My Life With Deth (18 page)

The album cycle started with an undercover warm-up show at the Electric Ballroom in Phoenix, under the pseudonym Vic & the Rattleheads. This was followed by a national radio broadcast by Westwood One, recorded live the next night from the Mesa Amphitheatre in Mesa, Arizona, to a sold-out crowd. By this time, the lead single, “Trust,” was a number-one smash hit on the U.S.’s Active Rock radio format.

We had now successfully transformed ourselves from being merely a thrash metal band into the mainstream. Although
Youthanasia
was a pivotal point,
Cryptic Writings
was the real deal. This whole period was a real leap forward for the band. We’d fought hard for success, and we got it.

This time was also one of great change for me personally, in terms of my development as a human being. New priorities fell into place for me around
Cryptic Writings
. Back in 1983 when I first moved to California, my focus was solely work, work, work: Megadeth, Megadeth, Megadeth. That’s why if you’re going to start a rock band, you should do it when you’re eighteen years old. You may as well get in the game as early as you can, because at that age you don’t have other responsibilities.

Cryptic Writings
gave us three more top-five Active Rock hits in the U.S. These effectively reinvented the band in the U.S. mainstream and propelled us on an eighteen-month world tour. We toured several times around the country, flew twice to Europe and Japan, and then headed to South America. The songs were heavy but hooky, and, just like with
Countdown to Extinction
, we were in favor in the mainstream.
This time, of course, we had done it without TV exposure, as that had completely dried up, at least domestically.

Because of our radio success, Dave was often asked to go on early- morning radio shows and play golf with radio station bigwigs and program directors—people who could make you or crush you in a single blow during their weekly programming meetings. He was great at the politics of that game and really helped push the wind into our sails on radio because of those efforts. Capitol Records was spending huge money on our radio campaign and it was working.

If you think you end up on radio just because you wrote a good song, guess again—it’s pay to play, or at least it was back then. This period marked the end of that form of radio corruption. Fortunately, we got to enjoy the ride before it all ended up in court between the radio industry and the U.S. justice system, only a few years later.

Turbulence was coming, however, and it was soon Nick Menza’s turn to leave the band. He was replaced by Jimmy DeGrasso only ten days before we commenced the Ozzfest tour of the U.S. in the summer of 1998. I was sad, because I had supported Nick for all those years, but when his playing began to hurt the band’s live performances I gave Dave my blessing to stop fighting him on it and the change was made. Jimmy’s audition was in front of five thousand people at a sold-out show in Fresno. He played flawlessly, which was a real eye-opener for me. Once more, the caliber of the players in this business was proven to me. For him to play eighteen songs that well, with no rehearsal, was amazing. I took that lesson seriously—and it was very useful to me in later years.

Jimmy’s excellent sense of timing revealed that Dave, Marty, and I had developed some bad habits together in the former lineup, a common tendency when musicians play together for a long time. Jimmy’s playing brought these issues immediately to light. However, those habits were part of the charm of the
Rust in Peace
lineup, and our fans liked them. Our timing might not have been perfect, but we executed the music with ferocity. That vibe and punch could never be duplicated
with any other lineup, and the fans knew it. Another lesson: sometimes it’s not about being perfect, it’s about having vibe.

We carved out most of October for me to be home for her birth. Megadeth was in South America in the earlier part of that month, and when I called home Julie would tell me of small pains that might signal the onset of the birth. I begged her to keep her legs crossed until I got home, so I could be there to greet Athena. Athena Grace Ellefson was born a couple weeks later on October 23, 1998, in Scottsdale, so I was able to be there for her birth.

After a final trip to Japan a few weeks later in November, we headed home. The tour ended on a high note with much success, many accolades, and plenty of money to divide up from our merchandise take. Could we sustain this level of success? Well, let’s look at it like this. When we released our next album a year later, it appeared at the same time as enormously successful albums by new bands such as Godsmack, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, and Disturbed. I think that explains everything about where we were in the scheme of things and the wisdom of those who were guiding us into the next album.

A THOUGHT

Parenthood

One of the first things any seasoned parent will tell you is how much your life will change when you have kids. Intellectually it makes sense, but you don’t really grasp it until the day it happens.

All those parents before us were right: kids do change everything, especially your priorities. For me, fatherhood has been about rearranging my priorities in all that I think, say, and do. This includes faith, money, and career decisions and everything else, too. In fact, the measure of being a good father isn’t so much what we do but rather how we
prioritize
what we do.

To this day, I think every opportunity that comes my way is always followed by the immediate thought of “How will this affect my family?” Even touring raises those questions. Julie constantly reminds me of how blessed I am to be able to go out and do what I love for a living by playing music. That’s why, once I come home off the road, I usually get about one day’s grace to be the hero for the day with the family. The next day, it’s off to the back of the line, and time to roll up my sleeves and be Dad again.

That’s probably the most difficult part of being a touring rock musician—the constant ego check that comes from your family. It’s great to have everyone give you attention, but when you face the reality of having kids, they are the ones who really need attention—because kids don’t raise themselves.

