Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine: ‘I said, This one’s for the cause. We had to be taken out of the place in a bulletproof bus’

After a six-year hiatus, Megadeth are back with a new album, The Sick, The Dying ... and the Dead! Dave Mustaine, their guitarist — one of the greatest in heavy metal — talks about overcoming adversity and how the Troubles inspired one of his best songs.

You were diagnosed with throat cancer in 2019. How is your health now?

I think I’m 100 per cent. I got my all-clear from the doctor in October of 2020. I should be coming up on my three-year anniversary. That’s pretty cool stuff. We worked really hard on all of the treatment and on the nutrition and all the personal stuff that I had to do outside the hospital. The doctors set up this really brutal programme to address the cancer. They wanted to kill it without having to do any surgery.

I told the doctors that I was a little concerned that Eddie Van Halen had part of his tongue cut out. Bruce Dickenson — the Iron Maiden lead singer — and Michael Douglas had got it too, and I was part of the club. We had a great programme. My doctors are really great. Whenever anybody goes to see a doctor and gives you the all-clear for your health, you are usually really, really grateful. It doesn’t have any power over me any more. I want to make sure that people don’t get discouraged when they hear news like that. I went to two doctors in Tennessee, and they knew how important it was for me to continue singing.

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How has the last six years been in terms of illness, Covid-19 and the other trials you have had?

It’s just another day at the office, right? Life is tough. You are going to be a winner or you are not. I don’t think people should be called losers. Trying to get second place is not being a loser. Anyone who finishes the race is a winner so long as people are always striving to make themselves better. It is really easy. Just make an improvement of 1 per cent and in a little over three short months you are going to be a completely different person, whether it is your work ethic, your significant other or your children.

Is your new album, The Sick, the Dying ... and the Dead! about Covid-19 and your cancer diagnosis?

I have had several people tell me that it was about Covid-19, but it is not. It is about the Black Death. The lyrics are so self-explanatory. They tell the story pretty clearly. I had watched a movie. It was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with Robert de Niro in it, and Kenneth Branagh. There was a part in the movie they were talking about the plague, and I remember distinctly parts of the movie that were really macabre. The nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosie is in the song: Ring-a-ring-a-roses, A pocket full of posies, Atishoo, atishoo, We all fall down. It’s a rhyme for children from the Black Death based around the pocket pull of posies, because the bodies stunk so bad you had to load up on posies to cover the stench. People had to cremate bodies to get rid of the disease.

How did your collaboration with Ice T on the song Night Stalkers come about?

When I met him first time his career was just taking off. He was pretty controversial. There was a certain mentality for people at that time who were hanging with rap artists, especially when Ice T had songs like Cop Killer [in 1992] and stuff like that. He had really polarised the public. I was a believer that it was art he was singing. He was a talented guy. We used one of his songs, Shut Up, Be Happy, which was our intro tape for years. I had to rate some records one time and [Ice T’s] OG Original Gangster was one of my favourites. It was fresh in my mind at the time. His part in Night Stalker is cool. I wanted someone who had distinctive, easily identifiable voice and cadence plus that street mentality and delivery. I thought he would be the perfect person to get his arse in the chopper and get ready for this.

How can you interest younger rap and hip-hop fans in heavy metal?

There is a way you can merge the two art forms. Kids are into hip hop because that’s what their friends are into. There are a lot of kids that are not individual when it comes down to listening to music. There is a lot of people who don’t want to listen to anything that their friends aren’t listening to, because they don’t want to be ostracised. When I was listening to Iron Maiden and AC/DC back in my teen years, my friends didn’t know what to think because the music was so hard and so heavy.

We’ll be Back, the first single from the new album, is one of the hardest songs you have done in many years. Tell us about it.

When I got the diagnosis they thought that was the end of Megadeth and the end of Dave Mustaine. There were believers that have been with me on part or all of the journey who knew that was not going to take place. A lot of people told me that when I got cancer they felt sorry for cancer. They said they knew I was going to make it.

I took that 1 per cent challenge: I am going to push myself on this record; I’m going to make sure I sing the best I can and play the best I can. The most important time I spent talking to my higher power and listening, it was clear to me that at my age [61] I shouldn’t be able to keep coming up with faster, harder music.

The inspiration and the mentality only has to be 1 per cent a day and you have a profound change. Everybody is superexcited with this. We have got some of the best people in the business, not because they are the most expensive but they are the best crew people. Nowadays we are all professionals. I can’t think of anything more exciting than watch these guys work. They go into a building and they erect a temple for people to listen to music.

On May 11th, 1988, at the height of the Troubles, you caused uproar at a concert at the Antrim Arena. It inspired one of Megadeth’s greatest songs, Holy Wars ... The Punishment Due, from their 1990 classic album, Rust In Peace

Holy Wars was about the naivety coming there. I was so honest and so innocent. We were backstage, and some stuff had happened during the day which really set the tone for the night. It was just a powder keg ready to go.

I went downstairs and somebody was caught trying to bootleg T-shirts inside the venue. Talk about brass! We went to take the shirt, and he said, “These are for the cause.” I didn’t know what the cause was. “What’s the cause?” I asked him. “It’s about prejudice and religion. The Catholics think they are better than the Protestants; the Protestants think they are better than the Catholics.”

I understand that. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, and they hate every religion except theirs. I was drinking Guinness straight from the source. I had a bunch of Guinnesses. We are up on stage, and some kid was throwing coins. I don’t know if he was trying to hit Chuck Mehler [the band’s drummer] or Dave Ellefson [its bassist], but I got hit one time. I was pissed. I saw the guy who threw it, and I said something to him. The show stopped. I came back out on stage, and I had just heard that Paul McCartney had said, “Give Ireland back to the Irish,” and I thought Paul’s a knight, he’s cool, it’s got to be something worth saying — so I said what he said and added, “This one’s for the cause,” and the reaction was much different, because I was an American.

It polarised the audience. We had to be taken out of the place in a bulletproof bus. The next day I was in Nottingham, and I wrote the lyrics “Brother will kill brother, spilling blood across the land, killing for religion is something I don’t understand / Fools like me who cross the sea and come to foreign lands / Ask the sheep, for their beliefs / Do you kill on God’s command? A country that’s divided surely will not stand / My past erased, no more disgrace / no foolish naive stand.”

That’s part of my elementary evaluation of the situation, which was grossly underestimating the pain and suffering that people have because of this. I penned this song. It just came out. I love the Irish people, and I don’t really see any distinction between north and south, east and west.

The Sick, The Dying ... and the Dead! is released on Friday, September 2nd