Megadeth, one of Argentines’ favorite groups, and the painful story of its leader Dave Mustaine

Last Tuesday, ticket sales began for the two shows that the American band Megadeth (together with Metallica, the most influential of the genre) will give on 13 and 14 April 2024 at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires, as reported on its official website.

As part of the tour, entitled “Crush the World tour”, the group led by the guitarist Dave Mustain will touch Argentine soil commemorating 30 years since his first visit to our country. And the irrepressible passion will once again be unleashed. A beautiful fact that has its own explanation.

“Me-ga-deth, Me-ga-deth… Wait Mega-deth”

The war cry was born by spontaneous generation in Argentina, in 1994, when the trash-metal band Megadeth visited our country for the first time. That night at Obras Stadium hundreds of silver throats exploded like machine gun bullets along with the song’s guitar riff. Symphony of Destruction.

Dave Mustaine, their leader, understood nothing and tried with all his might to grasp a word that sounded strange to him, in an effort that made him momentarily forget even the lyrics of the song he was singing at that moment:

“I stood there on stage, tough. I thought they said aguate, meaning tequila. And it took me a while before they explained to me what the word ‘resist’ means, which is something like don’t stop, don’t give up. It is undoubtedly something that started in Argentina, but then went around the world and today it is also sung in Australia. “It’s something unique that hasn’t happened with any other band, anywhere in the world,” the guitarist would later say.

Indeed Since then, the Argentine song, one of a kind, has been heard in places so remote and distant from each other. such as India, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Philippines, Romania, Peru, Singapore, Croatia, Ukraine or Russia.

It is a must at all the band’s concerts, and when it starts playing, coming down from the field to the stage, that is, when reaching the highest point of a connection between audience and artist that has rarely been seen in the development of modern music. music.

The love between musicians and fans

The love story (because it’s nothing else: this is LOVE, the capital one and the good one) between the Argentine public and Megadeth has to do with people’s recognition of an authentic boy who never betrayed himself.

The “Colorado” Dave Mustaine, stuff of the soul, charismatic guitarist, singer without technique, but with great strength and by far the best composer of thrash-metal songs, a fast and overwhelming subgenre within the metal scene.

Not to mention a significant detail. The power of thrash depends largely on the guitar riff (usually plugged into a wall of monumental Marshall amps, with heavy distortion known in slang as the “crunch” sound and a hold up infinite that seems to launch him towards the stratosphere), which is what will give power to the song. And in this Mustaine is a true magician.

By far the best rifferter, and although he isn’t the lead guitarist, he is a wise old fox who knows how to shake bodies and souls of his legion of acolytes.

Why “thrash” means this. It’s a hard blow. It is the shock produced in the mind and body by the inevitable shock of music to which one cannot remain indifferent. A sonic tsunami that demolishes everything in its path. And his parents appreciate it and let him know it.

a difficult life

Dave Mustaine has never had an easy life. And obviously not in this impeccable artistic path that he has already accumulated four decades of success. In many aspects, yours is a story of overcoming. And overcoming enormous obstacles. The son of divorced parents, he left home at the age of 15 to live alone. And that loneliness would accompany him in some way until today.

“I had a really unusual childhood. He was a guy who took care of himself. My parents were alcoholics. I spent a lot of time growing up with my sisters, who were married to older guys who were sort of my biological parents. Until I started getting closer to my younger sister Debbie, she had a piano and I tried to play it. There was a guitar and I started playing it to see if the piano sounded better. “That’s how I started on the guitar.”

Mustaine’s first band was called Panic, and it was the typical group of friends trying to get somewhere with their heavy rock. influenced by heavy metal megastars such as the Australians AC/DC or the English Iron Maiden.

But the problems have already started there. A few months later and in various road accidents, first the drummer and the sound engineer died, then the other guitarist of the group.

“Simply we were not meant to last -Mustaine continues-. So at one point I was reading the paper and I saw this ad that someone had put up, saying they were looking for a lead guitarist who liked Saxon and Motorhead. A boy with a big voice and a strange accent answered and we immediately started talking about music.”

