My Life With Deth (15 page)

Our first tour of the
RiP
cycle was labeled the Clash of the Titans, with Slayer, Testament, and Suicidal Tendencies. The first leg took place in Europe in the fall of 1990. We had a long history with Slayer. We’d played together as far back as 1985, and our bands were yoked together, even though we were lyrically and thematically very different. Our fans seemed happy to coexist, and that was why we ended up doing so much stuff together over the years.

Overall, it was a good run for us, although the tides were shifting within heavy metal music. The end of hair metal was coming and the thrash metal bands were finally getting our turn at bat, which is why it was a good idea to join forces. We accomplished a lot more that way, with more money and greater opportunities. Clash of the Titans was a huge statement from our genre in these arenas. Suicidal Tendencies were popular at the time: Testament were on their way up;
and the two top bands of Megadeth and Slayer were both major forces.

We went around the world on that tour, playing with Judas Priest and Testament throughout North America in 1990 and then playing Rock in Rio in 1991. From there, we did Japan, Australia, and Hawaii. It was a great rebuilding process, and times were exciting for metal in general.

We then did a short tour of Europe in the spring of 1991, and our support group was Alice in Chains. They were a fantastic band. We’d had a lot of support acts, and a lot of them I just didn’t get, but we stood by the stage and watched Alice in Chains every single night, because they were so amazingly cool.

Then we started the Clash of the Titans tour in North America with Anthrax replacing Testament, and the opening band was Alice in Chains again, whose first album,
Facelift
, had just come out. I arrived at the first show, in Dallas, and their singer Layne Staley was there. He was a very shy, soft-spoken guy offstage. He’d had his hair cut short and bleached blond, and he looked great. He told me that he’d just come out of rehab, and I said, “Rehab? For what?” He said, “Ah . . . heroin,” and I said, “I just saw you a few months ago, and I never would have thought you guys did any heroin. I thought you just smoked a lot of pot.”

Dave and I put our arms around him and told him that we’d been down that road and that if he needed a place of refuge out there on tour he should come to us, because we were there to help him. I think Layne stayed sober for that tour, but at some point thereafter he fell off the wagon, and I don’t know if he ever got sober again before he died in 2002. It just goes to show that when you’re sober, you can’t ever take for granted that you’ll be given that gift again. It’s always easier to
stay
sober than it is to
get
sober.

It has been well documented that there was some friction between Dave and some of the other musicians on the Clash of the Titans tour, and I think I understand why. A lot of it was about jockeying for position on the tour, which was hard, because we wanted to become a united force. There were definitely some things said that made it difficult,
but I played the diplomat, as usual. I handled political relations for the band and lightened the mood as necessary.

More importantly, the Clash of the Titans tour was completely sold out almost every night. It was apparent to me that this was as big as thrash metal was ever going to get, with our videos on MTV and so on. Coming off that tour, I remember sitting in the accountant’s office over in West Los Angeles, and much to our surprise we had a bonus of positive cash flow from merchandise. The advances were recouped, we paid back all our debts, and I paid Dave back the remainder of a $5,000 loan he’d given me in 1989 from one of his Metallica royalty checks, when I was in financial straits from my drug use. I was on a payment plan with pretty much everybody, but I finally paid them all back. I made my last payment to the IRS and then we were finally ready to turn the page and roll into the next record,
Countdown to Extinction
. What a phenomenal way to end a year.

A THOUGHT

Letting Go Absolutely

There can be real freedom in letting go. Once we do, we are suddenly free from our past and allowed to move forward to experience life as it is meant to be, rather than how we want it to be.

Sometimes things just don’t work out as we’ve planned, and being able to make adjustments and corrections has been key to my ability to move forward. In short, we can either be stuck in a bad situation, or we can let it go and see it as an opportunity to learn and grow.

More than anything, I’ve come to realize that life is a verb, not a noun. It is constantly in motion, always moving forward. The only way we can truly experience it is to be in the present, because that is where the action is. When we are stuck in our thoughts of the past (which no longer exists) or projecting images of our future (which hasn’t yet happened), we rob ourselves of the here and now. And right here, right now is where life is actually going down.

“That which doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”

—Anonymous

O
ur songwriting changed a bit for
Countdown to Extinction
. In 1991, we’d been playing really high-speed metal songs in big arenas like Madison Square Garden, and the sound was a little odd as a result. We started writing songs that were a little broader and more melodic. Our new mission was to create music that had more of a groove to it. Marty’s writing was very melodic anyway, and the vocal lines moved in that direction, too, assisted by Max Norman, our producer. We added these great big riffs and it all came together in a perfect storm of songwriting.

We were in great spirits and the music was flowing out of us. We would go over to a rehearsal facility in Van Nuys called the Power Plant to write, shoot some hoops on our breaks, and then go in and write more songs. It was easy, it was fun, and the collective goodwill around the whole thing made it a great time. It was one of my most treasured times in all of our careers together.

By the end of 1991 Megadeth was in a great place. I was sober and more financially secure, and in Ron Laffitte we had a manager who understood heavy metal and where Megadeth fit into it. He was a fantastic manager, in a similar way that Rod Smallwood is for Iron Maiden. Some managers would have just sucked up to the singer, but that never works, and Ron didn’t do that. He really grasped the bigger picture of the band working together to accomplish huge goals.

