“We’re all just a bunch of sojourners, aren’t we? Just troubadours.”
– Dave Mustaine
“That’s terrible,” Dave Mustaine says to me, his eyes fixed on my sleeveless, inked forearm. “I’m looking at your tat. I get it. A musician broke your heart.” Not quite… Well, wait… Yes. One did. I shift in my seat; the Megadeth frontman has just outed me. I resist the urge to move my arm from sight; the tattoo — a beamed eighth note anchored by two halves of a heart — is as subtle as a scarlet letter. This wasn’t how I expected our conversation to start — about vulnerability, or about me — but then again, Mustaine has never been one to mince words. He knows what I know — that if you live in Hollywood long enough, especially if you work in the music industry, your heart will endure its fair share of beatings.
Young and talented, armed with attitude and a drinking problem, at 21-years-old Mustaine endured one of the most famous break-ups in metal history when he was kicked out of Metallica in 1983. The band packed his bags and put him on a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles, just before recording it’s full length debut, Kill ‘Em All.
But rather than put down his guitar, Mustaine formed Megadeth that same year and has since sold over 20 million albums, been nominated for seven Grammys, and established himself as a thrash metal pioneer.
I met with Mustaine alone in a small practice room at the Guitar Center Hollywood, just after he’d finished giving a music lesson to a young contest winner, and a few hours before his Guitar Center Sessions speaking engagement. Outside the building, a line of fist-pumping, horn-throwing longhairs waited; Fans snaked for blocks down Hollywood Boulevard, chanting Mustaine’s name, shouting Megadeth lyrics — riled up and ready for an evening of conversation with their hero.
Read our exclusive interview with Dave Mustaine on SuicideGirls.com.
