The story of Megadeth

Kicked out of Metallica

Megadeth is really the story of one man, Dave Mustaine. He was born on the thirteenth of September 1961 in La Mesa, near San Diego, into a family of Jehovah's Witnesses. His father was a heavy drinker, and after his parents divorced in 1965 his dad left for good when Dave was four. He had three much older sisters, and he later joked that he only took up music because one of them played the piano so badly. As a teenager he pumped gas for a living and formed his first band, Panic. Tragedy hit early. After Panic's very first gig, a stand in drummer and a sound man were killed in a car crash. Several Panic songs survived, though, and years later they grew into Megadeth tracks like Hangar 18 and Mechanix.[1] [2] [3]

In 1981 Mustaine answered an ad that a young Danish drummer named Lars Ulrich had placed in a Los Angeles paper called The Recycler. Ulrich and singer James Hetfield were building a band called Metallica, and they needed a lead guitarist. Mustaine later said he walked out of the warm up room, asked when the audition would start, and was told he already had the job. He suggested they go and buy beer to celebrate. For the next two years he was Metallica's lead guitarist and one of its main riff writers. The first song he ever wrote, Jump in the Fire, went into their set. But he was also drinking heavily, and his temper was becoming a problem for everyone around him.[1] [2] [3]

On the eleventh of April 1983, Metallica were in New York to record their first album. At ten in the morning Mustaine was woken on the floor of their rehearsal space in Queens, and Hetfield, Ulrich and bassist Cliff Burton told him he was out. The reasons given were his drinking, his drug use and his aggression. He was handed a one way ticket on a Greyhound bus and sent home across the country, a journey of about four days. His replacement was Kirk Hammett. Mustaine was still credited as a writer on four songs on Kill 'Em All and two on Ride the Lightning. Decades later he admitted that if he had a violent drunk in his own band, he would have done exactly the same thing.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That long bus ride gave Megadeth its name. Somewhere along the way, Mustaine picked up a political leaflet from the California senator Alan Cranston, warning about the world's nuclear arsenal and using the word megadeath. He had nothing to write on, so he scribbled lyrics on the back of a wrapper from a Hostess Sno Balls cake. Those words became a song called Megadeth, which later turned into Set the World Afire. He dropped a letter from the word to make it his own. He also made himself a promise on that bus. He would build a band that was faster and heavier than the one that had just thrown him out.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Hollywood street rats

Back in Los Angeles, Mustaine lived with his mother for a while, worked as a telemarketer, and started a short lived band called Fallen Angels. Then, in the summer of 1983, two teenagers from Minnesota moved into the apartment below his in Hollywood. Their names were David Ellefson, a bass player, and Greg Handevidt, a guitarist. They had driven out in Ellefson's van five days after finishing high school, hoping to study guitar. After a rocky first meeting they ended up drinking beer with Mustaine all night, and soon they were his bandmates. A short lived singer called Lor Kane suggested using the name Megadeth. Because there were now two Daves, Ellefson picked up the nickname Junior, and it stuck for decades.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Finding the rest of the band was hard. Mustaine and Ellefson auditioned around fifteen drummers, looking for one who could handle the odd time changes in the songs. Singers came and went too, including John Cyriis, who went on to found the band Agent Steel. After months of failed searches, Mustaine reluctantly took the microphone himself. He always said he never wanted to be a singer. He wanted to be one of the best guitar players in the world. Handevidt headed home to Minnesota, where he had a young child. In March 1984, with drummer Lee Rauch, the band recorded a three song demo tape called Last Rites, with early versions of songs that would land on their first album.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For their first shows, Megadeth borrowed a guitarist from another young band. Kerry King of Slayer filled in, starting with their debut gig on the seventeenth of February 1984 at Ruthie's Inn in Berkeley. He played five shows in all, but Slayer already had a record out, and he went back to them. Rauch soon left too. Then a local manager called Jay Jones, who also dealt drugs, took the band under his wing, found Mustaine and Ellefson somewhere to live, and introduced them to a jazz fusion drummer named Gar Samuelson. Samuelson's old bandmate Chris Poland followed at the end of 1984. Poland later said he just rented a room at their rehearsal studio, played very loud, and Mustaine wandered in, drunk, and asked him to join.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The independent label Combat Records gave the band eight thousand dollars to make a debut album at a studio in Malibu. A large part of that money went on drugs, alcohol and food. Mustaine got rid of the producer, the label found another four thousand dollars, and the band finished the record themselves. Ellefson later said you can hear the tempos drift depending on which drug had fuelled each take. Killing Is My Business and Business Is Good came out in June 1985. It sounded rough, but its speed and skill turned heads. It included Mechanix, Mustaine's original, much faster take on the song Metallica had reworked as The Four Horsemen. It also introduced the band's skeletal mascot, Vic Rattlehead.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Peace Sells and the chaos years

