MUSTAINE On Reunion With ELLEFSON: 'I Think This Is A Really Great Story With A Happy Ending'

Eden Munro of Canada's Vue Weekly recently conducted separate interviews with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine and guitarist Chris Broderick. A couple of excerpts from each chat follow below.

On the genesis of MEGADETH's tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band's seminal album "Rust in Peace":

Dave Mustaine: "It was basically a challenge. My manager said, 'Do you think you could still do it?' and I said, 'Of course I could still do it,' and I guess kind of the gauntlet was thrown down."

On coming across as a happy man, comfortable at last in his own skin and with the lineup he shares the stage with: drummer Shawn Drover, guitarist Chris Broderick and his old friend David Ellefson, once again on bass:

Dave Mustaine: "I think this is a really great story with a happy ending, where we're at right now, what's happened in my personal life. You know, people make fun of me because of my becoming a Christian, and I'm thinking, 'God, man, if anybody needed to have their life changed it was me.' But I didn't get soft; I certainly didn't stop shredding on guitar. When 'Countdown to Extinction' came out [in 1992] and we had the number two record in the United States, that was pretty inebriating, but I was still in that place where I didn't want to be number two. I wanted to be number one, and 'Achy Breaky Heart' was the number one record and I was pissed. Since then I've learned that you've got to pick your battles — you've got to decide what you're going to get emotional over, and I get more pleasure out of helping people. I just got a letter back from the children's hospital here in San Diego about all the toys we donated over Christmas and it showed this little girl that was two that has cancer and, man, I tell you, talk about making you want to cry when you see that stuff and making you grateful."

On his recent reunion with bassist David Ellefson:

Dave Mustaine: "We've got a lot of stuff that we need to talk about, and obviously the time will present itself. I made a promise to myself to try to be the absolute best band leader that I can possibly be and that's going to entail me several times having to have the past recalled, and it's not always pleasant to have someone hold up a mirror in front of you. I guess the most important thing is willingness: am I willing to look at my part in any of the things that might have led to us not being best friends again? Because I don't always know how the things that I say and do affect people. Sometimes I'm doing or saying stuff to be funny and everybody laughs in the room, but you never really hear under all the laughter the guy muttering under his breath, 'I'm gonna kill you, Dave.'"

Vue Weekly: How familiar were you with "Rust in Peace" before joining MEGADETH?

Chris Broderick: "Rust in Peace" was really the CD that kind of brought me into MEGADETH, because I was always into the Shrapnel [Records] guys, the shredders, and I'd known about Marty Friedman from him playing with Jason Becker [co-guitarist in CACOPHONY], and so "Rust in Peace" was definitely the CD that brought me into the MEGADETH fold. That's the CD that I absolutely love the most.

Vue Weekly: How do you approach the songs that were recorded before you were in the band?

Chris Broderick: Definitely note-for-note. First, it helps me personally because I get the benefit of all of the phrasing and the concepts that the original artist intended when they were writing it, so in this case a lot of what Marty Friedman did, I get to internalize it and grow from his phrasing. And secondly, I think the fans really deserve that because they grew up with [the album]. A lot of them, it speaks their language.

Vue Weekly: A typical setlist is constructed with a different flow than an album, with more of a focus on a wide selection of songs that fans know from throughout the catalogue. How does it feel to just start up at one end of "Rust in Peace" and blast straight through to the other?

Chris Broderick: I've never been one to really get into the process of selecting a set for the night, but I do know that you want to try to build up. One of the big considerations in the first part of the show is making sure the soundman gets the sound right, so it's choosing the right songs for that — too fast and too chaotic and it would be hard for the soundman to get the sound dialed in quickly, so you want to kind of ease into it and then pick the show up from there, so there are intentional climaxes in a good setlist. Now with this, it's just running the CD from beginning to end, and I love that because that's the way I listen to the CD. I know a lot of people will just download a specific song these days, but for me a CD is kind of like a slice in time that kind of tells you what those people were thinking overall, so I always listen to the whole CD, and performing it is kind of the same thing.

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