Why Dave Mustaine Was in Agony at the Final Big 4 Concert

Dave Mustaine has played his share of challenging gigs with Megadeth. But it was the closing night of the historic Big 4 tour — Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax at Yankee Stadium in September 2011 — that found the metal frontman in a serious bind.

“My neck was getting ready to stop working,” he tells UCR, remembering the gravity of what he was facing that day. “The show must go on,” he adds. In the conversation below, Mustaine details how he was able to soldier onward and step onstage in front of 41,000 people to finish the tour. 

Megadeth is back on the road on Aug. 2 for the Destroy All Enemies tour. Mustain discussed the new trek, the band’s latest album, The Sick, the Dying…and the Dead!, and his love of Sammy Hagar and Judas Priest.

You’ve already been doing some shows this summer overseas. “Kick the Chair” is back in the set for the first time in 15 years. What made you think of that song?
It’s one of the heaviest songs on [The System Has Failed]. Somebody mentioned it and with James [LoMenzo], Dirk [Verbeuren] and Teemu [Mantysaari] playing now … you know we [previously] had limitations on the songs we could put into our set, because of the use and video and the reluctance of any of us to learn any new songs — and also, my limitations on my voice after I had my neck fused together and a plate put in my vocal box area.

READ MORE: Megadeth Albums Ranked

How has that changed things for you when it comes to writing new music and playing shows?
That’s changed a lot of stuff, because my voice has been limited because of trying to save my ability to walk. They fused my neck together, because I’d gone to a chiropractor and he had adjusted me while he was angry at something and broke a bone in my neck. So the guy broke my neck and I lived with it for a few years in agonizing pain. I finally got an X-ray and they said, “You need to get you neck fixed now.” That was right before the Big 4 show at Yankee Stadium. The day before the concert, I was in the hospital. The day of the concert, I had flown out right before it and was on so much anti-inflammatory steroidal medicine so I could walk. Because my neck was getting ready to stop working. [But] I went out and played and we had all kinds of tape all over the stage [that said], “Do not headbang.”

You’ve been doing this cool series of videos for the latest album, starting with “We’ll Be Back,” with a whole storyline. I wondered how the concept came about.
There’s five of them, and we were actually talking recently as this campaign winds down for [the current album] about doing a sixth video as a climax to the story, so that when we do our next record, we can start fresh again. [Similar] to guitar playing, now all of the good chords are taken, because there’s so many guitar players. The video directing and producing world, there are so many people now with the advent of photos and videos on everyone’s cellphone. Everybody’s a videographer. Everyone, everyone is a photographer. So how do you put this all together nowadays? I mean, you let ‘em fight it out and the best man wins.

Watch Megadeth’s ‘We’ll Be Back’ Video

You mentioned guitar playing. I spoke with Bruce Kulick recently, and he was talking about the interesting things he learns about his own songs from the fans. I wondered if you’ve had any similar experiences?
There was only one time ever that a fan showed me one of my songs. He played it the same way I played it. But it was not in the premise of somebody showing me an easier way to play my songs. He had said he knew one of my songs and I said, “No, you don’t.” It was the beginning of “Lucretia,” which is very difficult. He goes, “Yeah, I do.” He picked up my guitar, which made me mad in the first place, and then he played “Lucretia.” I went, “Damn, he’s got it. That began a 25-year friendship, and he’s still working with me today. You never know how these business things turn into friendships. I don’t like friendships that turn into business. That never works. When it’s a business that turns into friendship, even that is risky. But yeah, we’ve been together now for 25 years. Probably more.

There are a couple of epics on the latest album. You’ve certainly had plenty of experience in the past, but I wondered what your approach is when it comes to putting them together. 
I think my approach towards some of those more dramatic songs, it’s just like a bull being led by the nose. The song takes me where it wants to go. I have a general idea, because of the vibrations of the songs. There’s a lot of truth to be said about energy, electricity, light and sound. When we start playing, you know when it feels good. It just feels good. Some of the songs, as they progress, they need something very mysterious as a beginning and something very dramatic as an ending, such as “Poisonous Shadows” [from 2016’s Dystopia]. That was a song that for me was a really fun undertaking. Because it was pretty dramatic, pretty classical. You know, Kiko [Loureiro] had a part in that too, so that was fun.

How did Ice-T come to mind for “Night Stalkers”? I know he’s someone you’ve known for a long time.
Ice-T and I have been friends for years, going back to the Rust in Peace days. We used to go out onstage to his intro tape, which he loved. One time, I did an interview and they said, “Name your top three records” and I said, “Ice-T, Ice-T, Ice-T.” He got wind of that too, and he was super excited. We became friends. I loved the fact that he was [in the Army — prior to his own musical career, Ice-T was a squad leader in the 25th Infantry Division for several years in the late ‘70s]. I thought that was badass. Especially when I was a kid, to see special ops guys before they were super popular, I always liked that stuff. It goes back to watching John Wayne in The Green Berets movie. That’s when I started to really fall in love with the special ops guys, the Green Berets. I was also starting to watch other Army flicks at the time. I mean, I was not a big fan of stuff like M*A*S*H*, although I watched that — but it was for different reasons. It was for comedy, not military stuff.

