“It doesn’t feel like me and some side players or some session guys” – Dave Mustaine shares Megadeth’s dynamic as a band

The question regarding the evolution of the Megadeth dynamic with the arrival of guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari last year came up in a recent interview with Chuck Armstrong of “Loudwire Nights” featuring Dave Mustaine.

Well, we are a band again. It doesn’t feel like me and some side players or some session guys. Not that it felt like that with any of the previous lineups, but that was one of the fears that I had. I feel like Kiko did us a really huge courtesy by helping us find Teemu because with Kiko needing to step down… I thought I was gonna finish my career out with Kiko, and when things came up with him, he couldn’t tour anymore because he needed to be home for his kids. So I see he’s touring again, which I’m happy that he’s still playing. But he had to go home. And when he did, he introduced us to Teemu. And it was an even closer connection between me and Teemu than Kiko and I had. We’ll [Kiko and I] always be friends, but this new relationship I have is — it harkens me back to the days when we had Marty Friedman in the band and the four of us actually felt like a band. Dave Mustaine

The lead singer and guitarist also shared some news about new material of the band.

Yes, we are. We’re not gonna be taking as long in between offerings as we did this time. There were a lot of setbacks — the pandemic, the blockade, you name it. It’s just so many things that went on. [My throat] cancer treatment, the lineup change, having to start from scratch with a new bassist. And the cancer treatment also was difficult on the guys because they were watching me go through all this stuff. And one day, I would be seemingly normal. The other day, I would be so medicated that I couldn’t stay awake. And that was hard for the guys to see. I had two days that I was really, really sick that I threw up. Out of the whole treatment, I thought that was really good. I was fighting with everything, every moral fiber of my being, to make sure that I stayed in the game, because they kept saying over and over again, ‘If you don’t eat, if you lose weight, we’re gonna put a tube in you.’ And I got so serious. And we started to pick up the pace when we were doing the [‘The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!’] record. Dave Mustaine

He also shed some light about David Ellefson departure from Megadeth.

I don’t like getting into the details about it because Dave was my friend for many, many years and even still, in a matter of faith, we’re still brothers, but this was something we needed to change, and I painfully did so. And we had Steve DiGiorgio come in from Testament, and he really delivered. He was a great guy and just masterful player. I really liked him a lot. We talked a lot about his availability to play with us if we had tour dates come up until we found a permanent player. And I thought about that, and I just thought, ‘No, I don’t wanna do that to Eric and the guys in Testament,’ ’cause Eric and I and Alex, we’re guitar players, so we’re close with one another. And poaching somebody’s player I don’t think is cool. Plus, Steve had integrity, where he was there to play on the record and everything. And any talk of anything other than that, it just never germinated. And just to be clear for the record, we never tried to steal Steve. I think he would tell you that. We were talking about situations where if we had a concert, we needed him to come in and do a one-off.

Dave Mustaine