DAVE MUSTAINE: The Most Important Thing Is To 'Treat People The Way You Want To Be Treated'

Amy Kelly of Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Ultimate-Guitar.com: One of the biggest pieces of news recently has been the addition of guitarist Chris Broderick. What has Chris brought to the band?

Mustaine: He obviously brings a sense of great caliber of guitar playing. He had come recommended by Shawn (Drover, current MEGADETH drummer),and Glen (Drover, former MEGADETH guitarist) had parted because he had needed to spend time with his three-year-old. I absolutely understood why Glen would want to leave. I did it a few years earlier. When Glen knew that Chris was coming in, he gave a glowing endorsement. All he does is work out and play guitar, and that's great! I went to YouTube and I looked at a couple of the clips that he had. I thought this guy was a remarkable player.

He was supposed to audition and I was putting together a gymnasium at my house. James (Lomenzo) laughs about this because he said that Chris thought it was some kind of initiation thing! "Dave, I know you and I know you just needed your gym built!" So he's thinking, "Yeah, I passed with flying colors. My hazing was to be lifting weights."

He's a great guy and we get along great. He's got a great look, very healthy. He plays great, sings great, and he's got a great personality. He's teachable, which is good in this business. Guys that are as good as someone like Chris usually are really arrogant and hard to deal with.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Have you found time to write any new music on the road?

Mustaine: Honestly, I'm at home right now taking a much-needed sabbatical. We've been out on tour for over a year. We come home in between legs, but as you can probably imagine, the other band members get to unplug. All that happens for me is I get off of one train and get on to another. Right now during my vacation time, I'm doing interviews and I'm doing a photo shoot today and I'm doing a seminar. I'd like to take my 46-year-old carcass down to the beach to see some water. I went to the beach this morning and the waves were perfect. If I had it my way, these guys would be using archived footage and the interviewers would be transcribing a bunch of stuff off my fact sheet over on my website.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: But you do have to admit that it's a compliment that fans and media are still very interested in what MEGADETH is doing 25 years later.

Mustaine: I'm not ungrateful for having the attention and the work right now. It's one of those jobs that you really treat fans with honor and respect. If you've got even a modicum of humility, you can last in this business. To me, the most important thing was to treat people the way you want to be treated. Some people say that I'm a mean person. Well, you know what? The person that's saying that is probably a dipshit and I put them in their place! I have a knack for doing that.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: I'm sure that there have been moments when others have deserved some of your verbal jabs.

Mustaine: There is some stuff I regret, though. Some of the stuff, when you see it in print now that I'm older and I have kids, I kind of wish I hadn't have been quite as colorful with the words. But that's who I was. I didn't ever think that some day my 10-year-old daughter would be reading about me saying something about having sex in an interview. I didn't think it was inappropriate at the time because there was no daughter. It's given me a great sense of respect for the opposite sex of my fan base. I've always really respected everybody that's been fans of ours.

Read the entire interview at Ultimate-Guitar.com.