Dave Mustaine speaks about the lineup changes that happened in Megadeth

Dave Mustaine, the leader of Megadeth, was asked in a recent interview with Fox Radio host Terrence Long how he has maintained the band’s momentum over the course of more than 40 years despite several lineup changes, as per Blabbermouth.

Certain people say that there’s been a lot of people that have been in Megadeth, and there’s been a lot of people that have said they were in the band — people who were auditioned, people who were in name only. For almost 50 years, the amount of people that we have on record is really pretty small. If you think about David Bowie, he had loads of people he played with. And, for me, I wished that it was just one lineup the whole time, honestly. But you don’t always have that luxury of playing with the same people for long periods of time, especially in something as intense as thrash metal. Because face it, thrash metal’s a young man’s game, and certain people grow up, they grow old and some people change. They still have the fire, some people don’t.

Mustaine mentioned this when thinking back to the early years of Megadeth.

There was just a quality about the music and the scene that we were all a part of that I really loved being in the middle of. We would go places and we would see people, and there we were, and that was a great feeling because it was like we had our own private club, and we would show up and it just felt good, because everybody that was there was part of that scene, part of that metal, part of that brethren. And we all wanted to be part of that scene, and we all knew who was part of that scene. A very famous shirt that was being worn around a long time ago was a hand-painted t-shirt of one of the guys from Mötley [Crüe], and it was a shirt that had a line through it, and it said, ‘No posers.’ And I think that was the bass player that was wearing that shirt. But, anyways, there was a huge standoff between the guys that played metal and the people who were more of the pop kind of guys, the glam guys.

Mustaine also discussed his choice to go on a “farewell” tour and release the newly released self-titled album, which is being hailed as Megadeth’s final studio album. Mustaine had this response when asked if he thought his music conveyed everything he wanted to.

Well, it’s not because I wanna quit. My hand is giving me problems, and I don’t wanna keep playing if I can’t play. That, to me, is a little frightening. I don’t wanna go out in front of our fans and not be able to do my best. I wanna make sure that I do my best and that fans will always be smacking each other, saying, ‘Can you believe what I just saw?’ That kind of stuff. So, yeah, I don’t know how much longer we’ll be touring. It may be a little while. It may not.

It sucks when you got guys that don’t have a debilitating situation that are just being lazy, and you see ’em just taking the easy way out. That, to me, is kind of shitty. But I am who I am when it comes down to playing and the way that I take the stage. I don’t wanna ever go out there and do it half-assed. I wanna make sure that I kick ass every time I take the stage. And I believe that every time we’ve hit the stage on this last tour, every date that we’ve done so far, we’ve done that, that it’s 100% and we’re ready to go. And we’ve put on great shows.