DAVE MUSTAINE: 'I Had To Work My Ass Off To Get What I Have And I Love What I Have'

Keith Carman of Exclaim! recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine about Dave's newly published autobiography, "Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir". A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On writing the autobiography:

Mustaine: "It was really cathartic. When you're putting your life down into a book, you wonder what you're gonna leave behind you. I want to leave a legacy of achievement but one that says you can overcome anything. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to work my ass off to get what I have and I love what I have. I'm very grateful for it and I don't take it lightly."

"Telling the truth is hard for anybody. The only uncomfortable thing about this was putting the stuff in there that made me look bad, but I had to in order for it to be the truth. I could have written a book that was all about, 'Oh, I love me. I'm so beautiful and wonderful,' but that wouldn't be true. I don't think I'm that great and the beauty of the book is that I am fallible. Who would laugh at comedy if it didn't have people making mistakes? The root of comedy is people doing stupid stuff. Some people laugh at different stuff though. I remember reading the book and at the part where the girl is tossed into the grass and all the vodka bottles are pitched around her head. I laughed at that 'cause I remember the day. She was so wasted and we had to leave so we drove her to her apartment and hoofed her on the lawn. She was like a lawn troll out there."

On the legal aspects of telling his life story in book form:

Mustaine: "There were a lot of other things legally we had to look at because there were a lot of people in my life that, if I tell the story, they're going to jail. It's not about getting pissed off. They're going to jail. Nowadays when you tell a story... say there was a dude I had an encounter with [but] we don't know each other anymore. I [relate] the story and all of a sudden someone goes sniffing into that person's life. It's an invasion of privacy so there's that and there's the fact that there are ambulance chasers everywhere. We had to word it in a way that the information got out but still told the same story. Legally, the same thing being said one way is totally malicious another way. That's something I had to learn.

"It's very bizarre — for lack of a better word—trying to figure out how to tell a story two different ways and keep it the same story. When you see somebody who's an attorney working somebody in the witness chair, they need to ask the right questions to get the right information out. That's basically what happened. We had to word it in a way that the information got out but still told the same story. Legally, the same thing being said one way is totally malicious another way. That's something I had to learn."

Read the entire interview from Exclaim!.