Megadeth's Dave Mustaine on Drugs and the Dark Side of the Music Industry

Jurgen's experience, yes, I know the

music

business was very different from what it is now, it's so different, I don't know if those two things are related, but yes, I'm sure the peace movement probably saw lots of wild things. a

music

ian, right, and the music business is what you survive on and, for example, Elvis, you know how his life ended and, uh, you know what the music business was like back then, you know, throwing

drugs

into the problem. sex and money in the problem and um, I don't know, if I had modern management or even if I was with you, you know someone who, um, you know as a manager, you know, that would say, hey, that's probably not a good idea. for you. to say that nowadays we have people who, um, their only job is to help us keep from stepping on it, you know that well, and I have people around me, they used to be very busy with me, but you know.

Fortunately, growing up, I learned a lot of things that you know you can't say specifically that well. I mean, nowadays with social media it's so easy for someone to just tweet something really ridiculous without someone saying "hey, no." Don't say you're on Adderall, sit down, don't write that, don't say you know it was back then. Do you think that

drugs

and alcohol are the same in music today or do you think it is less? Do you think it's just not promoted? I mean, what do you think is the difference between the influence of drugs and alcohol in the early days versus now?

Well, I guess I think in the early days of the music business, drugs weren't the first to come out. so strong and you know they didn't have, for example, something as simple as weed, you know, the marijuana that I used to smoke when I was a kid versus what is made and grown today is very different and I think the stigma for people about smoking is less and I think there's a lot of other things that people use along the way to deal with things that could be fixed, you know, good management, good, good support system, um, and most importantly, you know, having Someone He's going to tell you the truth, you know, I'm an adult, I'm a big kid, so when things happen in my career and they could have been avoided or someone didn't tell me and I find out.

Then, that sucks, yeah, and for a lot of people, when those things happen, they respond in a negative way, you know, self-sabotage or you know they medicate themselves and I remember when I was drinking, you know, there was something that someone said in one of those meetings and I thought it was kind of clever, the guy said, you know, I drank when my team won and I drank when my team lost and I drank when my team played, I drank when my team was in the offseason and I thought, "Okay, that's it." It's about me, what team do we not support anymore?", but you know, there are a lot of reasons why people succeed or don't succeed in the music business and I think it's a lot like you, you know?

When we met this afternoon, you know you have to take care of yourself, you really do, and there are so many things in the music

industry

that, you know, the history, the people you meet. I'm working with you, you know, a lot of people don't want to say anything bad about someone, but I mean, imagine how much better things would be if someone actually said, you know, he's a good guy but he stole from us or you know this. Boy, he's good at this but he's terrible at that. You know everyone is afraid of offending someone with things like that, but you still know that in other areas of life offending people doesn't mean you know it, so we've had a few moments like that.

We had some people on our crew and on the tours that we were on the last tour we were on, not in my band but in another band. Their bus drove to the Canadian border and the driver got off and left them. Everybody sitting there, so yeah, it's a music business because he was drunk or something and you can't go to Canada, so oh my God, that's funny, they're so complicated, all of this, but it seems like it was in the past, you know? uh, back in the '60s or '70s, I was talking about different times, different messes, different managers, you know, managers used to handle the mess, they don't handle the message anymore, they don't want to tolerate that because there's always someone around. the corner. that's ready to work harder than you it's like that motivational thing that Arnold said a long time ago someone's out there getting stronger running further you know all those things I love those motivational tapes yeah well someone's out there doing it and yeah You do it and I just want to take crazy drugs he was kind of out of it, but get on stage and be brilliant sometimes you know, that's Keith Moon, you know, yeah, that worked for Keith, but I think that's a player like Keith that's everywhere. place, you know he doesn't have a song with a pattern, so let's go out and play everything there, I know a lot of musicians that will drink when they play, I know a lot that, right?