READ MORE: Hear Megadeth Recruit Ice-T For Blistering ‘Night Stalkers’

This tour with Mudvayne and All That Remains seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun.
We tried to be a little bit open to what the fans are going to want to be listening to and make it a fun night for everybody. I’m hoping that all of [the bands] become close as quick as possible. You know, you usually become friends on tours, but it takes a little while. But I’m hoping we can spend some time together. We did a couple of tours a long time ago where on days off, we’d go and do charity softball games in minor league baseball stadiums. We did that back in the Gigantour days. Stuff like that is really cool. There’s days off and there’s a couple of times when we have a couple of days off. So it’s really, really smart as celebrities, when we go into a town, to do something for that town in the form of charity. Go bowling, go play softball or whatever.

But [we like to] bring the fans in on it and do something for the local food banks. When we did Youthanasia, we did a food drive, and anybody who brought 10 pounds of canned, non-perishable food would get an after-show pass. We only had about 200 passes for each night. It was a brutal undertaking, but we’d raise 2,000 pounds — a ton — of food each night in 13 cities. The sad thing about it was that we only got thanked by the city of Chicago. The city of Phoenix, where I lived, they said something kind of nice, but it wasn’t a thank-you. It just shows with all of the bureaucratic shit that goes on in our cities … how could somebody not know that a metal band comes into their city and drops off 2,000 pounds of food for your city’s homeless people? How could you not know that? But it didn’t keep us from wanting to help our fellow man, because at the end of the day, I was homeless and I remember that. I’ll never lose sight of that.

Listen to Megadeth and Sammy Hagar’s Version of ‘This Planet’s on Fire (Burn in Hell)’

One of the bonus cuts on the latest album is a version of “This Planet’s on Fire” with Sammy Hagar. Tell me about working with Sammy.
Well, Sammy is a musician that I’ve been a fan of for a very long time, ever since the Montrose days. We’re talking 45 years ago, when I first heard Montrose. I was really excited when he did his solo career and I got the album Street Machine that had “This Planet’s on Fire” on it. You know, when you’re used to a certain type of music from people, you don’t expect stuff like that. That was just a burner. It was an amazing song. That beginning riff was very much like [Rush‘s] “The Spirit of Radio” or AC/DC parts. I don’t know where Sammy got that idea from, but it was a really cool part that was very popular with the greatest guitar players at that time. I think because Sammy’s been so successful and he’s so content in his life, he’s very off-the-cuff. The way he would talk to me was really refreshing and fun. It was like he was an older brother,  and I really mean that in every sense of the word. Because he would talk to me and I would feel really good. It’s kind of like being pinched by your sister or your mom or something — annoying, but there was this dialogue between us that I wished I had growing up, that kind of banter with an older brother. But fuck, let’s move on to the singing. Man, Sammy is one of the greatest rock voices ever. Who else sings like Sammy? Nazareth’s singer …

Dan McCafferty.

… Maybe [some of the] brilliant moments from Axl [Rose]. But there’s not a lot of guys that sing like that. Chris Cornell has some of those moments, of that super distorted voice.

Another thing Megadeth did in 2022 is a version of “Delivering the Goods” by Judas Priest that’s crushing.
Thanks. We sped it up a little bit. We just kind of felt that out of homage to Glenn [Tipton] and the boys in Judas Priest. I’m a huge fan of their guitar playing, Glenn and K.K. [Downing]. Those were my heroes. “Victim of Changes” was one of the first songs that really knocked me on my ass. I can’t even begin to express how much that song made an impression on me. “The Ripper” was great too. It was, by far, one of the greatest songs I’d ever heard. But “Victim of Changes” was like nothing I’d ever heard before. The drama, the builds, the singing, the guitar parts. There’s that incredible intro with the guitar part starting so far off in the background.

The funny thing too, Matt: I was looking at their amps when we traveled with them on the Painkiller tour. They had these guitar racks that had — with all due respect to the beloved Priest — they had some really old, really cheap gear. It was the stuff I was using on Peace Sells. Rocktrons and stuff like that, which were great effects, but I didn’t think that they would be using that. Because it’s kind of like an economical device to get chorus and delay on guitar. It totally made sense now why their sound was so appealing to me, because I had that sound for so long with the first two records. I think I’d moved away from the Rocktrons on the third record, but I know for sure that I had it on the first two.

Listen to Megadeth’s Version of ‘Delivering the Goods’