Info Dave Mustaine
Dave Mustaine
Birth date: September 13, 1961
From: La Mesa, California
Personal: Married, 2 children
Physique: Hazel Eyes, strawberry blonde hair, 6”/1.8 meters tall
Joined Metallica: Early 1982
Left Metallica: March 1983
Instrument: Guitar
Story:
Dave was born September 13, 1961 in La Mesa, California, United States. His 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. During his younger years, Dave was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, but he never dedicated his life to the religion through baptism.
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 a local newspaper called "The Recycler", looking for a lead guitarist. In his own words, Dave remembers his first meeting with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich: "I was convinced that I should be in the band and went to rehearsal. I was tuning up when all the other guys in the band went into another room. They weren't talking to me, so I went in and said, 'Well? Am I in the band or not?' and they said, 'You've got the gig.' I couldn't believe how easy it had been and suggested that we get some beer to celebrate.
"Dave's relationship's with Metallica, however, wasn't slated to last, " Brian Slagel, an early former manager of the band, recalls in an interview: "Dave was an incredibly talented guy, but he also had an incredibly large problem with alcohol and drugs. He'd get wasted and become a real crazy person, a raging maniac, and the other guys just couldn't deal with that after a while. I mean, they all drank of course, but I guess they could all hold their liquor better than Dave, and I could see they were beginning to get fed up of seeing Dave drunk out of his mind all the time." One of the final straws for the band was on the road trip from San Francisco to New York to meet up with producer Johnny Z.
The band nearly didn't make it: a crash with a jeep during a snow storm near Wyoming left the band's touring van in a ditch. Nobody in Metallica's van was hurt, but since the incident occurred while Dave was driving punch drunk, the others members silently agreed that as soon as they started the new phase of their career, they had to get rid of Dave. In April of 1983, Dave was fired, officially for his drug use and personality clashes with founding members Ulrich and James Hetfield. The band packed up Dave's gear, drove him to a Greyhound bus station, and put him on a bus back to Los Angeles, leaving their former band member returning home with a trauma that stuck him into a severe depression for years. During his short time in Metallica, Dave toured with the band, co-wrote several songs which were later featured on the albums "Kill 'Em All" and "Ride The Lightning" and recorded several songs with the band, including the "No Life Til Leather" demo tape.
In 1983, Dave was extremely angry after being kicked out of Metallica and his only goal in life was to create a band more successful than Metallica, so he returned to Los Angeles after departing Metallica and formed Megadeth with bass player Dave Ellefson, Kerry King on guitar and Gar Samuelson on drums.