MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE Explains His Longevity: 'I Think It's Just Being Honest To People'

On June 5, FaceCulture conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine at the FortaRock festival in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. You can now watch the chat in two parts below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On how he explains his longevity:

Dave: "I don't know. I'm sure there's a lot of people that wanna know. [Laughs] I think it's just being honest to people. Sometimes people don't want you to be honest with them. [I am honest] sometimes to a fault. I think sometimes I can be blunt, and I think that it's hurt people. It's hurt me. There's things I've said I regret. But would I change anything? No. I love being right here at this moment, and if I changed anything, who knows where we'd be?"

On his main motivation to keep making new music, especially MEGADETH's latest album, "Dystopia":

Dave: "I think a lot of it was… There was some stuff that happened during the summer of 2014 and the whole year of 2015 that really had frustrated us and made us do some big changes with our management, with our staff… A couple of bandmembers had left. And I just knew that I wanted to go back to my roots. And I had said that back after 'Cryptic Writings' when Marty Friedman [guitar] was in the band. I said, 'We need to go back to our roots,' and he quit. 'Cause he wanted to become even more alternative than 'Cryptic Writings' was, and I couldn't go any further. And you see where Marty Friedman's at; he pursued his alternative life now, and he's happy. I'm happy. But I couldn't go that way. I couldn't take MEGADETH into that world. Because MEGADETH isn't an alternative band. It's a metal band. The thing about pop music and where we're at, and having Marty, having Nick [Menza, drums], having any of the guys that have played with us in the past, where they take the music, that's their own contribution. And I think that metal music is a lot different from pop music. What does pop music mean? It stands for 'popular.' So it's the stuff that you hear on the radio, like Rihanna, Beyoncé and stuff like that. It's not music that I particularly listen to. I like listening to music that makes me wanna fight, that makes me wanna drive fast, that makes me wanna do things. And I'm not a big fan of dance tracks [and] never have been. I think that's the beauty of the uniqueness of all of us as people; we're all different, and we all have different music tastes that we like."

"Dystopia" shifted 49,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending January 28. In terms of pure album sales, it opened with 48,000 copies, marking MEGADETH's highest-charting album since 1992's "Countdown To Extinction" debuted and peaked at No. 2 on the chart dated August 1 of that year. "Dystopia" also logged the group's best sales week since 2007, when "United Abominations" landed at No. 8 with first-week sales of 54,000.