We ebb and flow and we grow, and sometimes we regress. I think it's really cheap journalism when people bring up the feud to try and goad me into saying something."Are you accusing us of cheap journalism, Dave?
"No, no, no. You didn't say it like a punk, so it's OK," Mustaine says. "Your question is really relevant. I find it's hardest to forgive the people who you love the most, or on the flip-side, have hurt you the most."When PAGE X last spoke with Mustaine, in 1998, he was clean and sober. Is he still?
"The answer is no," he says. "Am I a drug addict? Am I loaded right now? No. Am I still in AA? No, I'm not. But it worked for me, to get me to a place of enlightenment where I realized I needed to go much deeper inside myself and really confront a lot of the things that I was doing."United Abominations, Megadeth's new CD, (on Roadrunner), is due May 15th.
"The lyrical content is going to be misinterpreted immediately, because it always is," Mustaine says with a chuckle."Some of the songs are pretty acerbic, but it's fiction. Like, 'Sleepwalker'. How many people get to go around exacting revenge on people while they're asleep? We all have girlfriends and people that do stupid stuff to us. As soon as you get into that realm of sleep, it's like: We're all equal."
As for Megadeth's current tour, opening for HEAVEN AND HELL (a reunited lineup of BLACK SABBATH): "I respect them, but I grew up more on LED ZEPPELIN than Black Sabbath. But for me, it's fun to be there to be respectful to these legends. Being around these guys is kind of nostalgic. They were making records when I was just a kid. In order to go from being a headliner like Megadeth to being a support group - it's gotta be for the right reasons."
