DAVE MUSTAINE Talks About Decision To Carry On With MEGADETH
MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine has posted the following message in the "Forums" section of the band's official web site:
"This was my journal for Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 9, 2005 up until the show:
"12:00: Sitting out by the pool, I am listening to LED ZEP and just waiting, waiting, waiting. People are asking for autographs and photos everywhere I go, some that I know are not fans, but are just trying to get something from the buzz that they see, so I do it anyway. I am really tired of some of them. Example: some bald-headed knob came up to me yelling 'Hey' at me over and over, and then was stupid enough to grab and pull me. I made eye contact with him and said, 'What's my name?' if he could look any stupider, at that moment he did. So I ask him again and he says, 'Dario' or 'Zorro' or something so I walked away, meanwhile the security guards noticed me getting upset with this flaccid f**kwit and it was curtains for him. He should have known who he was pulling on.
"I am mixed about my feelings about tonight and announcing we are going to continue as MEGS because I want to know what would happen if I didn't have the ups and downs associated that the band has caused or influenced on people. I also think about every day when I get up and I see my beautiful family's faces and tell them that I am leaving for the 'Killing Road' again. I have missed so much in their lives to be able to provide for them the way that I never was, so I will do what I know is best for now.
"2:00: It is almost 2 PM and I miss my family. I am nauseous from the sushi dinner we had last night; it was OK, but nothing to take home in a doggie bag, unless I wanted to hurt my dog. I know I can't let anyone know that I am sick or they will freak out and nervousness will pervade the entire camp.
"Now that I have made my decision I know I am going to have an extremely busy next few years, at least three to five with MEGS if we get a good record contract, and hopefully at least ten with Gigantour. 2006 will have a new band, a new record, Gigantour North America, and possibly Gigantour Oz/Japan, as well as the DVD and CD for Gigantour, and the MEGS DVD and CD from tonight, and what seems to be a Gigantour South America at the end of next year, I will be busy, busy, busy.
"I am listening to new riffs from the Drovers again and some may actually make the next record, with a lil tweaking, they are that good. I am surprised at Shawn's stuff seeing as guitar is not his instrument that he plays, but he is very capable as some people have had the delight to see. I will probably start tracking the demo tracks for this 11th studio record as soon as I unwind at home next week. As well as selecting bands to go after for G2. I also have so much mixing to do on all the DVDs and CDs with Jeff Balding and Michael Sarna. Then or in-between is 'The Arsenal of Megadeth' DVD from EMI. It's a shame that someone is trying to keep this from being released, especially when he is in the red. Silly boy!
"4:00: I am back in the room and I have listened to all the Drovers' riffs and now am listening to my own new stuff. I have a lot to choose from and am pretty confident I can make another record up to the level of 'System' or hopefully much, much better. I need to take my time and not second guess myself like I did for so many records at the end before Mayday. Still sick and getting sicker. I better try to take a nap.
"5:00: D-day. It's time to go to the venue, I am dying from the sushi and I don't know if I can play tonight, but I know I must or I will be just like all the artist I despise for canceling. En route Jacque Knapp is filming me looking out an open window. I am trying to appear interested in the scenery, but I really don't want to get car sick. We can start to hear the bands playing from a distance and I know as soon as we get there it is going to be unrealistic and insanity from the second I set foot on the ground and word gets out I have arrived. I love this part. We walk briskly to the dressing rooms for what seems a quarter mile and get settled in. I am brought some food, but I can only pick at it. People are coming up to me and the security is keeping them forever away, an unsettling feeling, but given my condition, I appreciate it.
"6:00ish: We have to go do a press conference right now.
"Wow! Was that a bunch of shit. Some idiot asked me a question about a reunion in front of the guys; very rude. Then the moron does it again by saying, 'Senor Menza says on the web site that he wants to play with you again,' and now I am pissed. I say, 'Stop! There is no Friedman, no Ellefson, no Menza ever again. Next question!' So next the bonehead girl asks me what my plans are after I already said I would make my announcement tonight and not until. After I said, 'I just answered that,' she asked how my relationship was with Lars Ulrich. Jeez, do people get up and think how can I be the dumbest ass in the press conference. I let her have and said, 'Your question was not very smart.' I feel like I am going to vomit and I say the press conference is over.
