DAVE MUSTAINE On MEGADETH's 'Retirement Tour': 'We're Gonna Play As Long As We Can'

At this past September's Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky, MEGADETH leader Dave Mustaine confirmed to Musora that his worsening hand condition has forced the band's retirement. He's been diagnosed with Dupuytren's contracture — also known as Viking's Disease — which is preventing him from playing his guitar at a hundred percent and ultimately led to his decision to announce that MEGADETH would embark on its farewell tour. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Look at my hand. I've got an injury on my hand. It's just genetic. It's something that just happens to people. Some people get it, some people don't. It's actually called Dupuytren contracture [a condition that causes one or more fingers to bend toward the palm of the hand] or Viking's hand.

"When we're done with our retirement tour, I am going to do something about it," Mustaine explained. "I just don't know if it's gonna be successful or not. And I wanna make sure that I've gotten everything that we wanna do before I go and get surgery done, in case I can't play anymore. Because if I walk out and I can say, 'Hey, guess what? Let's do [the MEGADETH song] 'Bad Omen',' I think that'd be a happy day for all of us.

"We're on top right now, and I always said I wanted us to go out on top. Everything we're doing right now has been very well thought out and we really appreciate everything that we have right now. And I don't want it to get going so fast that we lose sight of our gratitude to people who have helped us, the fans who have bought the albums and the books and have come and bought the tickets and the merchandise. Those people are the catalyst that sets us off. And we can't tell you what it feels like to be up on stage. We'd be making it up, 'cause there's nothing we can really quite say that encapsulates how great it feels. It's like trying to explain an orgasm to a virgin. You know what I mean?

"We're gonna play as long as we can," Mustaine added. "And we're gonna be as grateful as we possibly can with these shows and by the level that we play. We're going out there and we're not taking any prisoners. We're absolutely pushing ourselves and playing songs from our whole era that were the monster songs.

"Every album has a couple of songs on it that's a little bit more melodic, and then you've got the ones that are the real kick-in-the-crotch kind of songs."

At a book-launch event for his recently released memoir, "In My Darkest Hour", in New York in September, Mustaine said that so far MEGADETH's final tour has felt bittersweet. "There's times when we take the stairs in the back, and walking up the stairs… I say, 'It's your stage,' and I go up there and do my job," he said.

At the same book event, Mustaine floated the possibility of a new MEGADETH live album being recorded during the final tour.

"If we were to want to, say, have some live recordings of us playing songs for the future, it might be a good idea to record a bunch of different live tracks," Mustaine said. "But yeah, we're going to have fun doing it, regardless of whatever we're going to do."

As for whether there could be any new MEGADETH studio recordings in the future, Mustaine said: "There's bits and pieces and little stuff like that. There's a couple completed songs from the last album with James [LoMenzo, bass], Teemu [Mäntysaari, guitar], and Dirk [Verbeuren, drums], that we did not release yet. But I think those are supposed to be bonus tracks for the label or something. … There may be a song or something, but I don't know."

Mustaine, who was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2019 and faced the possibility of losing his voice, his music and his life, also revealed his current mindset, saying: "Getting up in the morning is a choice for all of us, and what we're going to do with that day. Especially when you know you've got so many days left. It's important to use those days wisely. For me, I try to live every day like it's my last, because I don't know when that will be, and I want to make sure that it's a good day for everybody around me, my family, my friends.

"I know I just need to keep living life," he added. "I've been living life, trying to do the right thing always because it's the right thing to do. I look forward to whatever is in store for me, the touring, the playing, the new music if there is any, the moments we get to share doing things like this. … We just like to do cool things. I don't want to be one of those people that crawls off into a cave and dies. I want to live hard and I want to play hard."

MEGADETH have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, earned a Grammy Award (with 12 additional nominations),generated billions of streams, notched 10 Top 10 entries on the Billboard 200, including their first-ever No. 1 album with their acclaimed self-titled seventeenth studio release, and captivated millions of fans in arenas and stadiums across the globe. Their catalog spans indisputable classics such as the platinum "Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?" (ranked No. 8 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Metal Albums Of All Time"),the platinum "Rust In Peace", and the double-platinum "Countdown To Extinction", which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

Following the success of 2016's "Dystopia" — which debuted in the Top 3 and earned the band's first Grammy Award for "Best Metal Performance" — and "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!", which returned the band to the Top 3 and received another Grammy nomination, MEGADETH reached a new career milestone with their 2026 self-titled album. Debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the record was praised as one of the strongest releases of their career, reaffirming the band's ability to evolve while remaining one of heavy music's most influential creative forces.