DAVE MUSTAINE: 'I'm Not A Good Liar'

Matt Blair of ChartAttack.com recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ChartAttack.com: You're balancing a live tour and a book tour right now. And you've mentioned in the book that you have a renewed focus on your family, but you're doing a job which is keeping you on the road by the very nature of it. What sort of changes have you had to make to keep your family in focus?

Mustaine: Well, a lot of it was — you know, just by way of my faith and sorting out my life — it's made me appear to be more desirable to my family. They want to be around me more now. There's a lot of stuff that's transpired over this whole healing process that has made me a better husband and a better dad. The short answer to your question is that they want to be out here with me, and have already shown that by being on tour with me. We've spent more time together on the road just this year than I've spent with my wife in any previous entire year, you know? In a family, it's pretty much like having all four tires on a car going in the same direction. When one kind of goes off a little bit, and it's out of alignment, it impedes the progress of a family. So we all have to work together, and I think because I was gone to an extent, it forced my wife to be the dad also. And that's not a role that women are naturally created for.

ChartAttack.com: One thing that sets the book apart from the typical rock 'n' roll memoir is that while it starts off as sort of a "how to" tale of how to be a rock star, as you get closer to the end it actually ends up being more of a "how to" on how to be a father and live a family life. Are you hoping that this is something that other people, like your fans as they grow, might follow suit on?

Mustaine: I wasn't really making a "Dave Mustaine For Dummies" book, but yeah, if it helps people, that's great. I think human nature is that we want to help people, it makes us feel good. It's helped me a lot in a lot of situations where I was feeling the pressure of the music industry, to talk with a fan about what's going on with their life. Talk with somebody in the music business that's less fortunate than you. Take a minute to talk with a band that's, you know, a baby band, and share something with them. Now, granted, the odds are still stacked against us to make it in the music business because it's a difficult business to crack. It's funny, I've gotten to this place in the music business where it just feels so normal and natural to me that I've kind of forgotten how hard it really is to get into it. And I'm really, really grateful for that.

ChartAttack.com: In the book, you don't talk about the way you dealt with your addictions as a model that's going to work for everybody. And with your religion, you've said that this is what works for you, but it doesn't necessarily work for everyone else. You've essentially said that you're not going to tell anybody how to live their life, but this is how you're living yours. Is that just a product of…

Mustaine: [Laughs] What, being able to be real?

ChartAttack.com: Well, living on your own terms, sure.

Mustaine: I just think that, you know, you deserve better. I mean, eyeball to eyeball, right now? I'm not a good liar. I don't like lying. I've lied, I'm not good at it, like I said, and I just don't like it. So for me to have made a book that was based on lies, I would have really compromised my integrity. And I know with my career, I've made a lot of mistakes, and I think the fans have been really forgiving, because I've copped to it. And I've said, "Look, you know, this is why we're a lot alike, because I'm human. And this is why I'll never give up on you, because you're forgiving. And this is hopefully why you'll never give up on me, because I'm honest."

Read the entire interview from ChartAttack.com.