My Life With Deth (10 page)

Once I was back on the farm, my dad—who had never been one to
mince words—made it clear that he was a bit skeptical of our lackluster success. As much as he wasn’t a music guy, he did understand show-business etiquette. He used to say to us, “You need to treat your fans better, stop swearing onstage, and start writing more mainstream songs!” I could tell this freaked Dave out, but he listened to my dad out of respect.

My father was like that: he earned your respect because he called it like he saw it, whether you liked it or not. It was an interesting dynamic to see my dad and Dave together, eating together and praying at the dinner table together. I think Dave really liked it. It was a different family dynamic from the one he knew, and very comforting when compared to our hand-to-mouth existence in L.A., building the band.

When we were in New York a few days later, it was game on once again. I was back to using and drinking. Dave and I shared a room at the Omni Hotel by Central Park, and our manager was giving us money to live on, which felt as if heaven had parted and given us some grace. The pressure was finally off and it felt like we really were going to have a future. It was there in New York that I was introduced to the drug ecstasy. I took it and asked what it was. That’s how bad I’d gotten: I would take a drug and
then
ask what it was! I’d never taken it before, and I didn’t feel anything until about thirty minutes later, when we got to the legendary club CBGB, down in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan. All of a sudden I started coming on to this new drug high. It was bizarre: really, really weird, like a mix of acid and cocaine—I was hyper but tripping. It was often used as an aphrodisiac.

I was high as a kite as we went club hopping around New York City. On the one hand it was like something you’d see in a movie, being wined and dined by a real major label with a promise of fame and fortune in front of you. On the other hand, I kept trying to sober up, thinking that I had to keep my wits about me and at least try to be a professional in the midst of all the partying. Fortunately, nothing happened beyond a great party, but it was a surreal event. We were treated like rock royalty and whisked in and out of the trendiest VIP clubs in
town, with no questions asked. It was a buffet of drugs and girls, and it felt as if we’d made the big time.

On the way home from New York, I was thinking about my life in L.A. We’d actually had a home for that one week in New York, with all expenses paid by people who had real interest in us and could actually make things happen. I was hip to Mercedes’s escort work and it was killing me.

Fortunately, not long after that New York trip, some more major labels started taking an interest in the band, and Capitol Records finally put an offer on the table, which in turn escalated to a bidding war with Elektra. Capitol won out. That released some record advance money to us at last, and our manager got the band a three-bedroom apartment over in Silverlake, just east of Hollywood. We had a home and a real band headquarters at last.

You always hope that you’ll get a major deal when you’re a musician. Metallica had paved the way for the thrash metal bands, and certainly the Big Four, as Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer were later collectively known, by signing with Elektra back in the mid-1980s. Right after we signed with Capitol, Anthrax signed with Island Records, and Slayer signed with Def Jam. As a band, and even as a genre, we were finally starting to find our way.

A THOUGHT

Money

Sometimes you have to make the most critical decisions in life under excruciating circumstances. This has been the case for me many times. Financial decisions are hardest to make when you have no money. Moral decisions are likewise hard when you have no morals. I’ve been between a rock and hard place on these matters more than once in my career.

Fortunately, a good friend counseled me that when making career decisions I should ask myself, “What does the decision look like when I remove the financial reward? Is it still worth doing?” If not, I know that if I proceed I will really be doing it only for the money.

Finances come and go, but what’s really important is whether you can truly leave your mark on an endeavor. If it is still worth doing with no monetary reward, then it is worth doing for a greater reason.

“You can’t do the wrong thing the right way.”

—Anonymous

T
here’s one thing that I’ve always appreciated about Dave Mustaine: Megadeth was never about buddies sitting around jamming. It’s a very focused mission, and Dave has the vision to achieve it. You meet him on his terms, not yours, and that dynamic works. Without him, the band wouldn’t have its edge: without me, it would be complete gunfire at all times. The strategy of battle can’t be constant surrender, but it can’t be constant attack either. There has to be a little bit of both. He’s the colonel and I’m the lieutenant, and between us we win the war. That sums up the dynamic between me and Dave, as it has from the very beginning of Megadeth.

When Capitol signed us, it felt like Megadeth was in big business. We visited the Capitol tower with our heads held high—even though when we left the tower, I went downtown to Ceres Street, scored some heroin, and took it back to our Silverlake apartment in small, rolled-up balloons, carrying them in my mouth to avoid getting busted.

Peace Sells . . . but Who’s Buying?
was released in the fall of 1986 and we were scheduled to start that tour with Motörhead down the west coast of California and the southwestern U.S. We hired designer Ray Brown to create some stage clothes for us, as he had designed looks for Judas Priest, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, and other big bands at that time. We did photo shoots and loads of media interviews around the new album, bought some new equipment, and quickly got our business up and running.

Motörhead were a notoriously tough bunch, like a biker gang. For this tour, their drummer, Pete Gill, had his kit set up on stage-prop train tracks, which came to the front of the stage and seriously impeded us in setting up our show with Gar’s drums in the middle of the stage, and our amplifiers on each side. Dave was furious, and rightfully so, because we didn’t have any stage space. That led to an argument between our manager, Keith Rawls, and Motörhead’s manager just before the show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the second show of the tour. It seemed to me that both men puffed up their chests too much—and Keith pulled us from the last three dates of the tour.

Even now, I think that didn’t need to happen. That decision to pull out of the tour led to a rift between Motörhead and Megadeth, which lasted until the Graspop festival in Belgium in 2001. Personally, I just wanted to play the bass and have a good time, but this was a power play between managers.

