Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Dave Mustaine, the leader of Megadeth, discussed the prospect of recording a solo album when the band’s farewell tour is over in a recent interview with Poland’s Teraz Rock, as per Blabbermouth. Mustaine made this statement in response to the interviewer’s observation that he had previously considered recording a solo album more than 20 years prior.
I think it was ‘The System…’ Was it ‘The System Has Failed’? Yeah. That was the one that I’d injured my arm and I contacted the band guys and said, ‘I can’t play anymore. And I need to break up the band.’ So some time went by and my arm started to heal, and my godfather Alice Cooper contacted me and asked if I would do a benefit for somebody that worked for him and that also worked for me, who had just died and left his wife and a daughter with nothing. So, I hadn’t touched a guitar for 17 months — not even pick it up and set it down. I just didn’t touch it. And so I said, ‘Look, I can barely play guitar right now. And I’ll come and I’ll do something, but it’s not gonna be great.’ So I went and we played and somehow the pilot light was reignited and the fire inside of me started burning again and I wanted to play. And when I called up Marty [Friedman, former Megadeth guitarist] and Nick [Menza, former Megadeth drummer] and David [Ellefson, former Megadeth bassist] and talked to them, it was non-negotiable. We were not meant to get back together again. And I’ll leave all the nasty details out, but that’s when I went into the studio with some other people — [drummer] Vinnie Colaiuta, who is amazing, and this guy named Jimmie Sloas who played bass on the record, and he was really good too.
Returning to the question of whether he would think about making a solo album in the future, Mustaine gave this response.
I might. I don’t think so. I might. I might. Right now, things are going so great for us, we’re not even really thinking about the end. We’re thinking about the beginning of this, this campaign, and heading out and, and showing this [new] music to our fans. And we’ve been looking at the tours that we’ve got on our schedule, and everything’s doing really well ticket-wise. Dates are selling out way in advance, and that’s good for us too because in many of the places that we booked, we’ve had to go to a different configuration. Some places will be set up for, say, for example, 7,000 seats and they’ve got some seats up in the top that they’ve blocked off. And a band comes in and they keep selling tickets, they’ll open up those areas. ‘Cause a lot of times they don’t open those areas up because it looks bad for bands that don’t sell out the venue. And we’ve had a lot of concerts already that has — it’s gone to a bigger-size venue.