I don't know many people who use drugs anymore, um, that's something that's been phased out, yeah, just because you know the impact it has on your body, not only that, but the things it makes people do and the kind . from the people around I think you know again, like I was saying that weed has less astigmatism, so people are a little more open with that, but you know until you get backstage and it smells like you know that someone is there burning. chemicals or something, or you know people who fall in the hallway because of heroin or you know meth or cocaine use or something like that, you know, we try and we partner with like-minded people like us, you know to people who about their careers and who really like to take care of themselves um two of the guys from Five Finger Death Punch friend have uh sensei with them we're all doing jiu jitsu um when we were hanging out with trivium the singer from that band does him to Jesus, so we try to come out with bands that are really health-focused, you know, that are really digging and not just from here down, but here all the way back to when you were a kid and first heard about bands. and getting into bands was that there was always a narrative about something that was discussed a lot and like a lot of bands did drugs, I don't think it was because you know it wasn't something we were concerned with.

The moment I started playing with just other little guys, you know, skimpy outfits and stuff like that and it was never really drugs per se, it would be like maybe taking a six pack of air and you know, maybe smoking a joint or something, but it wasn't until Mega Death really started and we met uh gar and some of the people in that circle where, you know, we started experimenting with other things and we had a manager at the time who was very very bad and he He was always trying to keep us charged and we ended up having to fire the guy because it was for our own health, our own safety, I mean, you know, if I was a cheap bastard and didn't have any money.

I would say this is cool you got it for free but you know the thing is you know the guy was keeping several members of the band sick yeah there are guys who do that there are guys who do that and there are guys who will do that . just to corner you and keep you under control. I've seen managers do that Brian Wilson story that was a great story too. What happened to Brian Wilson? The movie he had about the doctor he had. He had some psychiatrists who kept him. All crazy, I saw the movie where Paul Paul Garganimous or whatever his name was, the only guy in a billion was the doctor and I don't remember who played Brian Wilson, but it was a great movie, what's his name, it was Brian . wilson story, i guess i don't know, i haven't seen it yet, but john cusack played it and i know john cusack uh, also a practitioner, he had also trained with cincy benny at the jet center, yeah, i remember him on he used he in one of his movies there it's love and mercy that's giamatti paul giamatti yeah oh yeah the guy from the howard stern movie also that guy is amazing yeah that one um that's that whole thing with psychiatrists or doctors or you know if it's a manager or someone that you have that can get you drugs and that keeps you doing them, that's a long-standing story that's been going on for a long time, especially with really talented people many times that person that you can benefit financially by controlling them So they hold them up and say, Look, I'm just going to take care of the kids, they keep you high and then they suck your money, and then there are a lot of these guys who end up keeping these incompetent managers for years longer than they should. because the boy also gives them drugs, because the boy gets them girls, he takes drugs, he organizes parties, he does all the things that don't help the band, don't help his music, but help him stay in the scene.

Yeah, those guys are real, I met them in comedy too, they exist, they exist and it's, you know, it's always been a long history, a long history in comedy, you know, with Sam Kinnison I was into coke and Richard Pryor , the famous. I had a problem, but no, you only hear about those types of people when they appear on the news. You know when something happened, so I always wondered, like in your time when you started, that a trope was something that was. We argue a lot with rock stars, no, drugs, the drug issue, because it seems like a lot of guys from your era were on drugs, yeah, they were, uh, well, I'll give you a scenario when we signed with Capital and went up.

We walked into the tower, we walked into one of the little rooms here and the guy opened his desk and there were lines everywhere, so yeah, they gave us a box of Nike shoes and all the punch you could eat. Wow, that's crazy, yeah, when I was a kid. When I worked at a comedy club they offered me coke or money or a combination of both. They pay you in cash or coke. This is crazy. I heard about a band with a frontman I really respected and who wanted to get paid. crack and I thought you know what I've lost you now, well maybe new I could get it for a good price and sell it on the road, yeah you never know, it's hard to get a good crack, yeah there are a lot of people. that's lost a lot with drugs, but that's why I'm always happy to talk to a person like you who you know had your problems and put them a

side

and recovered, yeah, and you know he recovered and is open to respect, you know?

I think it's very important for kids to listen to it, it's also a trap where you can let yourself be absorbed by that tribe. You can be a good person, a solid person that you know, you have confidence, you can achieve things, but you can. Keep getting sucked into that truck, you can.