Dave Mustaine (born September 13, 1961, La Mesa, California) has been a prominent heavy metal guitarist, songwriter, and singer for over twenty years. As the central figure of Megadeth, he is one of a handful of people considered to have pioneered thrash metal.

Contents

1 Beginnings 2 Metallica 3 The birth of Megadeth 4 Injury and retirement 5 Megadeth's return 6 Feuds 7 External link

Beginnings

Mustaine's parents divorced when he was seven, and he grew up bouncing around various low-income Southern California suburbs. As a teenager, he was often left on his own or with his sisters and their (sometimes abusive) husbands.

Metallica

In 1981, he left the band Panic to join Metallica, serving as lead guitarist for the young thrash band for two years. According to the story, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich had posted an ad in the local newspapers for a lead guitarist. Mustaine arrived, set up his amplifiers and started his sound check. So impressed were they with his sound check, that they immediately asked him to join them without even asking for a demo tape.

In April of 1983, Mustaine was fired for his drug use and personality clashes with founding members Ulrich and James Hetfield, who had resolved to keep Metallica as a 'clean' band. It is said that tensions were especially high between Hetfield and Mustaine, and they both have made public comments that the arrangement was not an effective one.

The birth of Megadeth

Mustaine returned to Los Angeles after departing Metallica and formed his own thrash band, Megadeth, with bassist David Ellefson. Mustaine wrote almost all the band's music (he would continue to do so for the rest of his career), including a few songs that featured guitar riffs he had developed during his time with Metallica. Metallica, meanwhile, had reworked some of Mustaine's riffs into their own songs, yielding pairs like "Mechanix"/"The Four Horsemen" and "Hangar 18"/"The Call of Ktulu". Megadeth's popularity in the San Francisco Bay Area quickly grew, but Mustaine's drug problems deepened as he became addicted to heroin.

After recording the first Megadeth album (Killing Is My Busines... And Business Is Good!), Mustaine approached Jackson Guitars for a custom built guitar. Jackson built him a modified Randy Rhodes series Flying V with 24 frets. After creating the guitar for Mustaine, the company began mass-producing a Dave Mustaine series flying V. This line continued into the early 2000s, when Mustaine switched to ESP guitars.

In 1988, Mustaine co-produced the album Refuge Denied for the band Sanctuary

After an impaired driving arrest in 1990, he entered a twelve-step program, and has reportedly remained clean and sober since; he married in 1991, and became a father in 1992. Also in 1992, he served as a correspondent for MTV News to the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

The band continued to release successful records on a regular schedule, even as it went through repeated turnover in musicians. Mustaine also collaborated on several projects with other musicians, including the MD.45 project with Lee Ving of Fear.

Injury and retirement

In January 2002, Mustaine suffered a compressed radial nerve in his left hand and arm, making it impossible for him to play guitar. In April of that year, Megadeth was disbanded.

Mustaine went through physical therapy for his injury, and began to explore other areas of the music industry, including production. However, he fully recovered from his arm injury following successful therapy, and following his recovery, all of Megadeth's albums were remixed and remastered on Capitol Records.

Megadeth's return

In a move that surprised many, Mustaine enlisted one of Megadeth's 1980s-era guitarists, Chris Poland, to join Vinnie Colaiuta (drums) and Jimmy Lee Sloas (bass) and release a new Megadeth album called The System Has Failed in September 2004. The album was very well received by music critics and was hailed as a return to Megadeth's successful late-80s/early-90s albums such as Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? and Rust in Peace.

In December of 2004, Mustaine hosted a tribute to Dimebag Darrell on MTV.

Feuds

Beside his work with Metallica and Megadeth, Mustaine has been known to have many feuds within the music industry. The most well-known of these is his feud with Metallica, most notably with drummer Lars Ulrich. Mustaine claims to have written several Metallica songs, most notably "Leper Messiah". Metallica refuses to recognize this. Many Megadeth fans believe that "Master of Puppets" was Mustaine's work and that Metallica "stole" it. In 2004, the Mustaine-Metallica feud reignited when footage of Mustaine was used in the film Some Kind of Monster without Mustaine's approval. Also, Mustaine also had a verbal feud with MTVs Rikki Rachtman on Headbangers Ball. Rachtman stated on air that he would like to settle his differences with Mustaine and move on. Dave eventually clear the matter up stating that, in reality, he really liked Rachtman.

In addition, Mustaine has a long-standing feud with Slayer guitarist Kerry King.

After the death of Dimebag Darrell, Mustaine stated that he would like to end his feuds and "become more like Dimebag".

External link

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about: Dave Mustaine

• Press release about the band's end http://www.megadeth.com/news/pr/disband.html
• ESP's "DV8" Dave Mustaine signature series guitar http://www.espguitars.com/sig_dave.htm