Megadeth's Dave Mustaine on Drugs and the Dark Side of the Music Industry

Yeah, I know that the music business is way, way different than it is now. It's so different. I don't know if those two things are related, but yeah, I'm sure the peace movement, it probably saw a lot of wild shit. Well, he's a musician, right? Yeah. And the music business is what you survive in. And for example, Elvis, you know, the way that his life ended and, you know, the way that the music business was back then, it was, you know, throw drugs at the problem, throw sex and money at the problem. And I don't know that had he had modern management or even if he was with, you know, somebody who, you know, like a handler, you know, that would say, hey, it's probably not a good idea for you to say that. You know, nowadays we have people who are, their sole jobs are to help keep us from, you know, stepping on it, you know? Right. So, and I've got people around me, they used to be real busy with me, but, you know, fortunately, growing up, I've learned a lot of stuff that, you know, you can't say. So. Well, specifically, I mean, in this day and age with social media, it's so easy for someone to just tweet something really ridiculous without someone say, Kate, don't fucking say that you're on Adderall. Sit down. Don't write that down. Don't say that. You know, it's just back then, do you think that the drug and alcohol thing is the same today in music or do you think it's less? Do you think it's just not promoted by the, I mean, what do you think the difference is between the influence of drugs and alcohol in the early days versus now? Well, I think in the early days of the music business, first off, the drugs weren't as strong and, you know, they didn't have, like, for example, something as simple as, or, you know, the marijuana that I used to smoke when I was a kid versus what's being manufactured and grown nowadays is way different. And I think that the stigmatism for people about smoking is less. And I think that there's a lot of other things that people use out on the road to cope with things that could be dealt with with, you know, good management, good support system. And most importantly, you know, having somebody who's going to tell you the truth, you know, I'm a grown up, I'm a big boy. So when I have stuff happen in my career and it could have been avoided or somebody didn't tell me and I find out later, that sucks. Yeah. And for a lot of people when that stuff happens, they respond in a negative way with, you know, either self-sabotage or, you know, they medicate themselves. And I remember back when I was drinking, you know, there was a thing someone said at one of those meetings and I thought it was kind of clever. The guy said, you know, I drank when my team won and I drank when my team lost and I drank when my team played and I drank when my team was in the off season. And I thought, all right, well, that's about me. What team are we not rooting for anymore? So, but, you know, there's so many reasons why people make it or don't make it in the music business. And I think much like yourself, you know, getting to know each other earlier this afternoon, you know, you have to take care of yourself. You really, really do. And there's so many things in the music industry that, you know, the history, the people that you're working with, you know, a lot of people don't want to say anything bad about somebody. But I mean, imagine how much better things would be if somebody really said, you know what, that he's a nice guy, but he stole from us. Or, you know, this guy is he's good at this, but he's terrible at that. You know, everybody's so afraid to offend anybody with stuff like that. But yet, you know, in other areas of life, offending people doesn't mean shit. So we've had sometimes we've had some people on our crew and tours that we've been on. The last tour we were on, not my band, but another band, their bus drove right up to the Canadian border and the driver got out and left them all sitting there. So, yeah, it's the music business because he had a DUI or something like that. And you can't get up into Canada. So, oh my God, that's hilarious. I'm so convoluted all this stuff. But see, like back in the day, you know, back in the 60s or 70s, I was talking about, you know, different eras, different messes, different managers. You know, managers used to manage the mess. They don't manage the mess anymore. They don't want to tolerate that shit because there's always somebody around the corner that's ready to work harder than you. It's like that motivational thing that Arnold said, long time, somebody's out there getting stronger, running farther, you know, all that stuff. I love those motivational tapes. Yeah. Well, someone is out there doing it. And if you do fuck up and you want to just take Xanax all day and do Coke and you don't write new music, someone's going to come along. They are. And unfortunately, everybody, but that's not a part of like the whole rock and roll mystique. A part of the whole mystique was the guy who did crazy drugs, was kind of half out of it, but would go on stage and be brilliant. Sometimes, you know, Keith Moon, you know, yeah, that worked for Keith. But I think that's, you know, player like Keith is so all over the place. You know, he doesn't have a song with a pattern. So just go out there and just hit everything. I know of a lot of musicians that will drink when they play. I know a lot that don't. I don't know very many anymore that do drugs. That's just something that's been kind of phased out. Yeah. Just because the impact it