Dave Mustaine

Guitar World magazine ranked Mustaine and his partner Marty Friedman 19th in the list of the 100 best guitarists in the world.

Journalist Joel McIver put Mustaine at the top of the list of the 100 greatest metal guitarists.

1981-2002 2004 — present Singing voice: Baritone Instruments: guitar, electric guitar, piano Genres: of thrash metal, heavy metal and speed metal

Panic (1981) Metallica (1982 — 1983) Fallen Angel (1983) Megadeth (1983 — present) Doctor of Medical Sciences, 45 years old (1996) Labels Loud Records, Combat Records, Capitol Records, Sanctuary Records and Roadrunner Records

Dave was born in La Mesa, California, USA. His father, John Jefferson Mustaine (1922-1979), was of Irish, English, French, Finnish and German descent, and his mother, Emily Mustaine (née David, 1922-1990), was of Jewish descent. According to Dave in an interview with the Finnish program Jyrki in 2001, his last name originally sounded like Mustonen. The father was an American for many generations, while the mother emigrated to the United States as a child with parents from Essen (Germany, her father came from Prussian Treptow, now Poland). Of all four children, Dave was the only boy and the youngest. His father was very cruel to Dave, especially when he was drunk. When Dave was 4 years old, his parents divorced and he grew up without a father. Due to the fact that John did not stop terrorizing his family, they constantly moved from place to place. Until the age of 18, Dave was interested in the dark arts to spite his family, who were adherents of Jehovah's Witnesses, as he, in his words, "hated going door to door on Mondays."

In the fall of 1969, his mother saved up money to buy her son a guitar, but his early exercises did not reveal his talent, so Dave left his instrument for a while. After a while, he became a catcher on the junior baseball team. In February 1975, the family moved in with their older sister Suzanne, who also lived in California, but was already married and separated. His sister's husband disliked Mustaine because of his love of heavy music. At the age of 15, Mustaine rented his apartment, earning money by selling drugs. One of his customers often did not have enough money to buy and instead of money she gave records of bands such as Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Motörhead and Judas Priest. In the spring of 1978, Dave dropped out of school and switched to electric guitar mainly because of free drugs and available women. He suffered from drug and alcohol addiction for 20 years and once almost died of an overdose.

His first band was called "Panic". During its short existence, the band has not achieved any notable success. Nevertheless, Mustaine wrote three songs, which later, with some minor changes, were included in the band's debut album Metallica. He did not participate in the recording of the album due to his sudden dismissal due to his attitude towards the rest of the Metallica band partners. Panic played a single concert, after which, on the way home, a sound engineer and a drummer crashed into a railway booth, which put an end to the band.

Metallica In 1981, Dave joined Metallica, having been hired by an ad given by Lars Ulrich. He only worked in the group for about a year. In the debut album Kill 'Em All, Dave co-wrote four songs: "Metal Militia", "Phantom Lord", "Jump in the Fire", "The Four Horsemen". The song "The Four Horsemen" was released on Megadeth's debut album titled "Mechanix" — this was the original title of the song. It was written entirely by Mustaine, however, when Dave was kicked out of the band, vocalist and rhythm guitarist James Hatfield changed the lyrics and changed the title of the song. The tempo was also reduced by about one and a half times and an acoustic part was added, written by new lead guitarist Kirk Hammett. In addition, Dave is the co-writer of the songs "The Call of Ktulu" and "Ride the Lightning" from the second album Ride the Lightning. The chord sequence from "The Call of Ktulu" can also be heard in the song "Hangar 18" from Megadeth's 4th studio album, Rust in Peace.

According to the memoirs of his Metallica colleagues, Dave was very talented and equally unbearable. He continued to have problems with alcohol and drugs. A serious quarrel broke out between the musicians when Mustaine brought his dog to rehearsal, which began scratching the car of the band's bass guitarist, Ron McGovney, and he kicked it in frustration. An altercation ensued between Mustaine and McGovney, in which Hatfield intervened. Dave threatened to punch the bass player if this happened again. James, in defense of his friend, said "if you want to say something to him, tell me first", after which Dave hit James first, and then Ron, as a result of which Dave was expelled from the group. However, he was accepted back the very next day, but the sediment remained. Dave also maliciously played a joke on McGovney by pouring a bottle of beer on his bass, as a result of which Ron left the band and kicked all the band members out of his house, where she was rehearsing.