Success came alongside real mess. Chris Poland missed the band's first tour in 1985 because of his heroin addiction, and a guitarist called Mike Albert stood in until Poland returned that October. When Megadeth started their second album, Mustaine and Ellefson were effectively homeless. Poland and Samuelson, both using heroin, would turn up hours late. Mustaine said he wrote the words to Peace Sells on the wall of the warehouse where they were living, because he did not even have paper. He wanted to push back against the way metal fans were mocked as idiots on television. Midway through the sessions, Tim Carr of Capitol Records signed the band, bought the album from Combat, and brought in producer Paul Lani to remix it.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Peace Sells but Who's Buying came out in the autumn of 1986. Mustaine had lifted the title from a Reader's Digest article, and the cover by Ed Repka showed Vic Rattlehead as an estate agent selling off the ruins of the United Nations building. The title track became their first video, and its opening bass line was used for years to introduce MTV News. The album is now seen as a thrash classic. That same September, Metallica's Cliff Burton was killed in a tour bus crash in Sweden. Mustaine was hurt that he heard the news from a friend and not from his old bandmates. He wrote the music for In My Darkest Hour in a single sitting, and first played it live with Burton's parents in the audience.[1] [2] [3]

In early 1987 Megadeth opened for Alice Cooper, and Cooper quietly took Mustaine aside to warn him about the pace he was living at. Mustaine later said that talk broke through the hard shell he had built around himself. The drugs won that year, though. After the tour ended in Hawaii, Mustaine fired Gar Samuelson and Chris Poland, accusing Poland of pawning band equipment to pay for heroin. Samuelson's drum technician, Chuck Behler, took over the drums. The new guitar seat went first to Jay Reynolds of the band Malice, then to his own guitar teacher, Jeff Young. The third album, So Far, So Good, So What, arrived in January 1988, with Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones guesting on a cover of Anarchy in the UK.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the eleventh of May 1988, Megadeth played the Antrim Forum in Northern Ireland. Mustaine had spent the day drinking and knew almost nothing about the Troubles. Earlier, he had been told that bootleg Megadeth shirts were being sold for the cause, and he did not realise that meant the Irish Republican Army. On stage, after a coin hit him, he borrowed a Paul McCartney song title, said Ireland should be given back to the Irish, and dedicated Anarchy in the UK to the cause. Fighting broke out in the crowd, and the band were driven out in a bulletproof bus. Mustaine said he only learned what he had done the next morning, when Ellefson told him over breakfast. The night later inspired Holy Wars.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The summer of 1988 should have been a triumph. On the twentieth of August, Megadeth played the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in England, in front of around a hundred thousand people. But Ellefson was sick from heroin withdrawal, the set limped along, and management pulled the band off the European tour that followed. Mustaine told Q magazine he had been spending five hundred dollars a day on cocaine and heroin for years. He fired Behler and Young, and cancelled a tour of Australia. He also accused Young of an affair with his girlfriend, which Young denied. Behler's own drum technician, a young session player named Nick Menza, got the drum job. By then, the band had become known for replacing members almost as fast as it wrote songs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1989 Megadeth did not play a single show. They did record Alice Cooper's No More Mr. Nice Guy for the horror film Shocker. The director Penelope Spheeris, who filmed the video, recalled that Mustaine was so affected by heroin that he could not sing and play guitar at the same time, so the two had to be filmed separately. Then, in March, he crashed his car into a parked vehicle that turned out to have an off duty police officer inside. He was arrested for driving under the influence and for possessing drugs, and a court ordered him into rehab. For the first time in around ten years, he came out clean. It was not his last stay in treatment, but it saved the band.[1] [2] [3]

