The guitarist and singer Dave Mustaine wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth and faced a lot of difficulties in his life before becoming a successful Rock star. When he finally thought he could make it, he was fired from Metallica and saw his ex-band getting bigger while he was trying to do the same with his own new band: Megadeth. A couple of years later he finally had the chance to also form one of the most influential Thrash Metal bands of all time,
None of that would have happened if he wasn’t determined to be successful and as he recalled in an interview with The Big Takeover, he had no plan B.
Dave Mustaine talks about how determined he was to be successful
“In my heart, I had hoped that I could continue playing for as long as I live. The question was, how long was I going to live? We were all in this [L.A.] scene at the time that everybody was living super fast and dangerous. People like Vince Neil getting in a car crash and the drummer for Hanoi Rocks losing his life, that whole period around then — everybody was just dangerous. We had to get away from that. All I wanted to do was just play my guitar.”
“I didn’t want to hang. I was not one of those guys that would go over to people’s houses and party all night. If I was doing anything, I would do it by myself in the house and play guitar. Not that I was alone in my house, but you know. For me, I didn’t have a Plan B. And I didn’t want to have a Plan B because my Plan A was all that mattered. And I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Growing up homeless, and growing up a poor kid, does something to you.”
He continued:
“So yeah, being a poor kid and going from house to house to house, and wearing hand-me-down clothes all the time, and living in a car for as long as I did, that changed me. And that’s what I think drove me to want to be successful because I didn’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want to be stuck in a situation of being homeless and living in a car. I was not going to settle for that.”
“So that’s why I worked as hard as I did. Some people will say I was callous with the [Megadeth] lineup changes and stuff like that, but with every one of the lineup changes we had, there was a really legitimate reason that we made a change,” Dave Mustaine said.
Mustaine is the only member of the band who was part of all the releases. Right now, the band is also formed by Dirk Verbeuren (Drums – Since 2016), James LoMenzo (Bass – Since 2022) and Teemu Mäntysaari (Guitar – Since 2023).