As the war of words between Dave Mustaine and his former friend and Megadeth bandmate David Ellefson carries on, the Kings Of Thrash - that's bassist Ellefson and former Megadeth guitarist Jeff Young - have launched their 'The MEGA Years' tour in San Diego, California.
The pair were joined on the tour's opening show at the Brick By Brick club last night (October 12) by Killing Is My Business...and Business Is Good / Peace Sells... But who's Buying? era guitarist Chris Poland for several songs, including the group's three set encore, Wake Up Dead, Good Mourning/Black Friday and Peace Sells...
Speaking ahead of the tour, So Far, So Good... So What! era guitarist Young said that the shows are not about "spite or retaliation."
Talking on the Rock Interview Series podcast, Young told host Thomas S. Orwat, Jr. [as transcribed by Blabbermouth], "For us, this isn't about any spite or retaliation; it's a celebration of the music that we were all a part of, that we helped create. And it's fun for us to do this."
He continued, "People said, 'You should do this.' And we said, 'Hey, yeah, you're right. We should do this.' It's a win-win - it's a win for us, and it's a win for [Dave Mustaine], because any performance royalties, anything… If we did include live tracks, he would make money off that. It's promoting albums that hopefully fans will go back and buy, which is putting money right in his pocket. Especially Killing Is My Business, I think a lot of people are gonna go back and wanna rediscover that album after this tour."
"For us, it's all about positivity," Young insisted. "We're all in this moment — we're living in the moment, and we're not looking beyond. We're not reading any of the comments on Blabbermouth or any of the stuff. Because we know what our intent is, and intent is everything. And our intent's positive. We like playing together. We know we're crafting original music. We're not relying on this; we don't need to ride the coattails of this. This is just something that the fans wanted, and you wanna give fans what they want."
Watch fan-footage of Ellefson, Young and Poland playing Wake Up Dead and Peace Sells... below: both clips were filmed and uploaded online by YouTuber 'Eclipse'.
And you can watch Jeff Young's Rock Interview Series interview in full below:
