Name: Megadeth's Dave Mustaine on Drugs and the Dark Side of the Music Industry
Uploaded: 2022-08-23T17:14:46.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Megadeth's Dave Mustaine on Drugs and the Dark Side of the Music Industry' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Megadeth's Dave Mustaine on Drugs and the Dark Side of the Music Industry' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-23. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- Yeah, I know that the music business
is way, way different than it is now.
It's so different.
- I don't know if those two things are related,
but yeah, I'm sure the peace movement,
it probably saw a lot of wild shit.
- Well, he's a musician, right?
And the music business is what you survive in.
And for example, Elvis, you know,
the way that his life ended and you know,
the way that the music business was back then,
it was, you know, throw drugs at the problem,
throw sex and money at the problem.
And I don't know that, had he had modern management
or even if he was with, you know, somebody who,
you know, like a handler, you know, that would say,
"Hey, it's probably not a good idea for you to say that."
You know, nowadays we have people who are,
their sole jobs are to help keep us from,
you know, stepping on it, you know?
- Right.
- And I've got people around me,
they used to be real busy with me,
but you know, fortunately growing up,
I've learned a lot of stuff that,
you know, you can and can't say, so.
- Well, specifically, I mean,
in this day and age with social media,
it's so easy for someone to just tweet something
really ridiculous without someone saying,
"Hey, don't fucking say that, you're on Adderall.
Sit down, don't write that down.
Don't say that."
You know, it's just, back then,
do you think that the drug and alcohol thing
is the same today in music, or do you think it's less?
Do you think it's just not promoted by the,
I mean, what do you think the difference is
between the influence of drugs and alcohol
in the early days versus now?
- Well, I think in the early days in the music business,
first off, the drugs weren't as strong,
and, you know, they didn't have,
like, for example, something as simple as,
or, you know, the marijuana that I used to smoke
when I was a kid versus what's being manufactured
and grown nowadays is way different.
And I think that the stigmatism for people
about smoking is less,
and I think that there's a lot of other things
that people use out on the road to cope with things
that could be dealt with, with, you know,
good management, good support system,
and most importantly, you know,
having somebody who's gonna tell you the truth.
You know, I'm a grown up, I'm a big boy,
so when I have stuff happen in my career,
and it could've been avoided,
or somebody didn't tell me,
and I find out later, that sucks, you know?
And for a lot of people, when that stuff happens,
they respond in a negative way with, you know,
either self-sabotage or, you know,
they medicate themselves.
And I remember back when I was drinking,
you know, there was a thing someone said
at one of those meetings,
and I thought it was kinda clever.
The guy said, you know, I drank when my team won,
and I drank when my team lost,
and I drank when my team played,
and I drank when my team was in the off season,
and I thought, all right, well, that's about me.
What team were we not rooting for anymore?
So, but, you know, there's so many reasons
why people make it or don't make it
in the music business,
and I think, much like yourself, you know,
and getting to know each other earlier this afternoon,
you know, you have to take care of yourself.
You really, really do.
And there's so many things in the music industry that,
that, you know, the history,
the people that you're working with,
you know, a lot of people don't want to say anything bad
about somebody, but, I mean,
imagine how much better things would be
if somebody really said, you know what,
that he's a nice guy, but he stole from us.
Or, you know, this guy is, he's good at this,
but he's terrible at that.
You know, everybody's afraid to offend anybody
with stuff like that, but yet, you know,
in other areas of life,
offending people doesn't mean shit, you know.
So we've had some times where we've had some people
on our crew and tours that we've been on.
The last tour we were on, not my band,
but another band, their bus drove right up
to the Canadian border and the driver got out
and left them all sitting there.
- Why? - So yeah, it's the music business.
- Why did he do that?
- 'Cause he had a DUI or something like that,
and he can't get up into Canada.
- Oh my God, that's hilarious.
- It's so convoluted, all this stuff.
But see, like back in the day, you know,
back in the '60s or '70s,
I was talking about, you know, different eras,
different messes, different managers.
You know, managers used to manage the mess.
They don't manage the mess anymore.
They don't want to tolerate that shit
'cause there's always somebody around the corner
that's ready to work harder than you.
It's like that motivational thing
that Arnold said long time.
Somebody's out there getting stronger,
running farther, you know, all that stuff.
I love those motivational tapes.
- Yeah, well, someone is out there doing it.
And if you do fuck up
and you want to just take Xanax all day
and do coke and you don't write new music,
someone's gonna come along.
- They are.
- And unfortunately, everybody,
but that's, isn't that a part of like,
the whole rock and roll mystique?
Part of the whole mystique was the guy
who did crazy drugs, was kind of half out of it,
but would go on stage and be brilliant.
- Sometimes, you know, Keith Moon, you know,
yeah, that worked for Keith,
but I think that's, you know,
a player like Keith is so all over the place.
You know, he doesn't have a song with a pattern,
so it's just go out there and just hit everything.
I know of a lot of musicians that will drink when they play.
I know a lot that don't.
I don't know very many anymore that do drugs.
That's just something that's been kind of, kind of--
- Phased out?
- Yeah, yeah, you know.
- Just because of the impact it has on your body?
