MUSTAINE: I Have A Hard Time Saying I'm Christian Because So Many Christians Are Hypocrites

Sean McCourt of San Francisco Bay Guardian recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On his newly published autobiography, "Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir":

"I'm very excited about it, because when I initially set out to write this thing, it wasn't to be on the Oprah book club — although now that I know a little bit more about books it would certainly be cool to sit on the couch and tell her a little bit about my story.

"My story is about helping other people and just giving people an indication that they're not the only one that's going through hard shit — and that you've just got to turn your collar up and lean into the wind, and persevere."

On how he doesn't attempt to glorify his past mistakes in the book:

"I've always wanted to tell the truth to people about what happened to my career, so they don't think that I'm such a horrible person. I remember when my son was just a little guy and we did VH1's 'Behind The Music' and I had talked about crack — my son was coming home on the bus and some of the older students started chanting 'Your dad's a crack head' to the point where he was in tears. It was really painful."

On his now-infamous stint in the early days of METALLICA and his current relationship with his former bandmates:

"I saw them over in Europe, we had dinner and it was fine. I was sitting there at the table with Lars [Ulrich] and James [Hetfield], and I thought it was so great that we were together again — we're in different bands, but the fact that we as three young little guys, what we accomplished, how we changed the world. I mean, honestly, you can't even listen to a television program anymore without hearing music that's [evolved from] what we created. To be able to sit there with our brethren and knowing that in this room stands the cream of the crop of American heavy metal talent, and it was such a great feeling."

"My relationship with Lars and James has been publicized a lot, so I went up to James and I said, 'I don't want to try to repair our old relationship. That would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I want to have a new relationship with you,' and I think that's what we have now, it's great, and I'm going to see the guy when I get into [San Francisco on the current 'American Carnage' tour]."

On how he got on stage with METALLICA to jam on old favorite, "Am I Evil?", a cover song that goes back to the formative days of METALLICA, when they used to live and play in San Francisco and the Bay Area:

"We would play the Stone and the Old Waldorf, and one of the songs that we would play, guaranteed, every single set, no matter where we played, no matter how big we got, we always played 'Am I Evil?' a song by DIAMOND HEAD. If you could have been in the little jam room right before we went on, it was so moving, because when the band stops there's a little guitar part where there's some hammer-ons, and Lars looked over to James and he said, 'Hey, who should we have play this?' He was pointing to me like he wanted me to do it and I thought, 'Dude, that is so cool.' Who would ever have thought that we would have gone to that place where we were so hurt, and we just kept lobbing grenades at each other, to the place now where we're playing together again, and we're hanging out and hugging and having dinner with our wives."

On how he enjoys meeting the multiple generations of fans that come out, and the fact that he gets to talk to them about what he's been through in his life:

"One of the things that I want the reader to know is that this wasn't something that I wrote to be this self-absorbed book. It's just a lot of revealing stuff that I share about my life and my walk, and how my life changed in 2002 when I became Christian.

"I really have a hard time saying that I'm Christian because so many Christians are hypocrites, and have just given Christianity a bad name; I believe in God and I believe in Jesus, that's my bag, that's it, no more, I don't push it on anybody. Being a dude who read the Satanic bible and did witchcraft and put hexes on people, that's pretty cool."

Read the entire interview from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.