The classic lineup and the big time

The hunt for a new lead guitarist became a small legend of its own. Slash of Guns N' Roses jammed with the band but stayed where he was. Dimebag Darrell of Pantera was offered the job, but he wanted to bring his brother, drummer Vinnie Paul, and Mustaine already had Menza. Jeff Loomis, who later formed Nevermore, auditioned at eighteen and was judged too young. Chris Poland even demoed the new songs and later said he was ninety nine percent ready to rejoin before his manager talked him out of it. The job went to Marty Friedman, formerly of the shred duo Cacophony. Mustaine admitted he was put off at first by Friedman's two coloured hair, until he actually heard him play.[1] [2] [3] [4]

With Friedman on lead guitar and Menza on drums, the band made Rust in Peace, working with producer Mike Clink at Rumbo Recorders in Los Angeles. Mustaine took the title from a bumper sticker hoping the world's nuclear weapons would one day rust in peace. The album came out on the twenty fourth of September 1990 and reached number twenty three in America and number eight in Britain. It opens with Holy Wars, which grew out of that night in Antrim, and it includes Hangar 18, a tale of alien bodies hidden by the military. Rust in Peace went platinum, earned a Grammy nomination, and is still ranked among the finest thrash albums ever made. Many fans call this the definitive Megadeth lineup.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Megadeth spent 1990 and 1991 on the road with their peers. The Clash of the Titans tour put them alongside Slayer, Testament and Suicidal Tendencies in Europe, and then with Slayer and Anthrax in America, with a young Seattle band called Alice in Chains opening. In January 1991 they played Rock in Rio to a vast crowd. Ellefson later said that tour turned a broken down, drugged out band into one that could fill arenas on its own. In April 1991 Mustaine married Pamela Anne Casselberry. Their son Justis was born in 1992 and their daughter Electra followed in 1998. The couple are still married as of 2026, and Electra went on to pursue a career in country music.[1] [2] [3]

Countdown to Extinction was recorded in Burbank in early 1992 with producer Max Norman, and for the first time all four members wrote songs. The Los Angeles riots broke out during the sessions, and a curfew forced the band out of the studio at six every evening. Menza suggested the title after reading a Time magazine story. Released on the fourteenth of July 1992, the album entered the Billboard chart at number two. The only record above it was by Billy Ray Cyrus, and Mustaine admitted he obsessed over that for years. The album went double platinum. Symphony of Destruction became their only entry on the Billboard Hot 100, and MTV cut its video's assassination scene. That summer MTV even sent Mustaine to report on the Democratic National Convention.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The good times cracked again in 1993. One month into an American tour with Stone Temple Pilots, Mustaine relapsed and ended up in a hospital emergency room, and the rest of the dates, including shows in Japan, were cancelled. After seven weeks of rehab he was back, and the band recorded Angry Again for the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero. That summer they were dropped from Aerosmith's tour after only a handful of shows. Then they moved operations to Arizona, where Max Norman had them build a studio inside a rented warehouse in Phoenix. Youthanasia came out on the first of November 1994, reached number four and went platinum. Its ballad A Tout le Monde was banned by MTV as a suicide song, which Mustaine always denied.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chasing radio, losing the classic lineup

