DAVE MUSTAINE's 'GC Sessions' In Hollywood: Video Footage, Report, Interview Available

On July 10, MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine visited the Guitar Center store in Hollywood, California for a very special installment of "GC Sessions".

Designed to provide informative, provocative conversation and hands-on tutorials, "GC Sessions" serves as an incubator for musicians, providing them an opportunity to network with their peers in an intimate setting and gain career-fostering advice from their heroes. For this evening's event, Dave Mustaine offered guitar techniques, discussed his favorite gear (including his signature guitars and Marshall amps),and provided advice on marketing, monetizing and touring in today's music business.

Watch fan-filmed footage from Dave Mustaine's "GC Sessions" below.

In other news, Greg Burk of MetalJazz.com conducted an interview with Dave Mustaine at the "GC Sessions" in Hollywood, California. An excerpt from the chat follows.

MetalJazz.com: Your first formation of MEGADETH was with a couple of jazz guys [drummer Gar Samuelson, who died in 1999, and guitarist Chris Poland]. Was that intentional? Do you listen to jazz?

Mustaine: "I like jazz a lot. I think there's a lot of explorative chords in there, and sounds that the guitar players make that are really beautiful; I think they really push the limits of guitar. Did I get them because they were jazz players? Not really. I got Gar Samuelson because he came to rehearsal and he fell asleep — he nodded on heroin — and his cigarette burned clean through his fingers. And I went, 'Fuuuck, that's metal!' I thought, 'This guy's gonna be into cattle prods and stuff!' So we hired him. We listened to him play, and one of his influences was the MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA — they really liked that stuff, Poland and Samuelson. Gar had a brother named Stew too, who was really good, played guitar. Chris, too — we had talked to him about playing, and he had heard that I was one of the top guitar players in the world, and he wanted to play with this band. I was, 'You wanna play with me?' Because I was still a kid at the time, remember, this was back in the early '80s. And he was like, 'Yeah, man, you're like the number 31 guitar player in the world, aren't you?' And I was like, 'Yeah, well, that's what the chart says, but that was one magazine, it doesn't mean anything.' Well, he'd never been in a magazine. So. Jazz — love it. Wasn't the inspiration behind MEGADETH, although MEGADETH is very jazz-influenced.”

MetalJazz.com: Do you think you learn something from each new guitar player that you work with?

Mustaine: "I've definitely learned a lot. Learned a lot of bad stuff from some, learned a lot of good stuff from some."

MetalJazz.com: What's something bad that you learned?

Mustaine: "I learned about heroin from Chris Poland."

MetalJazz.com: I meant from a guitar-playing point of view, but . . .

Mustaine: "You said bad, come on! Bad is bad! As far as, like, a bad guitar thing, fundamentally? I don't know that somebody would have had access to teach me something that was fundamentally flawed, because I wouldn't have been able to have assembled it in my mind, there's no way. Because I kind of have a bullshitometer, that if I hear something that doesn't sound right, it doesn't go in, it doesn't work!"

Read the entire interview at MetalJazz.com.