MEGADETH Mainman: 'This Is A New Chapter'

January 31, 2008

Headbanger's Blog recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. An excerpt from the chat follows:

Headbanger's Blog: When did you start seeing signs that Glen Drover [former MEGADETH guitarist] might not be happy with what he was doing in the band?

Mustaine: You know, out of respect for Glen, I'm not gonna really talk too much about that. He was having some stuff that he was dealing with, and we're talking about someone who left for personal matters. He didn't get into it, so why should I? I frankly don't know what [made him want to leave] other than what he told me, which is he wanted to leave to be with his family. Now, Glen is the brother of our drummer [Shawn Drover], and out of just sheer stupidity you would talk shit about an exiting member when he's got a sibling in your band, so I've got nothing to say. And even if I was mad a Glen, which I'm not, I wouldn't say anything about it. Glen is a talented player, and he had given the thumbs up to Chris Broderick [new MEGADETH guitarist] coming in, and Shawn is the one who even recommended Chris Broderick. So, I was really excited.

Glen was influenced a lot by Chris Poland, and we don't play a lot of MEGADETH from the Chris Poland era. Chris was totally influenced by Marty Friedman, who we play a lot of music from. It was the longest lineup, and for subsequent guitar players after Marty left, I tried to find people who sounded a little more like him than just kind of going in whatever direction I wanted to.

There was no real rhyme or reason between the choices of a player like Chris Poland, and then jumping to someone like a Jeff Young and then jumping to Marty Friedman. It wasn't like I was advancing or progressing or following any kind of educational graph to get from Chris to Marty. The good thing now is every song is ready to go. Chris has been down here playing the songs with me. We play them in slow-mo, we film them on video cameras and we're going over every single note — so much so that we even corrected things that bass and drums were doing wrong while we were doing rehearsal here prior to leaving for the tour. We got deep down in there and found a bunch of stuff that made it even tighter. I loved playing with Glen. This is a new chapter. I think we've taken it up a level. I appreciate Glen helping me find Chris. Now it's time to move on.

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