- Well, not only that,
but the things that it makes the people do
and the kind of people that are around that.
I think that, you know, again, like I was saying,
herb is less of a stigmatism,
so people are a little bit more open with that,
but, you know, as far as coming backstage
and it's smelling like, you know,
somebody's back there burning chemicals
or something like that,
or, you know, people falling out in the hallway
from heroin or, you know,
tweaking around on meth or coke or something.
You know, we try and associate with people
that are like-minded with us, you know,
the people that are about their careers
and that really are into taking care of themselves.
Two of the guys in Five Finger Death Punch do jiu-jitsu.
They have a sensei out with them.
We all are doing jiu-jitsu.
When we were out with Trivium,
the singer for that band does jiu-jitsu,
so we try and hang out with bands
that are really health-centric, you know,
that are really looking into,
and not just from here down but here up to.
When you were a kid and you first were hearing about bands
and getting into bands,
was that always a narrative?
Was that something that was discussed a lot,
that, like, a lot of bands did drugs?
I don't think it was because, you know,
it wasn't something we were preoccupied with.
We were, at the time when I first started,
playing around by myself with other little, you know,
small-time outfits and stuff like that.
It never was really drugs per se.
It would be like maybe get a six-pack of air
and, you know, maybe smoke a joint or something,
but it wasn't until Megadeth actually got going
and we met Gar and some of the people in that circle
where we, you know, started to experiment with other stuff.
And we had a manager at the time who was very, very bad off,
and he would try to always keep us loaded,
and we ended up having to fire the guy
because it was for our own health and our own safety.
I mean, you know, if I was a cheap bastard
and didn't have any money, I would say,
"This is great. You got it for free."
But, you know, the thing was is, you know,
the guy was keeping several members of the band sick.
- Yeah, there's guys that do that.
There are guys that do that.
And there's guys that'll do that just to sort of corral you
and keep control of you.
- I've seen managers do that.
- Well, the Brian Wilson story was a great story, too.
- What happened with Brian Wilson?
- The movie that he had about the doctor that he had,
he had some psychiatrist that kept him all whacked out.
I watched the movie that Paul Garganimus,
or whatever his name is, the one guy from Billions,
was the doctor.
And I can't remember who played Brian Wilson,
but it was a great movie.
- What is it called?
- It was the Brian Wilson story, I guess, I don't know.
- I haven't seen that one yet.
- But John Cusack played it,
and I know John Cusack's practitioner, too.
He'd trained over with Cincy Benny at the Jet Center, too.
- Yeah, I remember he used him in one of his movies.
There it is, Love and Mercy.
That's it.
- Giamatti.
- Paul Giamatti.
Oh yeah, the guy from the Howard Stern movie, too.
Now that guy's awesome.
- Yeah, that whole thing with psychiatrists or doctors or, you know,
whether it's a manager or someone that you have that can get you drugs
and that keeps you on them, that's a long-standing story.
That's been going on a long time.
Especially with really talented people, a lot of times that person,
they can benefit financially from controlling them.
So they get a hold of that, they go, "Look, I'm just going to babysit you,
keep you on drugs, and then suck money out of you."
And then there's a lot of those guys that wind up keeping these incompetent
managers
for years longer than they should because the guy gets them drugs, too.
- Right.
- Because the guy gets them girls, he gets them drugs, he sets up parties,
he does all the stuff that doesn't help the band.
It doesn't help their music, but it helps keep him around.
- In the picture.
- Yeah, those guys are real.
I've met those guys in comedy, too.
They exist, they exist.
And it's, you know, it's always been a long-standing story in comedy,
you know, with Sam Kinison was in the coke,
and Richard Pryor famously had a problem.
But you only hear about those kind of people when they make the news,
you know, when something happened.
So I was always wondering, like back in your day when you first started,
like, was that a trope?
Was that something that was discussed a lot with rock stars?
Not in the news?
- The drugs.
- No, the drugs, the drug thing.
Because it seems like so many guys from your era were doing drugs.
- Yeah, they were.
Well, let's, I'll give you a scenario.
When we got signed to Capitol, we went up into the tower,
we went into one of the little rooms there,
and the guy slid his desk open, and there were lines everywhere.
So, yeah.
They gave us a box of Nike shoes and all the blow you could eat.
- Wow.
That's crazy.
- Yeah.
- When I was a kid and when I worked at a comedy club,
they offered me Coke or money.
Or a combination of both.
You get paid in cash or Coke.
I was like, this is crazy.
- I heard about a band with a front man that I really respected
that wanted to be paid in crack.
And I just thought, you know what?
I've lost all respect for you now.
- Well, maybe he knew he could get it at a good price
and sell it on the road.
- Yeah, you never know.
- It's hard to get good crack.
Yeah, there's a lot of people that get, like, really lost on drugs.
But that's why I'm always happy to speak with a person like yourself
that's, you know, had your problems and put them aside and bounced back.
- Yeah.
- And, you know, got healthy and is open about it.
You know, I think it's so important for guys to hear.
And also, that it's a trap, too, that you can get sucked up into that trap.
You can be a good person, a solid person who's, you know, got confidence,
you can accomplish things, but you can get still sucked in that trap.
- Yeah, you can. You can.
- Thank you.