After Youthanasia, Megadeth took most of 1996 off and came close to breaking up. Mustaine made a punk flavoured side album called The Craving with Lee Ving of the band Fear, under the name MD.45, with drummer Jimmy DeGrasso. When the band regrouped, a new manager, Bud Prager, took an active role in the songwriting and pushed for radio hits. They recorded in Nashville with the country pop producer Dann Huff. Cryptic Writings came out in June 1997 and reached number ten. Its single Trust climbed to number five on the Mainstream Rock chart, the band's best showing there, and earned another Grammy nomination. Some longtime fans felt the band was drifting away from thrash, but all four singles got rock radio play.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In the summer of 1998, on the Ozzfest tour, Nick Menza found a tumour on his knee and left for surgery. It turned out to be benign. Jimmy DeGrasso filled in, and the arrangement became permanent. Menza said that while he was still recovering in hospital, Mustaine phoned him and simply told him his services were no longer needed. The next album went even further toward the mainstream. Mustaine said a remark from Lars Ulrich, that he should take more risks, shaped its direction. Risk came out on the thirty first of August 1999, again produced by Dann Huff, with Prager credited on five songs. It had very little metal on it. Fans revolted, and Mustaine later called it the lowest point of his career.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the fourteenth of July 1999, former drummer Gar Samuelson died of liver failure in Orange City, Florida, at the age of forty one. Eleven days later Megadeth played the Woodstock 1999 festival, and Mustaine dedicated Peace Sells to his memory. At the end of that year Marty Friedman announced he was leaving. His last show with the band was on the ninth of January 2000 in San Diego. Mustaine said Friedman quit when told the band was going back to heavy metal. Friedman described things differently, and in his memoir he wrote about suffering severe panic attacks in his final months. He moved to Tokyo in 2003 and became a genuine television celebrity in Japan.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Al Pitrelli, formerly of Savatage and the Trans Siberian Orchestra, took Friedman's place in January 2000. That July, after fifteen years, Megadeth left Capitol Records and signed with Sanctuary. Mustaine fired Bud Prager, took over production himself, and wrote nearly everything on The World Needs a Hero, which came out in May 2001 and reached number sixteen. Vic Rattlehead returned to the cover for the first time in a decade, and that caused trouble. Malaysia's government judged the mascot unfit for young people, and the band cancelled its Kuala Lumpur show after being told they could be arrested. Their American tour was cut short by the September 11 attacks, and two Arizona shows that November became their first live album, Rude Awakening.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A broken arm and a new faith

In January 2002, Mustaine went into hospital to have a kidney stone removed. The painkillers he was given triggered a relapse, and he checked himself into a treatment centre in Texas. There he fell asleep with his left arm hanging over the back of a chair. The pressure crushed the radial nerve, and he woke up unable to grip or even make a fist with his fretting hand. On the third of April 2002 he announced that Megadeth was over. His doctors told him a full recovery could take a year, with no guarantee. He spent months in physical therapy five days a week, teaching his left hand to play again. He later admitted that he had grown tired of his bandmates, and that ending the band felt like a relief.[1] [2] [3] [4]

During that recovery, Mustaine became a born again Christian. He said that after drifting back toward the Jehovah's Witness faith of his childhood, he looked up at a cross and asked himself what he had to lose. His new faith changed the band. He stopped playing some older songs, including The Conjuring, which he said contained real instructions for hexes from his teenage dabbling in black magic. He also made it a policy not to share bills with bands he saw as satanic. In 2005 that led to a row when the bands Rotting Christ and Dissection dropped out of shows with Megadeth in Greece and Israel. Around the same time he threw himself into martial arts, which he credits with helping to keep him sober.[1] [2] [3] [4]

By 2004 Mustaine could play again, and he started a solo album with session drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and bassist Jimmie Lee Sloas. Contract terms with the band's European label meant it had to come out as Megadeth. He tried to bring back the Rust in Peace lineup, but only Nick Menza agreed, and he was sent home during rehearsals. Chris Poland came back to play guitar solos as a session player. Meanwhile, David Ellefson sued Mustaine for eighteen and a half million dollars. He claimed the band had started as an equal partnership and that he had been cut out of publishing and merchandise money. Mustaine countersued, saying Ellefson had signed a settlement. The case was dismissed in 2005, and the countersuit was settled out of court.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The System Has Failed came out in September 2004 and was hailed as a return to form. Mustaine at first called it a farewell record, but on the road he changed his mind, and at a show in Buenos Aires in October 2005 he told twenty five thousand fans that Megadeth would carry on. He launched a travelling metal festival called Gigantour, named after the cartoon Gigantor that he loved as a boy. New members arrived in quick succession: brothers Glen and Shawn Drover, then James LoMenzo on bass, then guitarist Chris Broderick in 2008. United Abominations reached number eight in 2007 and Endgame followed in 2009. That year Metallica entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Mustaine was told he did not qualify, because he had never recorded with them.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Big Four and a homecoming