"7:30: Next was the meet-and-greet and I think I am going to stop doing this because of all the people who never seem to appreciate how hard it is to stop everything we are doing during our day to go sit at a table, smiling and we know inevitably some asshole will complain. That just perplexes me. I am going into my dressing room and I am not coming out.
"8:30: John Leeder and the entire crew come into the dressing room before the show and I tell them that this is one of my favorite places in the world, that they are some of my favorite people in the world, and that I hope they fall in love with the city, like I have too. I also say that tonight is the culmination of a year's hard work out on the road, a year before of hard work in the studio, and grueling therapy to get my arm back. But that tonight we are going to play the concert of my life, and that tomorrow we are going wake up a different band. Then John Leeder prayed over us all for a good show and no technical glitches since we were recording and live broadcasting.
"The reason that I decided to make my announcement in Buenos Aires is very complicated. To make up for canceling after 9/11/2001 when Al's [Pitrelli] guitar tech refused to go because he thought someone was going to kill us because we are American, because of the emotional connection between MEGS and [Buenos Aires], because we are recording, and because we are live broadcasting so the rest of the world will all be able to hear at the same exact second that I say, 'The answer is . . . . YES!'
"Glen and I are going over last minute stuff that is what we should be doing instead of meet and greets when we know the usual outcomes. We are going over the ramp out into the audience, the acoustic version of 'Coming Home' as well as Jimmy's use of the ramp too.
"We just got the stage call . . .
"In white sweatbands, a white shirt, black leather pants and black Pumas I headed up the ramp and did our routine before we take the stage. I say hello to Betina, our fabulous promoter, and her assistant Lilia, as well as give a Clint-like nod to the other people up on the stage, who I don't know, and the intro tape starts for 'Blackmail'. I send Glen and James out at their usual 42-second mark and I walk over to my guitar techs station and wait for the missile to be fired until I walk out on the stage. All I am concentrating on is not thinking about my body or how I feel, and the 18+ thousand fans are a huge dose of 'feel good.' I start the riff and walk to the mic. Everything went into a time warp.
"I look out to the thousands of fans and I know that in an hour and a half or so I would be telling the world all at once what I have been struggling with. Partly my family which I told you, partly curiosity of what it would be like to start over again, and partly because I know there are people who are jealous, intimidated, or have taken on someone else's beef with me and don't want me to continue in any capacity. But then I look up from the mic and I see a heavy metal haven, and I know that our fans, and it is nice to say 'we' and 'our' again, are waiting in anticipation.
"I start to sing and the lip curls up, its time to get down and don't ever look back. Old MEGADETH took the stage that night and new MEGADETH seized it at that first note. Glen and James are working the crowd hard and the frigging cameramen are everywhere; eleven cameras for the DVD shoot and a dozen more for the broadcast. The tempos are perfect we are all level on stage volume-wise and now we are on auto-pilot for the rest of the night. I have said it before and I will say it again, playing with these guys is like magic. You can just sense it when you are present.
"I end 'Blackmail' and continue through the first six-song set non-stop, relentlessly dishing out songs and I know that the fans are waiting for me to say something, anything!
"I go to my tech and change guitars and walk back out and after the cheering obviously will not subside, I interrupt them and say, 'Beinvenidos a la casa de MEGADETH,' which means 'Welcome to the house of MEGADETH.' I start 'Die Dead Enough' and after go directly into 'She-Wolf'. As of yet we have not gone out on the ramp to the second stage out in the audience, but now for the end solo of 'She-Wolf' I go out, and it is electric. I can't hear my in-ear monitors because of the singing of the solo, and thank God Glen came out as we planned and started the harmony, so by way of the inverse square rule, the volume went up for the unison solo. I think a lot of people just wanted to see if Glen was the real deal, which I know and would not have picked him if he wasn't.
