Mustaine: A Life in Metal. Dave Mustaine

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      MUSIC WAS ALWYS there, sometimes in the background, sometimes inching forward. Michelle had married a guy named Stan, who I thought was one of the coolest guys in the world. He was a cop, too (like Bob Wilkie), but he was a motorcycle cop, and he worked for the California Highway Patrol. Stan would get up in the morning and you’d hear the leather squeaking, the gestapo boots smacking against the floor, and he’d get on his Harley, fire it up, and the whole neighborhood would rattle. No one ever complained, of course. What could they do—call a cop? I liked Stan a lot, not just because of the Harley and the fact that he was clearly not someone you’d want to mess with, but also because he was a genuinely decent man with a real fondness for music. Every time I went to Stan’s house, it seemed that the stereo was roaring, filling the air with the sounds of the great crooners from the sixties: Frankie Valli, Gary Puckett, the Righteous Brothers, Engelbert Humperdinck. I loved listening to those guys, and if you think that seems odd for a future heavy metal warrior, well, think again. I don’t doubt for a second that the sense of melody that would inform Megadeth took root back in Stan’s house, among other places.

      My sister Debbie, for example, had a terrific record collection, mostly hook-laden stuff by the pop stars of that era: Cat Stevens, Elton John, and of course the Beatles. That kind of music was always in the air, sinking into my skin, and when Mom gave me a cheap acoustic guitar as a present for graduating from elementary school, I couldn’t wait to start playing. Debbie had some sheet music laying around, and before long I had taught myself some rudimentary chord progressions. Nothing great, of course, but respectable enough for the songs to be recognizable.

      For a long time Debbie was my best friend, the person with whom I spent most of my time. She’d come home from school and we’d hang out together, watch TV, play music (Debbie on piano, me on guitar). We leaned on each other when things got hard; we also fought like siblings do, with Debbie usually getting the better of me in our disagreements.

      As Debbie grew up and began dating, and eventually fell in love with a guy named Mike Balli, I was left behind. She was seventeen years old when they married. I knew even then it wouldn’t last, and of course it didn’t. Anyone who met Mike and saw him with Debbie knew it was a relationship doomed to fail. Whatever chemistry there was quickly evaporated, and they were left with an unbalanced union just waiting to die. Debbie was strong and dominant; she basically called the shots—a Big Momma kind of thing.

      But Mike had his positive attributes, especially to a fourteen-year-old aspiring guitar player. For one thing, his mother was in some way related to Jack Lord, who at the time was the star of the hit television show Hawaii Five-O. In 1974, it didn’t get a lot cooler than Steve McGarrett, and Mike didn’t mind dropping the guy’s name in casual conversation: “Dude, McGarrett’s like…my second cousin or something!” Can’t say I blame him. I would have done the same thing. Mainly, though, what I liked about Mike was the fact that he could play electric guitar, and he didn’t mind playing with me. Admittedly, his guitar was a complete piece of crap; it was called a Supra, and it was a ridiculous sunburst red, with three pickups, but it served its purpose. To my still uneducated ears, he seemed to be a fairly decent player.

      Mike’s little brother Mark was also a musician. He played bass in a band with a guy named John Voorhees (who later did a stint with a fairly successful band called Stryper). Mark and John heard me playing, asked if I might be interested in joining them.

      “Sure,” I said. “Just one problem.”

      “What’s that?”

      “I don’t have a guitar.”

      No problem, Mark said. I could borrow his acoustic. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just knew I liked the feeling of having a guitar in my hands, making music, being part of…something. I was a smart kid but an indifferent student, even as far back as elementary school. I’d get in trouble for fooling around or failing to have my homework completed, and sometimes I’d have to stay after school. Frankly I found this embarrassing. But I knew in my heart that I was a natural learner, especially if it was a subject that captured my interest.

      Like music.

      I loved having that secret weapon, that bond—where you sit down with another musician, and you start talking, and everyone else at the table immediately takes notice, because you’re speaking a language they don’t even understand, can’t hope to comprehend. It’s like they think the conversation is going to be empty-headed, but it’s not. It’s just…different. And if you don’t play music (as opposed to just listening to music), you really can’t possibly know what I’m talking about.

      So joining a band was about camaraderie as much as anything else, I suppose.

      And sex, of course. Ultimately, when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll, it’s always about sex.

      

      ONE AFTERNOON WHEN I was about thirteen years old, we went over to Mark’s house to rehearse. There were a bunch of people hanging out, including one of Mark’s buddies, who lived across the street, and his girlfriend, whose name was Linda. When I walked into the house, Linda caught my eye. I wasn’t exactly a player, even by junior high standards, but I noticed right away that Linda was giving me a hard look. She hung out while we jammed for a bit, and afterward, having seen that I was the new lead guitar player, she introduced herself to me. Within a matter of days, Linda had chucked her old boyfriend for me. Why? Not because of my looks or dynamic personality, but simply because I played guitar. And I recall thinking, as Linda sidled up to me and took my hand in hers, Hmmmm…I kind of like this.

      The hormonal inspiration for picking up a guitar is a cliché; it’s also fundamentally true, as pure and honest as any other muse. And it doesn’t change, even as you go from gangly, pubescent teen to full-grown adult male. That was one of the things that surprised me most about the music business: you hear all this stuff about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll…and you laugh it off. Then you get to peek behind the curtain, and guess what? It’s real! You go to Salt Lake City, the pristine capital of that most morally upright of states, and discover there’s a reason the rock stars call it Salt Lick City. You discover the cliché is based on truth. It’s absolutely real, and pretty soon you’re trying to decide which of the two proverbial bulls you want to be: the one that charges down the hill, full speed, and fucks the first cow he meets, or the one who saunters down the hill slowly and fucks them all.

      MARK’S HOUSE BECAME a place of inspiration and experimentation. One of the very first songs I learned to play was “Panic in Detroit” by David Bowie, followed by Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes.” There was a pot dealer who lived up the street, and he introduced us to a variety of great stuff (in more ways than one): Johnny Winter; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Triumvirate; and, of course, Led Zeppelin. I mean, if you played guitar, you wanted to be Jimmy Page, right? And if you sang in a rock ‘n’ roll band, you wanted to be Robert Plant. Everyone was trying to learn “Stairway to Heaven,” which I actually picked up pretty quickly. But you know what really got me hooked?

      KISS.

      Man, I really dug the early KISS stuff—not just musically but stylistically. I was not a Gene Simmons guy, either; I liked Ace Frehley, because he was a lead guitar player. I liked the whole rock star thing, and KISS seemed to have taken it to a new level. In the same way that Axl Rose made people hate rock stars, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley made rock stars seem kind of decadent and megalomaniacal—which wasn’t a bad thing at all, so far as I could tell. KISS was one of the first bands I saw live, and I couldn’t help but notice that a disproportionate number of their fans looked like Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders: they all had blond hair and wore tube tops, and they seemed to be throwing themselves at the band. And if the band wasn’t accessible, well, then the guy СКАЧАТЬ