The passage through Metallica

It turned out that the boy in question was Lars Ulrich, a young Danish tennis player who had just arrived in the United States had decided to exchange his racket for a drum set and form a metal band, influenced by English new wave heavy metal groups, such as Iron Maiden or Def Leppard. The band would be called Metallica and Dave Mustaine would be its lead guitarist.

But of course, when it came to Colorado, things weren’t going to be that simple. It stood between him and his new companions (James Hetfield and the bass player Ron McGovney besides Ulrich) his excessive addiction to alcohol and drugs.

Dave, accustomed since childhood not to depend on anyone, made his decisions within the group and made them known without too much regard to the other members. And if they didn’t like something, they would find out!

That’s why when on April 11, 1983 and after several aggressive situations (including the one in which, it is said, Hetfield kicked Mustaine’s dog and for this he earned a punch in the face from the Colorado man) They decided to unceremoniously kick him out of Metallica. But as Dave himself will later say, “there is always a ray of light in the darkest cloud.”

“We had arrived in Rochester, New York, after a bumpy truck ride from Los Angeles,” Mustaine continues, “to record our first album. I was driving and before I got there, near Laramie, Wysconsin, I hit a patch of ice on the road and the truck went sideways. We almost killed each other. Somehow, I became the dangerous kid who had to go. I guess it was fate.

build something better

But fate also lent a hand to the guitarist. Those two days on the bus back to Los Angeles, defeated and very angry, would foster his creativity. And once again a piece of paper had a lot to do with this:

“Suddenly I thought I should put together a band that sounded better than Metallica and with a name that sounded more metal than that. I was on the bus, I look down and see a piece of paper. It was a pamphlet from a senator from California and there was that word… Megadeath. Well, I removed the A and that left Megadeth.

Megadeath (with the A included) refers to more than one million human deaths following a nuclear attack. In other words, nothing more appropriate for the vengeful attack Dave Mustaine was about to launch against his former teammates. And wow, he got it.

His career has spanned more than 40 years (where, admittedly, a small army of musicians have passed through the band: Mustaine is the only one left from the original lineup), have sold more than forty million records worldwide, 17 Grammy Award nominations, gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums and 18 tours that have literally taken them around the world are medals enough.

Seeing death up close

Today, Colorado Mustaine declares himself a believer in God. Of course, after many years of addictions, treatments for those addictions, and even a death from which he miraculously resurrected!

That amazing and amazing episode happened after a disastrous show on February 17, 1993 in Oregon. As a result she swallowed three dozen Valium pills in one sitting. Dave arrived clinically dead at hospital.. But doctors managed to revive him:

“I don’t remember anything, I woke up several days later and I thought they had kidnapped me and I was in Mexico. But I didn’t see any light at the end of a tunnel or anything like that.”

It’s also true that he and his former Metallica colleagues have somehow made peace. They have already played together several times and there are videos that attest to it. Dave says that when he thinks about that past it feels like it happened to someone else, not him. And that he could understand some things about life. It’s better that way.

But let’s get back to the present

The band “Colo” (which is completed for this tour and again according to its official website with Teemu Mäntysaari on lead, rhythm and acoustic guitar, Giacomo Lomenzo to the bottom and Dirk Verbeuren on drums) then arrives again in Argentina to perform live the songs from his latest album. The sick, the dying… and the deadnumber sixteen in its production, released worldwide on September 2, 2022.

And with great expectations, given that fans had to wait six years after the previous work (the award-winning Dystopia) when Mustaine had to take a forced break due to an unexpected health problem. Diagnosed with severe throat cancer, the singer says he felt on edge at the time.

“It was really shocking, it brought tears to my eyes when they told me. But finally My radiologist and chemotherapist saved my life and I was cancer-free.. From there I decided to do things well.”

Something to which, among other things, Bruce Dickinson, the singer of Iron Maiden, who had already lived a similar experience and gave him good advice and a lot of encouragement, also contributed.

Colorado Mustaine is a warrior who has fought countless battles, and in one way or another has won them all so far thanks to his perseverance and his love of music. Or as he says himself…

“Playing the guitar and singing has always been my great love. I want people to love music as much as I do, I would like to help everyone break free and feel freer, this is the response of people in every show.

But at least he already knows the response of the Argentine public.

“Me-ga-deth, Me-ga-deth… Wait Mega-deth”