"'She-Wolf' ends; we go back to the stage to start 'Reckoning Day', and time is flying by for the next few moments until Glen and I go back out to the ramp to do 'A Tout Le Monde'. By now I have control of the audience completely, not that they would ever be rude or disrespectful, since they love us so much, and it was soon after that after the next six-song set, once returning to the stage that I said I was going to be making an announcement whether or not MEGS was going to be going on or not.
"Set number three starts and I am constantly thinking about what a train wreck 'I'll Be There' will be if not done at the correct speed and with intense crowd participation. I think of this throughout the next three songs. So here we are at the fork in the road; one of the two new songs we are unleashing on our Argentine friends. I say, 'I need your help,' and sing the melody at the end, we start the song, and I could feel the bones grinding in my spine to make me stand even taller than I am after hearing the response of the first verse and chorus. They would not stop singing after the song ended. I guess they liked it.
"Nothing is going to stop me now. Oh, yeah, there is that acoustic version of 'Coming Home' that Glen is going to play and I am just going to sing alone for the whole song. And unlike 'A Tout Le Monde' where the rhythm guitars come in to save me, this song is just me and Glen and one acoustic; his. Fortunately for me, I have one more trick up my sleeve; to sing 'Trust' in Spanish. And I mean only the double chorus after the guitar solo. The drums start and everyone is pogoing up and down. I put on my new ESP double-neck guitar and it dawns on me that if the background tape for the English version is played, I will not be able to do this.
"You see, there is a lot of background stuff going on you probably won't hear, but we work on relentlessly to bring you the very best sound possible. In fact, that is what Lance Dean does. He runs sound effects for over a dozen songs from backstage. But it ain't stuff like singing; it is stuff like the drawer slamming in 'Skin' or the monks in 'Angry', etc. when the moment arrives and I realize that my guys rarely ever, if not never have glitches like this, the tape is correct and I did my part, the song ended, and there was a new found connection between every Spanish speaking fan tuned in from around the world or in attendance that night that didn't know I can sing in Spanish.
"'Something I'm Not' worked well, as did 'Kick The Chair', but I honestly don't think the fans knew what we were going to do with an acoustic out on the platform in the audience. I said before we started that I will give my answer after this song, and that I was changing the words from 'Coming home to Arizona' which I love Arizona and always will, to 'Coming home to Argentina.' I was concerned of my voice not being able to hold out after all the non-stop singing, and the high-pitched songs like 'Skin', 'Train', 'Reckoning', and a few others that require really letting go. I can't really remember how I did, but I know after each chorus there were staggering cheers.
"After the song I said, 'I told you I would give you my answer. The answer is,' and I waited a few beats because I guess I really didn't believe I was going to try this again for how ever many years it goes, I said again, 'The answer is yes!' I turned on my heels and very matter of factly, went into their favorite song, 'Symphony of Destruction'. At that moment my manager John Dee, who I instructed to send an email to Tim Henderson of Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles the second I said it, he hit send. We were officially a band, and have given our first press acknowledgement to a friend of the Drovers and a supporter of me for years. I wanted to do this for him.
"There was not much of a ceiling left to raise at this point and we marched like gladiators until the last note of 'Peace Sells', to which I was told we were nearing the curfew. So we had to drop 'Hook in Mouth' because of the police, and went straight into 'Holy Wars'. What a masterful way to finish the night of my life! We all set our instruments down and grabbed as many souvenirs as we could of picks and sticks and all of us went out to the platform to say thanks. I may have looked tough on the outside, but I was bawling on the inside for this momentous night as we walked back to the stage clutched each others hands and raised them high.
"The night was now over and I said my customary, 'You've been great! We've been MEGADETH,' as I threw out my sweatbands. You see, you have been great; all of you. From the first tour with EXODUS, to the European tour with DIAMOND HEAD, to the Japanese tour, to the Oz tour with DUNGEON, to the run of Euro festivals and into the middle eastern area, to Gigantour, to South America. I choose this night to say what I needed to say because I knew while I was going to put on my best, feeling my worst, that you were all here with me. You are always here with me, and now that we have a band together again, you are here with us. You gave me back my career and I have returned the favor. And thankfully there is more of that to come.
"I love you more than you will ever know. And now to be the best Daddy and husband I can be again, until Gigantour 2."
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