Parenthood has been a tremendous blessing: it makes me check my ego at the door and think of someone else’s needs beside my own.

“ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ ”

—Jeremiah 29:11

T
he band took a few weeks off to relax before commencing the songwriting sessions for the upcoming album. This time around, our comanager Bud Prager really got involved and wanted to take the songwriting to the next level of mainstream. This appealed to all of our egos, but I could see the rub inside Dave.

At his core, Dave is anything but mainstream in the traditional sense, and any success we ever had was mostly because of our genre and our fans—not because of some mastermind from the outside, which Bud was becoming. We were being prodded by Bud to take Megadeth in a musical direction that haunted the band and its fans for the next decade. As metal music was being reinvented via the nu-metal movement of the late 1990s, we were writing in a more melodic vein,
ultimately moving in the opposite direction. As our subsequent manager Larry Mazer later told us, we zigged when the rest of the world zagged. Touché!

Relations soon became strained within the band and management. We were trying to hit a target toward which management aimed us, but which we couldn’t even see. One day Julie and I invited Bud to our house so we could talk about money, songwriting, and other basic tenets of Megadeth as it now existed. He and I sat on the couch in our living room and he basically said to me, “Be happy you’re even here.” He went on to explain that Dave was like Bruce Springsteen, and that the rest of us should stop trying to write songs and be happy that we had the talent of Dave in the band, as he was our meal ticket.

My heart sank. Were these the discussions he was having with Dave? Was this the banter of the band room when I wasn’t there? What was hilarious was that Bud obviously regarded what he was saying as a pep talk. He later told me that if the album was a success, Dave would be considered a genius, but if it flopped then he, Bud, would be considered the bad guy. When the album,
Risk
, flopped, I made him eat his own words, although all these years later, I bear Bud—who passed away in 2008—no ill will.

The lesson I learned here was that it was a professional move, rather than one to take personally. However, business can be personal, especially in the creative realm of a band—and even more so when the band members are required to live together on the road. After discussions like the one I’d had with Bud, with someone who isn’t even on the road with you, nothing is easy.

We headed to Nashville once more to begin the recording of
Risk
, again with Dann Huff at the helm, but on our arrival we realized that the songs were incomplete. As a result, we spent a lot of time writing songs in the studio, paying extremely high daily rates. I had to learn new songs and new parts and basically write my lines on the spot, which was not a method I was used to at all. Even the bass guitar tones
were mostly Fenderesque, with a much more organic and less metal sound.

Personally, I was just looking forward to playing my bass parts and simply getting out of there, given the stress we were dealing with. At the end of the day, it was a record that by and large was not even our idea. It was hands down the most uncomfortable session of my entire career.

It didn’t help that since
Cryptic Writings
, Dann had produced several chart-topping records with country superstars Keith Urban and Faith Hill. He mentioned to me that
Risk
would be the last rock record he could afford to make. In his mind, he could churn out a country record in four to six weeks, which would sell millions, as opposed to taking five months to make a rock record, in a genre where sales were declining.
Risk
was the last album we did with Dann.

What scared me most was that I saw a repeating pattern over our career of one album, such as our debut record, followed by a more successful follow-up. Then the next album would be less successful, and the next one after that would turn the tide again. I had seen this happen over and over again. If the pattern held,
Risk
would be a stiff, not a success.

I thought
Risk
was a good album, but I also thought that it shouldn’t have had Megadeth’s name on it. People had a certain expectation about what Megadeth was supposed to sound like, and this certainly wasn’t it. The album completely failed to live up to the brand. Of course, it was a strange time for all the main thrash metal bands. Metallica had taken a lot of heat for cutting their hair and altering their music, and we were heading the same way.

My own image changed, I’ll admit. I remember shooting a video in 1997 for the song “Trust” from the previous album,
Cryptic Writings
, while wearing a pair of $4,000 leather trousers, and feeling a little at odds with myself. Roman had just been born and I didn’t want him to think that I was just some old curmudgeonly biker guy. I felt as if I should suit up like a real dad, so one day I just shaved my hair off. It
looked like crap anyway, now that we were living out in Arizona. Somehow the dry heat and water was making my hair look a mess, not full, as it had been in California. In a way, cutting my hair in 1997 was the breath of fresh air that enabled me to re-create and start over—not an easy task in the public spotlight, and even less so in the face of criticism from fans.

We headed out on the road, but venues were smaller. We mostly played theaters and a few grimy clubs. A regime change had occurred at Capitol Records since the success of
Cryptic Writings
, and with the less-than-favorable sales out of the gate for
Risk
, more stress mounted between us and the label. I remember they came to our House of Blues show in Los Angeles and gave us a plaque to celebrate 500,000 copies sold around the world. We used to sell that many in the U.S. alone, and usually within the first month.

Times were changing, and financial stress was looming. We owed Capitol one more album, however, so I tried to do my usual diplomatic thing of keeping everyone’s hopes high. I pointed out that at least we still had a major-label deal, at a time when traditional thrash metal was in the toilet—and many bands of our genre were scrambling just to survive.

A jam backstage with Megadeth’s webmaster set us all thinking a little about the direction we were going in.