Lars Ulrich of Metallica came to see us on the first night of the tour at the Kaiser Center Auditorium in Oakland, California. He was pretty beat up, because it was right after Cliff Burton had died in the coach crash in Sweden. I asked Lars what he was going to do for a bass player, and he replied, “Why, do you want a job or something?” There was some speculation afterward about whether or not that was an offer, but I think it was simply rhetorical. They never formally approached me about the bass position. (In 2001, when Jason Newsted left Metallica, Dave told me that Lars had called him to get Dave’s blessing for me to be on Metallica’s list of bass players to consider. I didn’t get the call, however.)

Cliff and Dave had remained friends after the split back in 1983. I didn’t know Cliff well, but I thought he was very personable. He was a reserved, quiet guy, whereas Lars was very engaging and wanted to chat with whoever was in the room. When we got the news that Cliff had died in the crash, Dave was absolutely crushed. He wrote the music and lyrics for “In My Darkest Hour” that very day.

After the Motörhead dates we went out in support of Alice Cooper on his Constrictor tour, and the natural thing for us young bucks was to ask on a regular basis if we could meet Alice. Finally, one night after our set, we were told that he was ready to see us. We sobered up as best we could and went onto his bus. He was very cool: a very gentle, mellow guy. We got him onto the subject of partying, and he told us that he used to drink a bottle of whiskey a day—and that we needed to be careful so we wouldn’t end up in a similar situation.

It was a quick conversation, but we were listening intently and there was a silence on the bus after he spoke. It was a sobering moment, and a clear reminder for me that I was blowing it with my drug and alcohol use. I knew I shouldn’t be taking drugs, and it was as if the Good Lord had sent us a warning sign through Alice Cooper. If anyone knew the perils of addiction, it was he. Following the Constrictor tour, Alice and his organization made a big mainstream comeback with his next album. His words resonated with me, but I was too wrapped up in my addictions to take any action. Drugs are like that. The warnings to not start taking them can be helpful, but it’s a whole different dynamic once you’re already hooked.

Toward the end of the Peace Sells . . . tour, we agreed to record a song for the soundtrack of a forthcoming film called
Dudes
, starring Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jon Cryer (later a star of the popular TV show
Two and a Half Men
), and Lee Ving from the punk band Fear. The film was directed by Penelope Spheeris. We recut our version of “These Boots” and it sounded great, partly because our chops were tight from being on the road.

This led to us appearing in Penelope’s next film,
The Decline of Western
Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
, which was part of our initial launch of the album,
So Far, So Good . . . So What!
in 1988. I was thrilled with the way we came across in our interviews, especially compared to most of the other musicians in the film. I talked a lot about integrity in my interview with Penelope, and I meant it, but I was extremely high on heroin when she recorded it. When I look at it now, it’s obvious; my eyes give it away. I was completely hammered.

I used to pride myself on being a guy who could be pretty buzzed but not completely smashed. I rarely went over the top, although I remember one time I went up to the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset Boulevard with Mercedes. She had given me a downer called Placidyl, and as we walked home, my legs gave out from under me. I collapsed right on Sunset Boulevard and just lay there laughing. The truth is, I was never that into pills. Heroin was more my thing, as it seemed to fuel my artistry. I loved playing bass on heroin, and the thought of giving it up terrified me. I wondered if I would ever enjoy playing without it.

In 1987, at the end of the Peace Sells . . . world tour, Chris was fired again, and we had to let Gar go, too. Chris was completely strung out and Gar was just hanging on. It was very sad: we’d had two records with this lineup. On the one hand, it was really hard for me to stand by that decision, because I was also doing drugs. It was hypocritical, but we believed it was in the best interests of the band. Gar had been doing heroin a lot longer than I had, and he was shooting up. I was not. Also, Dave and I were the metal guys in Megadeth; Chris and Gar were the jazz guys. They were a bit older and seemed less invested in the band than we were. Their thinking was more along the lines of “I need to make a living—do I have a career or not?” Dave and I were younger, hungrier, and had a lot less to lose.

Chuck Behler was Gar’s drum tech, and we asked him to step up and sit in for Gar when he didn’t show up for a sound check at a show we had in Washington, D.C. Chuck sounded great, so we asked him to join the band in time to begin writing our third album,
So Far, So Good . . . So What!
I was playing a lot of guitar by this time, as there
were only three of us. The riff for “Hook in Mouth” was one of mine, as were parts of “Liar.” The album was written and recorded very quickly, but we needed a second guitarist, which took a while to find.

First, we asked Jay Reynolds of Malice if he would join the band because he was a friend of mine, and he was someone Dave had known a little bit on the L.A. metal scene. Jay and I were casual party friends and had fun talking about our bands, going to the Rainbow to pick up girls, using drugs, and so on. He was a likable, fun-loving guy, but it became apparent very quickly that he didn’t have the necessary style of guitar playing needed for Megadeth. We hadn’t checked out his playing well enough before we gave him the green light to join us.

I was always the one who got new guys up to speed, for countless hours and days, getting them acquainted with the songs and the riffs. I would get them about 75 percent of the way there, and then Dave would take them up the rest of way. It was utility grunt work, but I was happy to do it. It stemmed from the work ethic I’d acquired as a kid, as well as my desire to see the band flourish. In the process, I learned a lot about the intricacies of the band’s guitar style, too.