The Fallen Angel: In 1983, the Fallen Angel group was created en masse. It lasted no more than six months without achieving any noticeable success. At the venue, she performed mainly covers and four Metallica songs, which were signed by Mustaine back in the panic stage and co-authored by him. At the end of 1983, Fallen Angel disintegrates.

The section lacks links to sources (see search recommendations). After leaving Metallica, Mustaine stayed in a car dealership for 4 days and wrote songs on a piece of gas. In this newspaper, he came across the words of Senator Alan Cranston, who betrayed Mega-Death. At first, he wanted to call himself a new person, but not because he called you "Set the World on Fire", and Megadeth became known as a band as a result. After unsuccessfully searching for a vocalist, Dave decides to perform the lead vocals himself, being also the author of the band's songs and performing solo and rhythm guitar parts. As he recalls, he was driven by a competitive spirit and a desire to surpass Metallica and a desire to play even tougher, more energetic music than them. Dave himself came up with the band's symbol — Vic Rattlehead.

Dave was very angry at his former bandmates for being kicked out of the band. As Mustaine recalled, when the debut of Metallica's Kill ’Em All album was not a real blow for me, since the old musicians from the band who used his guitars thus we support his desire. This "feud" lasted for quite a long time.

The Megadeth leader was supposed to perform at the Budokan concert venue. But on February 17, 1993, a few days before the flight to Japan, the band gave a concert in Oregon, where Mustaine was in terrible condition. After leaving the stage, he took a handful of valium pills. When the ambulance took Mustaine to the hospital, he was already unconscious. When Dave regained consciousness, he was transported to the Maddows Rehabilitation Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The rest of the band forbade him to drop out of rehab, because "it could result in another story with a star found dead in a room" and canceled the tour. In total, Dave had to undergo 15 courses of treatment for drug addiction, as after each course he started using drugs again.

In 2011, Dave, like Tom Araya, had to undergo neck surgery, almost immediately after his 50th birthday. The long-term "shaking of the head" during live performances has affected. On June 17, 2019, Dave was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, which caused some of the scheduled concerts to be canceled. It was also possible for him to refuse to participate in Megacruise, where Megadeth was the lead singer, only from his name, when she was a daughter of the band, and Megadeth was performed by the Canadian cover band Mechanics. The rest of the Megadeth members staged a small show with tanates on karaoke. Treatment has already begun and, according to Mustaine, has a 90% chance of success. Dozens of musicians wished recovery, including James Hatfield and Lars Ulrich from Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul Stanley from Kiss, Scott Ian from Anthrax, Mike Portnoy from Dream at the Theater, Christina Scabbia from Lacuna Reel, Gary Holt from Exodus, he from Christian rockers Stryper Michael Sweet, Chris Jericho from Fozzy, daughter Elektra, teammate David Ellefson and even the first bassist of Metallica, Ron McGovney, and Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden gave a telephone consultation, because he also had a chance to fight tongue cancer, but he won and gave advice. On January 20, 2020, Mr. Mustaine made a group application to participate in the "Fatal Five-Finger Strike". On January 31, 2020, Mustaine announced during a concert in London that cancer had been completely defeated.

Religious views: Dave is a Protestant Christian and began to take a serious interest in religion in the 2000s. And his godfather is another, no less famous rock musician - Alice Cooper. He speaks disapprovingly of Satanism. However, according to Dave, he tries not to impose his faith on his listeners and leave them free to choose. Mustaine's religious views caused him to refuse to play some "particularly dark" songs from the band's early work at concerts.

In May 2005, Dave Mustaine refused to play at a concert in Greece with Rotting Christ, because of their lyrics insulting Christianity. He said,

"We're headliners, and I usually decide who I play with and who I don't. But since these guys have already been signed up to perform, it wouldn't be fair to throw them out, so we're pulling out of the performance ourselves. We will perform in Greece another time and in another place.

At some point, you have to be able to stand up for your beliefs, otherwise they are not beliefs at all, are they? You can't make a life-long choice and not follow it, it's like calling yourself a teetotaller and continuing to drink. I don't require everyone to support me in this, but many of you do, and I am grateful to them for that. I also understand those who insult me for my beliefs. For a person who has no beliefs, it is very easy to laugh at someone who has them. If they believed in something, they would tell themselves: "I don't share Dave's beliefs, but if it were about mine, I would do the same.""

The leader of this group, Sakis Tolis, stated: "All this is because of the name of our group - a name that expresses our rejection of any kind of religion, any kind of false ideas of eternal peace, which are the basis for hypocritical so—called democracies. Unfortunately, this Middle Ages is still penetrating into the new millennium."