In February 2010, drummer Shawn Drover texted David Ellefson to say that if there was ever a time for him and Mustaine to talk, this was it. Days later Ellefson was back, eight years after the band split, and he said it felt as if he had never left. That summer brought a moment fans had waited decades for. Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, the so called Big Four of thrash, played together on the same bill at festivals across Europe. The show in Sofia, Bulgaria, was broadcast live around the world, and Mustaine hugged his old Metallica bandmates on stage. In October 2010, Kerry King joined Megadeth on stage for Rattlehead, the first time they had played together since 1984.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Big Four reached Yankee Stadium in September 2011, and that December Mustaine joined Metallica at their thirtieth anniversary shows in San Francisco. The albums kept coming. Thirteen arrived in November 2011, and Super Collider reached number six in 2013 on Mustaine's own label, Tradecraft, though fans were cool on its lighter sound. His politics made headlines too. On stage in Singapore in 2012, he claimed President Barack Obama was staging mass shootings, including the Aurora cinema massacre, to push through a gun ban. Survivors of the Aurora shooting objected, and it drew wide criticism. He had also voiced doubts about where Obama was born. In 2012 he had neck surgery too, which he blamed on decades of headbanging.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

2014 was one of the band's hardest years. In May, Ellefson's brother died of cancer, and June dates were cancelled so he could grieve. A planned concert in Tel Aviv was called off because of the war in Gaza, and the band pulled out of a metal cruise after Mustaine had complications from spinal surgery. In October, his mother in law, who had Alzheimer's disease, went missing from a campground. Her remains were found in late November. That same month, Shawn Drover and Chris Broderick both quit within hours of each other. Mustaine then tried to reunite the Rust in Peace lineup. Menza rehearsed with the band, but walked away, saying the deal would have meant working on the new album without pay until the tour began.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Instead, Mustaine recruited Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro of Angra and Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler. Dystopia came out on the twenty second of January 2016 and reached number three. Adler could not juggle two bands, so Dirk Verbeuren of Soilwork took over the drums. Then came sad news. On the twenty first of May 2016, Nick Menza collapsed on stage three songs into a set with his jazz fusion band OHM, at the Baked Potato club in Los Angeles. OHM had been founded by another Megadeth veteran, Chris Poland. Menza was fifty one, and the cause was heart disease. In February 2017 Dystopia's title track finally won Megadeth a Grammy, their first after years of nominations.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Cancer, scandal and the long goodbye

In June 2019, while the band was working on its sixteenth album, Mustaine announced he had throat cancer. Nearly every show that year was cancelled, including a slot supporting Ozzy Osbourne. He later said his first reaction was not fear but anger. He went through fifty one radiation treatments and nine rounds of chemotherapy, and he talked openly about how much prayer meant to him. On the thirty first of January 2020, halfway through a show at the SSE Arena in London, he told the crowd his doctor had declared him completely free of cancer. Weeks later the COVID pandemic shut down touring around the world, and the new album slipped again. It became the longest recording process in Megadeth's history.[1] [2] [3]

In May 2021, sexually explicit videos of David Ellefson were posted online, along with accusations that he had groomed an underage fan. Ellefson and the woman both said she was an adult and that their online encounters had been consensual. Police in Scottsdale later confirmed she was nineteen, and Ellefson filed a complaint against whoever leaked the videos. Megadeth fired him anyway. Mustaine said the band did not know every detail, but that with an already strained relationship, working together had become impossible. Ellefson's bass parts on the new album were replaced by Steve Di Giorgio of Testament, and James LoMenzo, the man Ellefson had replaced in 2010, came back as the band's full time bassist in 2022.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Sick, the Dying and the Dead came out in September 2022 and debuted at number three in America. In February 2023, at the Budokan in Tokyo, Marty Friedman walked on stage with Megadeth for the first time since 2000, and he joined them again that summer at the Wacken festival in Germany. Later that year Kiko Loureiro stepped away to be with his young children at home. He recommended his own stand in, the Finnish guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari, who became a full member in November 2023. Loureiro later said he chose his personal life and had no regrets, and he left on friendly terms, something he admitted had not always been the case with Megadeth.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the fourteenth of August 2025, Vic Rattlehead announced in a video that the next Megadeth album would be the last, followed by a farewell tour. Mustaine said most musicians never get to leave on their own terms, and he wanted to. The self titled album came out on the twenty third of January 2026, and it gave Megadeth something they had chased since 1992: a number one album on the Billboard 200. It was the first time in a career spanning almost forty years of charting. The album closes with a bonus cover of Metallica's Ride the Lightning, a song Mustaine co wrote. He said it was about showing respect to James Hetfield, and admitted he had not spoken to him in a long time.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Mustaine has explained why he is stopping. He has Dupuytren's contracture, a condition that thickens tissue in the palm and pulls his fingers inward, and at a book launch for his memoir In My Darkest Hour he held up his left hand to show the audience. The farewell tour began in February 2026, and he has said it could run for three to five years. As of 2026 the band is Mustaine, bassist James LoMenzo, guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari and drummer Dirk Verbeuren. Megadeth have sold more than fifty million records, and dozens of musicians have passed through the lineup. Bands from Pantera to Trivium cite them as an influence, and they stand forever as one of the Big Four of thrash metal.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The people around Megadeth