We rolled into 1992 and went into Enterprise Studios with Max Norman in Burbank and started cutting the record. Dave’s son, Justis, was born at that time, so Dave had a pretty full plate of commitments between his family and the workload at the studio. Even so, the album shipped platinum. In those days you could ship a million copies and you’d get a platinum award, even if 900,000 of them were returned to the record company!

We were certified platinum in the first week. The presidents and staff at Capitol Records came down to our tour rehearsal in Santa Monica and presented us with the awards. We went around the world and did a pretty massive press junket to promote the album before it was released, and clearly those efforts paid us huge dividends upon its appearance. Dave was a correspondent for MTV, covering that year’s Democratic convention, and there was a lot of mainstream press attention focused on us.

It was exciting stuff, but it was also stressful. This was a heavy workload, and rather than simply being able to sit back and enjoy the ride, we found ourselves dealing with a lot of micromanaging. We had no previous experience of celebrity on this level. It was a whole new world that we were moving through, at what felt like a really fast pace.

We did the first leg of the Countdown to Extinction tour in big arenas in Europe, and then continued in the U.S. It was very profitable. Nineteen ninety-two was the single best year of my career, financially, when I made some $500,000.

Countdown to Extinction
was a major hit, debuting at Number 2 in the Billboard Top 200 in the U.S., right behind country artist Billy Ray Cyrus. We sold about 250,000 records our first week, which was huge for us, and for thrash metal in general. In December Marty and I went to Japan to set up what was essentially a sold-out tour. It was going to be huge. We got on really well and we had a great time. I remember being at a photo shoot in front of the famed Budokan and feeling that the Japanese tour in March 1993 was going to be simply fantastic.

I thought we had finally arrived. I had cleaned up my past, and the band was really firing on all cylinders. There was a general good feeling about it all. I felt as if after all these years of starvation, we’d finally begun to reap the rewards of all our hard work and discipline. We were all very excited about our futures and where we were headed. We fully expected to sell more and more records, and to get bigger and bigger.

Life, of course, has a way of deflating expectations.

*   *   *

We’d done a U.S. arena tour in the fall of 1992 that was very successful. However, at a show in Eugene, Oregon, on February 17, 1993, things began to shift quickly and we came off the road. It was essentially the final U.S. date for the Countdown to Extinction tour. The Japan tour was canceled, simply because the pressure of keeping Megadeth afloat at this level was causing health issues within the band.

In early 1993 Megadeth was nominated for a Grammy award, our third of the eleven nominations we’ve had to date. On February 24, Marty and I put our tuxedos on, rented a limo, and took our girlfriends down to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. As we were walking in, longtime supporters like Brian Slagel from Metal Blade Records were already congratulating us, saying that it was going to be a landslide and that we would easily win the Grammy. We were really excited.

We sat down and our nomination was almost immediately called, as the Best Metal Performance Grammy was one of the first to be announced. Lyle Lovett and Mary Chapin Carpenter were the presenters,
and they read off the nominees for Best Metal Performance. There was a pause, during which you could hear a pin drop, and then they said, “The winner is: Nine Inch Nails.”

Marty and I were completely stunned. I was in a state of shock. I was a fan of Nine Inch Nails, and I didn’t know about the process of the Grammy votes, but Trent Reznor was the new kid on the block, and we had sold two million records and we were all over MTV. It seemed like that would count for something! Immediately Marty said, “I’ve seen enough. We’re out of here.” He was adamant, so we called the limo—which hadn’t even found a place to park yet—and we headed up to Hollywood to grab something to eat. I don’t even know how to describe that feeling. It was such a bizarre moment, because it was as if the amount of work it had taken to ramp up to that hopeful night was literally gone in a second.

Nineteen ninety-three wasn’t all bad. In June we played stadium dates with Metallica, which was a great bill. Milton Keynes in England was the first one, and included Diamond Head, a favorite of both Megadeth and Metallica. The run of dates carried on into Italy, Slovenia, and Hungary. The shows were great, especially for Marty and me, who regarded Metallica as trailblazers. That band never made a wrong move. It seemed at the time that they had the Midas touch. They also have a lot of fun, and they keep things loosely tight, which I admire. There is a human quality about Metallica’s songs that people ultimately relate to. I’d look at Metallica and think, “There’re fifty thousand people here and they know the lyrics to every one of these songs.” They were the masters of a well-run business, but they were also able to get onstage and put on a great rock ’n’ roll show.

We did a big amphitheater run in the States in July ’93. We were headlining, Pantera were the direct support, and White Zombie, who were an up-and-coming band, opened the show. Pantera were on the rise. I remember getting a promo copy of
Cowboys from Hell
a couple of years earlier and I could tell they were onto something big. It was the start of us going on tour with bands that went on to be much bigger than we were. In many ways, Pantera screamed right past us after their next album, owing in large part to some of our own internal issues and tours that were canceled or postponed on the Countdown tour cycle.

That particular amphitheater run was mapped out to be a six-week tour for us, and it would have been very advantageous for all three bands in our careers. It would have been a nice financial windfall for all of us as well. Sadly, the tour was shortened and we instead booked dates with Aerosmith. Unfortunately, that tour also came to a sudden and unexpected end. As I see it, the worst possible way to make a business decision is to base it on sobriety, which was part of our motive to tour with Aerosmith. Business decisions need to be based on business—period. Both Aerosmith and Megadeth were at the peak of their careers at the time, but the two bands were clearly not a good match.