Dave Mustaine - Mustaine - A Life in Metal

TO MOM AND DAD,I PROMISED I WOULD BE GOOD.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATEDTO ALL OF THE PEOPLE WHO TOLDME I WOULD NEVER…

COME, COME, COME MY LITTLE DROOGIES. I JUST DON’T GET THIS AT ALL. THE OLD DAYS ARE DEAD AND GONE. FOR WHAT I DID IN THE FAST, I’VE BEEN PUNISHED. I’VE BEEN CURE.

ALEX, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

REGRETS, I’VE HAD A FEW…

SID VICIOUS

Cover Page

Title Page Mustaine: A Life In Metal Dave Mustaine

Epigraph COME, COME, COME MY LITTLE DROOGIES. I JUST DON’T GET THIS AT ALL. THE OLD DAYS ARE DEAD AND GONE. FOR WHAT I DID IN THE FAST, I’VE BEEN PUNISHED. I’VE BEEN CURE. ALEX, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE REGRETS, I’VE HAD A FEW… SID VICIOUS

A HORSESHOE UP MY ASS

1 DADDY DEAREST

2 REEFER MADNESS

3 LARS AND ME,OR WHAT AM I GETTING MYSELF INTO?

4 METALLICA—FAST, LOUD, OUT OF CONTROL

5 DUMPED BY ALCOHOLICA

6 BUILDING THE PERFECT BEAST: MEGADETH

7 MISSION: TO BREAK ALL THE RULES OF GOD AND MAN

8 FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT

9 THE END OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

10 THE TRAVELING CARNIVAL

11 AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE

12 THE LIVING YEARS

13 I PRAY THE LORD MY SOUL TO KEEP

14 THE INNER WEASEL

15 SOUL FOR SALE

16 SOME KIND OF GOD

17 MEGADETH: REBORN

EPILOGUE: THREE BOATS AND A HELICOPTER

Copyright

About the Publisher

HUNT, TEXAS

JANUARY 2002

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR BOTTOM, THIS SEEMS TO BE ABOUT AS GOOD A PLACE AS ANY-ALTHOUGH I’D BE THE FIRST TO ADMIT THAT THE BOTTOM HAS BEEN A MOVING TARGET IN MY DARK AND TWISTED, SPEED METAL VERSION OF A DICKENSIAN LIFE.

IMPOVERISHED, TRANSIENT CHILDHOOD? CHECK.

ABUSIVE, ALCOHOLIC PARENT? CHECK.

MIND-FUCKING RELIGIOUS WEIRDNESS ON MY CASE THE EXTREMES OF THE JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES AND SATANISM)? CHECK.

ALCOHOLISM, DRUG ADDICTION, HOMELESSNESS? CHECK, CHECK, CHECK.

SOUL-CRUSHING PROFESSIONAL AND ARTISTIC SETBACKS? CHECK.

REHAB? CHECK (SEVENTEEN TIMES, GIVE OR TAKE).

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE? CHECK THAT ONE, TOO.

James Hetfield, who used to be one of my best friends, as close as a brother, once observed with some incredulity that I must have been born with a horseshoe up my ass. That’s how lucky I’ve been, how fortunate I am to be pulling breath after so many close calls. And I must acknowledge that on some level he’s right. I have been lucky. I have been blessed. But here’s the thing about having a horseshoe lodged in your rectum: it also hurts like hell. And you never forget it’s there.

So here I am, staring down the throat of another stint in rehab, at a place called La Hacienda, out in the heart of the pristine Texas Hill Country. It’s only about two hundred miles or so from Fort Worth, but it seems a world away, with only cattle ranches and summer camps for neighbors. The focus is on healing…on getting better. Physically, spiritually, emotionally. As usual, I’ve brought only modest expectations and enthusiasm to the proceedings. Ain’t my first rodeo, after all.

You see, I’ve learned more about getting loaded, more about how to get drugs, more about mixing drinks, and more about how to bed the opposite sex in Alcoholics Anonymous than in any other single place in the world. AA—and this holds true for most rehabilitative programs and treatment centers—is a fraternity, and like all fraternity brothers, we like to swap stories. It’s a ridiculous glorifying of the experience: drugalogues and drunkalogues, they’re called. One of the things that always bothered me most was the incessant one-upmanship. You’d tell a story, sometimes baring your soul, and the guy next to you would smirk and say, “Ah, man, I spilled more than you ever used.”

“Oh, really?”

“Damn right.”

“Well, I used a lot, so you must be one clumsy fuckhead.”

For some reason, this sort of interaction never did much for me, never made me feel like I was getting better or improving as a human being. Sometimes I got worse. It was at an AA meeting, ironically, that I first learned about the ease of procuring pain medication through the Internet. I didn’t have any particular need for pain meds at the time, but the woman telling the story made it sound like a great buzz. Before long the packages were coming to my house and I’d fostered one hell of an addiction. By this time I was a world-famous rock star—founder, front man, singer, songwriter, and guitarist (and de facto CEO) for Megadeth, one of the most popular bands in heavy metal. I had a beautiful wife and two wonderful kids, a nice home, cars, more money than I ever dreamed of. And I was about to throw it all away. You see, behind the façade, I was fucking miserable: tired of the road, the bickering between band members, the unreasonable demands of management and record company executives, the loneliness of the drug-addled life. And, as always, incapable of seeing that what I had was more important than what I didn’t have. The joy of writing songs and playing music, which had sustained me through so many lean years, had slowly been siphoned off.

Now I simply felt…empty.

And so I went off to Hunt, Texas, hoping this time the change would stick. Or not hoping. Not caring. Not knowing much of anything, really, except that I needed help getting off the pain meds. As for long-term behavior modification? Well, that wasn’t high on my list of priorities.

And here’s what happens. Early in my stay I wander off to get some rest. I remember slumping into a chair and tossing my left arm over the back, trying to curl up and sleep. The next thing I know, I’m waking up, dragging myself out of the fugue of a twentyminute nap, and when I try to stand up, something pulls me back, like I’m buckled into the seat or something. And then I realize what’s happened: my arm has fallen asleep and it’s still hooked over the back of the chair. I laugh, try to withdraw my arm again.

Nothing happens.

Again.

Still nothing.

I repeat this motion (or attempted motion) a few more times before finally using my right arm to lift my left arm off the chair. The moment I let go, it falls to my side, dangling uselessly, pins and needles shooting from shoulder to fingertips. After a few minutes, some of the feeling returns to my upper arm and then to part of my forearm. But my hand remains dead, as if shot full of Novocain. I keep shaking it out, rubbing it, whacking it against the chair. But the hand is numb. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. I try to make a fist, but my fingers do not respond.

Out the door, down the hall. My breathing is labored, in part because I’m kicking drugs and out of shape, but also because I’m scared shitless. I burst into the nurse’s office, cradling my left hand in my right hand. I blurt out something about falling asleep and not being able to feel my hand. The nurse tries to calm me down. She presumes, not unreasonably, that this is just part of the process —anxiety and discomfort come with the territory in rehab. But it’s not. This is different.

Within twenty-four hours I will be on hiatus from La Hacienda, sitting in the office of an orthopedic surgeon, who will run a hand along my biceps and down my forearm, carefully tracing the path of a nerve and explaining how the nerve has been freakishly compressed, like a drinking straw pinched against the side of a glass. When circulation is cut off in this manner, he explains, the nerve is damaged; sometimes it simply withers and dies.