Dave Mustaine and David Ellefson. They met as neighbours in Hollywood in 1983 and built Megadeth together, surviving addiction and endless lineup changes. The partnership collapsed in 2002, and Ellefson sued for eighteen and a half million dollars in 2004. They reunited in 2010, with Ellefson saying the band was stronger with both of them. It ended for good in 2021, when Mustaine fired him after the leaked videos, citing an already strained relationship.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dave Mustaine and James Hetfield. They were bandmates in Metallica for two years, and their clashes, including the fight over a dog, helped end Mustaine's time there. The feud simmered for decades. They grew friendlier around the Big Four shows, then drifted apart again over a planned release of an old demo. In 2025 Mustaine said his cover of Ride the Lightning was about showing Hetfield respect, but admitted he no longer had his phone number.[1] [2] [3]

Dave Mustaine and Lars Ulrich. Ulrich hired Mustaine through a newspaper ad and helped fire him two years later. Yet he praised Megadeth early on, joined them on stage at Donington in 1988, and named My Last Words as his favourite Megadeth song. In the Metallica film Some Kind of Monster, Mustaine told him painfully how the firing had shaped his life. Mustaine later credited an Ulrich remark about taking risks with shaping the album Risk.[1] [2] [3]

Dave Mustaine and Marty Friedman. Friedman's exotic, melodic solos defined Megadeth's peak from Rust in Peace to Youthanasia, and fans still see their pairing as the band's golden era. Their split in 1999 left each blaming the other for the band's musical direction. Friedman built a new career as a celebrity in Japan. The ice finally broke in 2023, when he joined Megadeth on stage at the Budokan in Tokyo.[1] [2] [3]

Dave Mustaine and Nick Menza. Menza went from drum technician to star drummer of the classic lineup, and even named Countdown to Extinction. Their bond broke in 1998 when Mustaine let him go after knee surgery, and reunion attempts in 2004 and 2014 both failed. Menza said in 2015 that Mustaine had shown him no love. When Menza died in 2016, Mustaine tweeted in disbelief that he woke at four in the morning to the news.[1] [2] [3]

Dave Mustaine and Alice Cooper. Megadeth opened for Alice Cooper in 1987, when Mustaine was at his wildest. Cooper called him onto his bus and warned him to pace himself, a moment Mustaine says broke through the armour he had built after his mother moved out. He turned to Cooper again for advice in the Rust in Peace era, and says Cooper became his godfather and one of the people he loves most.[1] [2]

Dave Mustaine and Kerry King. Slayer's guitarist helped Megadeth play their very first gigs in 1984, as a favour to a player he admired. King went back to Slayer, but he later joined Mustaine on stage in 2010 for Rattlehead. King recalls Mustaine pointing out that they were the only two musicians who had played in two of the Big Four bands.[1] [2] [3]

Dave Mustaine and Pamela Casselberry. They married in April 1991, just as Megadeth were becoming an arena band, and have stayed together ever since. They have two children, Justis, born in 1992, and Electra, born in 1998, who has pursued country music. When Mustaine disbanded Megadeth in 2002, he said he wanted to give more time to Pam and the children.[1] [2]

