MEGADETH Celebrates 30th Anniversary Of First-Ever Band Web Site And 'Youthanasia' Album

In October 1994, MEGADETH and their label took a chance with a new venture. To celebrate the release of the "Youthanasia" album, the pioneering band established Megadeth, Arizona. It was the first-ever band web site on the Internet.

The web site — as Billboard (October 31, 2024) noted in a story celebrating its anniversary — was "based on the location of the band's new studio in Phoenix," and "was the concept for the first-ever artist web site. In addition to the chat room, called the Megadiner, the site featured an art and digital-postcard repository, Vic's Cactus Hut and Souvenir Shop, a newspaper titled Horrorscopes and links to videos and online-radio tracks."

"When the internet came into our lives, we really didn't understand it, just like anyone else," MEGADETH founder Dave Mustaine explains. "But we had the greatest opportunity because we were the ones chosen to be the guinea pig. When the people over at Capitol had shown us what this was, the basic layout and some of the artwork, the images were all cool. The woman that had done the images had done a bunch of great images and made it really look cool like the stickers that are on the back of campers and shit like that, so I thought it was really great and exciting. Again, no one really knew what it was, so once we clicked on the launch button and it started all whizzing and banging and all that kind of stuff, it was remarkable. There's been no looking back since."

Meanwhile, the multi-platinum-selling and Grammy Award-winning rockers just wrapped their U.S. tour which followed successful runs in Latin America (Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and México) and Europe (Sweden, Italy, France, Germany, and more) and garnered stellar reviews (see below). Next up, MEGADETH will head into the studio to record new music, and look for additional dates to be announced for 2025.

Dave Mustaine interview:

Q: Without a model, how did you know what would be appealing to fans?

Mustaine: "You know, we didn't have a model to do that so the only way that I knew that this was going to be appealing to the fans was my experience as a tape trader in the very beginning. When I was in my first band PANIC, and then freshly into METALLICA, we would trade tapes with people around the world and people would write letters, if you could believe that — Jeez, snail mail back in the day — but we also had really cool other magazines that would tell us stuff that was happening. This cut that down from weeks to get a reply from one of your friends to just a couple of seconds. With the way that the web site was set up, we didn't really know much about it with the layout or anything like that because when you think about the normal blueprint of stuff and when they say that there is a room here and a room there, you think about a two-dimensional drawing and the overview, looking down into a floor plan. So for me, thinking about what all these different rooms are, it was, I don't know, maybe a misnomer. It didn't work for my mind's eye to see what the layout of what this Internet and this web site and this chat room would be, but I figured out that that stuff didn't matter, it was just a word. As we clicked on other stuff like photos and mp3s and then we got into more of the advanced stuff--the chat room and so on — that was something that just blew everybody's mind."

Q: There's a funny story about a call with Gene Simmons. Can you recount it?

Mustaine: "When Megadeth, Arizona was launched, a lot of people went there because they couldn't understand, the same way that I couldn't, what all of these rooms were on the internet and having a chat room and so on. So it was really exciting one by one as we would hear people that noticed it and I was blown away when I heard from one of my favorite musicians and rock stars, Gene Simmons. Legend has it, he said, 'I want a web site just like Mustaine's,' and you can imagine how stoked I was to hear that. And I had asked his manager, Doc McGhee, and I had gotten a video sent back to me of Gene repeating what he had said. So hats off to you, Gene. Love you guys!"

Q: Media and the internet has changed so drastically since the launch of the site. What/how as a band are you continuing to engage your audience?

Mustaine: "When we first started out, we were stuck having to write to our fans, whether it was typing letters out on typewriters if you can believe that, or getting a handwritten letter, and I used to do that a lot, in fact I got something that was a photocopy just the other day from one of my friends of a letter that I had sent them and it was really nostalgic and cool. But you're trying to conduct business and when you want to be an international band, it sucked. When we started playing, a lot of the bands we knew in town, they really didn't look at things like it was going to be an international thing. They were just worried about being popular in their hometown, which for me, never crossed my mind, I wanted to be the biggest band in the world, so we would write, write, write. We would trade tapes with people around the world. Every once in a while, I would pick up the phone and make a long-distance phone call and have to deal with the shock of seeing the phone bill later. But once the Megadeth, Arizona site started, that was great. We were able to push the launch button on this site and go into the Megadiner and like I said before, anyone that was a member of Megadiner in the beginning are definitely IT. They have tremendous street credibility. Now, with the chats and stuff that had happened with the launch of Megadiner, people have chat rooms everywhere. We were just in a chat room the other day getting tech support. You gotta remember that a chat room is a chat room. It was really neat to be able to develop all of this stuff together with the fans that we have become friends with. Megadeth.com was born out of Megadeth, Arizona and that has led to some really long lasting friendships. I'm looking forward to the party tonight."

Q: Will you be doing anything on the current site to honor the anniversary? Should fans be looking for any easter eggs?

Mustaine: "In honor of the 30th anniversary for 'Youthanasia' and Megadeth, Arizona, I participated in a chat room on the MEGADETH Discord server. Fans were able to ask questions and chat with me directly, in real time, just like back in the day. Before the chat started, everyone watched a stream of our old documentary 'Evolver', which was cool. We are also adding something special to Megadeth.com to pay tribute to Megadeth, Arizona and some of the rooms from the past like Megadiner, Vic's Cactus Hut, and the Digital Drive in if you haven't seen it already. There will be some easter eggs you can find if you play around with the page and search hard enough."

Q: The web site launch was tied to the release of "Youthanasia", which means that album is also celebrating an anniversary. The album was recorded in Arizona. How was the recording process different than in a studio in Los Angeles, New York or another big city?

Mustaine: "'Youthanasia' was recorded in Arizona, but it could've been the moon for all I care. We built the different sound enclosures for each artist, and we built a control room for Max Norman to work in, and we had to get this gigantic console and get that moved out to Arizona and into this control room we had built. That was cool if you were taking a shop class in high school or something, but having to go build a studio you have to build a record in... I don't know. I liked it, but it was unnecessary."

Photo credit: Ryan Chang (courtesy of Gibson)