PEACE SELLS… IS DEFINITELY METAL
“The first time I heard Megadeth I was 14. I was with my girlfriend and her parents at a car boot sale. I was looking through some vinyl and I found the Peace Sells… album. I didn’t know who they were, but it was so cool. The cover’s red, it’s post- apocalyptic and it’s got a skeleton on it. I thought, ‘That has to be metal!’ and bought into it straight away. It was perfect for a young lad getting into metal. By the time I’d heard the album a third time, I was absolutely hooked. I went and bought the guitar tab book straight after, and that was a massive influence on me.”
THEY RAISED THE BAR FOR METAL MUSICIANS
“It was the guitar work in Megadeth that I really clicked with when I was a teenager. I wanted to learn to be able to play that well. Obviously I wanted to, but I never got there and I still have that same ambition. I just need to practise, which I don’t agree with. I should just be given those abilities, really. But to my mind, Dave Mustaine invented loads of stuff, like ‘spider-riffing’! I’d never heard of that before Dave. I remember watching Megadeth at Download in 2010 with [Evil Scarecrow guitarist] Brother Pain, and they played Rust In Peace all the way through. We sang along with all the riffs and all the solos. We were quite drunk and some of the solos are really high and widdly, but we had a bloody good go at singing them.”/o:p
DAVE MUSTAINE IS NEVER, EVER BORING
“He’s crackers and I like that. He’s a proper mad rock star. OK, there’s the Born Again Christian stuff, and I can’t really buy into that, but he’s frequently hilarious. Dropping out of a festival because Rotting Christ are playing… that’s amazing, isn’t it? I’d love Dave Mustaine to cancel a show because he’d been offended by Evil Scarecrow in some way. We did think about making a spoof of the Cradle Of Filth ‘Jesus Is A Cunt’ t-shirt that read ‘God Is A Wazzock’. That would probably wind Dave up a little bit, I reckon.”
THEY’VE AGED BETTER THAN METALLICA
“I’d hate to see Megadeth stop because I still think they’ve got some cracking tunes to get out there… unlike Metallica, who I just don’t care about anymore. They went to a point and dropped off the face of the Earth and Megadeth are waving at them from the top of the cliff. You can put some of the recent stuff up against the early classics and it’s not a million miles away from that level of quality, and you really can’t say that about Metallica. Over the last 20 years Megadeth have won hands down. People should tell Dave that more often!”
VIC RATTLEHEAD IS A BADASS MASCOT
“Vic Rattlehead is just cool. One of my first guitars was this awful cream affair… I didn’t even bother sanding it down because I was too lazy, but I got some old modeling paint, painted it black and then hand-drew Vic Rattlehead, stuck it to the guitar, and hand-wrote ‘Megadeth’ and stuck that on, too. I had made a total mess of the guitar but I thought it was awesome custom artwork! Obviously it lasted about a week before all the paper rubbed off. Vic’s up there with Eddie, but maybe a bit cooler. Vic’s never been turned into some clouds, unlike Eddie. Clouds aren’t metal.”
MEGADAVE NEVER SAYS DIE
“There’s nearly always one person in any band who’s the overriding creative force. I don’t think there’s any band more emblematic of that than Megadeth. Dave is Megadeth and he’s still got a lot of integrity. He’s stayed the course. Megadeth have had some slightly shoddy moments along the way, but they have got so many amazing songs scattered throughout their catalogue. Maybe Dave’s too nuts for some people, but see them live and they’re always fucking great.”
