During a new interview with Full Metal Jackie, at NAMM last weekend, Dave Mustaine discussed Megadeth’s former members and their upcoming album.
Here’s what he said about the band’s lineup:
“Well, it depends if they really have talent and they come in or if they’re a utility player. We’ve had a couple of situations over the past, where the ‘Rust In Peace‘ lineup broke up, Jimmy DeGrasso came in. Jimmy was a great player; we never really congealed, though. Same with Al Pitrelli I love both those guys as people, and I have so much respect for them as players, but for some reason, we never really could get that equilibrium between all of us.
And you know when you’re playing in a band together, that’s as close as you’ll ever get to another person without having sex with them. I mean, you can’t get any closer to a bandmember. After that, James Lomenzo, James MacDonough, Glen Drover, Shawn Drover, Chris Broderick… all those guys… the fans don’t want those guys in Megadeth.”
Here’s what he said about new album plans:
“I’m going in the studio March 02nd no matter what. And the songs that we have right now, we talked to the label, and I said, ‘I’m not making another radio song ever.’ ‘Cause that’s what, you know, record companies want. And I think that was the bane of Megadeth‘s existence. When ‘Countdown‘ came out, we had so many radio songs… From ‘Countdown‘ to ‘Youthanasia‘ to ‘Cryptic‘ to ‘Risk‘ and going down and down and down, it was more radio, radio, radio…
You know, I love all those songs, but it’s not really what Megadeth fans wanna hear; they wanna hear stuff like “The Conjuring“, like “Set The World Afire“, like “Devil’s Island“, stuff like “Holy Wars“, stuff like “Take No Prisoners“… And I get it — I wrote those songs, I can do that in my sleep. But when you’re having someone else say, ‘This is what you have to do,’ either you listen or you don’t.”
Metal Anarchy 