Dave Mustaine and Chris Poland. Poland's jazz fusion playing coloured Megadeth's first two albums, but heroin and accusations of stolen gear got him fired in 1987. Mustaine still wanted him back in 1989, and Poland nearly returned. He came back as a session guitarist on The System Has Failed in 2004. Years later his band OHM gave Nick Menza a home, and Menza died on stage with them.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dave Mustaine and Lee Hazlewood. Megadeth's 1985 version of These Boots Are Made for Walkin' rewrote the lyrics. Years later Hazlewood, who wrote the song, called the changes vile and offensive, and under legal threat it was pulled from pressings from 1995 to 2001. Mustaine bristled, saying Hazlewood had cashed the royalty cheques for a decade. In 2018 the band finally released a version with the original words.[1] [2] [3]

Dave Mustaine and Max Norman. Norman mixed Rust in Peace and co produced Countdown to Extinction and Youthanasia, the band's biggest sellers. He pushed them toward slower tempos and tighter songs, and even had them build a studio in a Phoenix warehouse. Mustaine praised his ideas, but Norman later accused Mustaine of trying to take some of his credit.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Megadeth

• MTV News used the opening bass line of Peace Sells as its theme for years. Mustaine said MTV News used the bass line minus one note, so he did not get paid for years. He joked that he and MTV stopped sending each other Christmas cards long ago.[1] [2]
• Lars Ulrich of Metallica has named My Last Words as his favourite Megadeth song. My Last Words, a lesser known track on Peace Sells about Russian roulette, is the one Ulrich has picked. He also wrote liner notes praising the album for its twenty fifth anniversary reissue.[1] [2]
• The title Peace Sells but Who's Buying came from a Reader's Digest article. Mustaine borrowed the phrase from an article titled Peace Would Sell But No One Would Buy It. The album's cover shows Vic Rattlehead selling off a ruined United Nations building.[1]
• Rust in Peace was named after a bumper sticker. Driving home from Lake Elsinore in California, Mustaine saw a car sticker wishing that all nuclear weapons would rust in peace. He liked it so much he made it the album title.[1] [2]
• Mustaine kept the very first take of his solo on Holy Wars. He says it is the only song where he recorded a solo and kept the first take, which is why the amp screams at the start. He later posted a correct version of the main riff, saying most online tabs had it wrong.[1] [2]
• Hangar 18 began life in Mustaine's first band, Panic, under the title N2RHQ. The odd name was shorthand for into our headquarters. Rust in Peace Polaris also came from Panic, where it was called Child Saint.[1] [2] [3]
• The Rust in Peace cover shows real world leaders examining an alien. Ed Repka's painting includes Mikhail Gorbachev, George H. W. Bush, Toshiki Kaifu and Richard von Weizsacker, gathered with Vic Rattlehead around an alien body.[1]
• Megadeth, Arizona, launched in 1994, is widely credited as the first official artist website. Capitol sales director Robin Bechtel pitched it on a thirty thousand dollar budget. It had a chat room called the Megadiner, and Mustaine says an anonymous troll spammed it constantly.[1] [2]
• The song Countdown to Extinction won an animal welfare award from the Humane Society. The title track, which criticises canned hunting, won a Genesis Award in 1993, making Megadeth the only metal band ever to receive one.[1] [2]
• Billy Ray Cyrus kept Countdown to Extinction from reaching number one in 1992. Achy Breaky Heart sat on top while Megadeth debuted at number two. Mustaine said it made him determined to reach number one at least once in his life, which he finally did in 2026.[1] [2] [3]
• Symphony of Destruction opens with a snippet of Mozart's Requiem. After the sound of an orchestra tuning up, you hear a few seconds of choir from the Requiem before the main riff kicks in.[1]
• Mustaine began writing Symphony of Destruction on the back of a sushi receipt. He says a headache struck while he was driving home through Toluca Lake, and the first lines came to him right there.[1]
• Set the World Afire opens with a sample of an old Ink Spots record. The 1941 song I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire plays at the start, a fitting joke for the first song Mustaine wrote after leaving Metallica.[1]
• Steve Jones played on Megadeth's Anarchy in the UK with his arm in a cast. Mustaine says the Sex Pistol had just been knocked off his motorbike. He asked for a hundred dollars plus a crude favour, and Mustaine paid him a thousand dollars instead.[1] [2]
• Mustaine changed the words to Anarchy in the UK because he misheard them. He says he simply could not make out Johnny Rotten's diction, and Rotten later grumbled that Mustaine had messed up his lyrics.[1] [2]