has on your body. Well, not only that, but the things that it makes the people do and the kind of people that are around that. I think that, you know, again, like I was saying, herbs is less of a stigmatism. So people are a little bit more open with that. But as far as coming backstage and it's smelling like somebody's back there burning chemicals or something like that, or people falling out in the hallway from heroin or tweaking around on meth or Coke or something. We try and associate with people that are like minded with us. You know, the people that are about their careers and that really are into taking care of themselves. Two of the guys in Five Finger Death Punch, Dujitsu, they have a sensei out with them. We all are doing jiu-jitsu. When we were out with Trivium, the singer for that band does jiu-jitsu. So we try and hang out with bands that are really health centric, you know, that are really looking into and not just from here down, but here up to. When you were a kid and you first were hearing about bands and getting into bands, was that always a narrative? Was that something that was discussed a lot, that like a lot of bands did drugs? I don't think it was because, you know, it wasn't something we were preoccupied with. We were at the time when I first started playing around by myself with other little small time outfits and stuff like that. It never was really drugs per se. It would be like maybe get a six pack of air and maybe smoke a joint or something. But it wasn't until Megadeth actually got going and we met Gar and some of the people in that circle where we started to experiment with other stuff. We had a manager at the time who was very, very bad off. He would try to always keep us loaded. We ended up having to fire the guy because it was for our own health and our own safety. I mean, you know, if I was a cheap bastard and didn't have any money, I would say this is great. You got it for free. But, you know, the thing was, you know, the guy was keeping several members of the band sick. Yeah, there's guys that do that. There are guys that do that. There's guys that'll do that just to sort of corral you and keep control of you. I've seen managers do that. Well, Brian Wilson's story was a great story, too. What happened with Brian Wilson? The movie that he had about the doctor that he had. He had some psychiatrists that kept him all whacked out. I watched the movie that Paul Garganemus or whatever his name is, the one guy from Billions, was the doctor. And I can't remember who played Brian Wilson, but it was a great movie. What is it called? It was the Brian Wilson story, I guess. I don't know. I haven't seen that one yet. But John Cusack played it. And I know John Cusack's practitioner, too. He had trained over with Cincy Benny at the Jet Center, too. Yeah, I remember he used him in one of his movies. There it is, Love and Mercy. That's it. Giamatti. Paul Giamatti. That's interesting, yeah. Oh, yeah, the guy from the Howard Stern movie, too. That guy's awesome. Yeah, that whole thing with psychiatrists or doctors or whether it's a manager or someone that you have that can get you drugs and that keeps you on them. That's a long-standing story. That's been going on a long time, especially with really talented people. A lot of times, that person, they can benefit financially from controlling them. So they get ahold of that. They go, look, I'm just going to babysit you, keep you on drugs, and then suck money out of you. And then there's a lot of those guys that wind up keeping these incompetent managers for years longer than they should because the guy gets them drugs, too. Because the guy gets them girls, he gets them drugs, he sets up parties. He does all this stuff that doesn't help the band and doesn't help their music, but it helps keep him around. In the picture. Those guys are real. I've met those guys in comedy, too. They exist. It's always been a long-standing story in comedy. Sam Kennison was in The Coke and Richard Pryor famously had a problem. You only hear about those kind of people when they make the news, when something happens. I was always wondering, back in your day when you first started, was that a trope? Was that something that was discussed a lot with rock stars? It's not the news. No, the drugs. The drug thing. Because it seems like so many guys from your era were doing drugs. Yeah, they were. Well, I'll give you a scenario. When we got signed to Capitol, we went up into the tower. We went into one of the little rooms there, and the guy slid his desk open, and there were lines everywhere. They gave us a box of Nike shoes and all the blow you could eat. Wow. That's crazy. When I was a kid and I worked at a comedy club, they offered me Coke or money, or a combination of both. You get paid in cash or Coke. I was like, this is crazy. I heard about a band with a frontman that I really respected that wanted to be paid in crack. I just thought, you know what? I've lost all respect for you now. Well, maybe Nuke could get it at a good price and sell it on the road. Yeah, you never know. It's hard to get good crack. Yeah, there's a lot of people that get really lost on drugs, but that's why I'm always happy to speak with a person like yourself that had your problems and put them aside and bounced back and got healthy and is open about it. I think it's so important for guys to hear. It's also that it's a trap, too, that you can get sucked up into that trap. You can be a good person, a solid person who's got confidence. You can accomplish things, but you can get still sucked in that trap. Yeah, you can. You can.