• The Megadeth song 502 is named after California's police code for drunk driving. The track appeared on So Far, So Good, So What in 1988. The following year Mustaine was arrested for driving under the influence.[1]
• The debut album's cover was a plastic skull decorated with tinfoil and ketchup. Combat Records lost Mustaine's intended artwork and improvised a replacement. The band were mortified, and Metal Hammer later listed it among the ugliest album covers ever.[1] [2]
• Vic Rattlehead's first name is short for victim. Mustaine says Rattlehead came from his mother warning that headbanging would rattle something loose in his head. The mascot was based on the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys.[1] [2]
• Gigantour, Mustaine's metal festival, was named after a cartoon he loved as a child. The cartoon was Gigantor. He said he wanted to give American fans an affordable, varied alternative to Ozzfest.[1] [2]
• Mustaine earned a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt in 2025, at the age of sixty four. He also holds black belts in taekwondo and karate, and was named a goodwill ambassador by the World Taekwondo Federation in 2007. He credits martial arts with helping him stay off drugs.[1] [2]
• Mustaine runs a winery called House of Mustaine, with wines named after Megadeth songs. He got into wine after Megadeth performed with the San Diego Symphony, and started the winery in 2015. The band also has its own beer line.[1]
• Kerry King and Dave Mustaine are the only musicians to have played in two Big Four bands. King played Megadeth's first five shows in 1984, and says Mustaine pointed out their unique status when the Big Four toured together.[1]
• Mustaine played a guitarist rejected for being too fast on The Drew Carey Show. In a 1998 episode, the characters audition him for their band and tell him to slow down. He replies that it is supposed to sound that way.[1]
• Mustaine once voiced a frozen version of himself in the cartoon Duck Dodgers. In a 2005 episode he is thawed out because nobody rocks louder, and Megadeth play Back in the Day. He also won an episode of Rock and Roll Jeopardy.[1]
• Marty Friedman has appeared on more than seven hundred Japanese television programmes. He moved to Tokyo in 2003, speaks Japanese, and played guitar on Moon Pride, the theme for the anime Sailor Moon Crystal.[1] [2]
• Nick Menza started drumming at the age of two on Jack DeJohnette's drum kit. During a concert intermission the toddler climbed onto the jazz great's kit and began playing. His father was the jazz saxophonist Don Menza.[1]
• Nick Menza nearly lost an arm in a power saw accident in 2007. He needed metal plates and long rehabilitation, then auctioned off the bloodstained saw blade and an X ray from the accident.[1]
• Crush 'Em was written specifically to be played in wrestling arenas. The Risk single ended up on the Universal Soldier The Return soundtrack and was played at WCW wrestling events and NHL games.[1] [2]
• Youthanasia was meant to be the first album recorded entirely on computer hard drives. Mustaine and producer Max Norman tried to track it digitally with early Pro Tools, but the technology was not ready, and they fell back on tape.[1] [2]
• Megadeth's 2026 number one ended one of the longest waits in Billboard history. It came thirty nine years after their chart debut, the longest wait for a first number one since David Bowie's Blackstar in 2016. It was also their best vinyl week ever.[1]
• When Megadeth won their Grammy in 2017, the house band played a Metallica song. As Dystopia won Best Metal Performance, the band played Master of Puppets, which upset many fans. Drummer Chris Adler, who played on the track, did not attend.[1] [2]
• Megadeth's drum seat passed down a chain of drum technicians. Chuck Behler was Gar Samuelson's drum tech before replacing him, and Nick Menza was Behler's drum tech before replacing him in turn.[1] [2] [3]
• A band member of Nick Menza's died in the 2003 Station nightclub fire. Guitarist Ty Longley, who played on Menza's solo project, was touring with Great White when the fire in Rhode Island killed a hundred people.[1]
• David Ellefson was considered as Metallica's bassist twice. He says he was in the frame after Cliff Burton's death in 1986, and again after Jason Newsted left in 2001.[1]
• Mustaine wrote a book about the story behind every Megadeth song, and it was lost. Called Score, it covered the first twenty years of songs. He says he handed it to Sanctuary Records, which went bankrupt, and he never found out what happened to it.[1]
• The videos for Hangar 18 and Crush 'Em were filmed at the same power station. Both were shot at the Scattergood Generating Station in Los Angeles, nine years apart.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.