MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE Talks About GIGANTOUR

MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine recently spoke to Australia's The Metal Forge about a number of topics, including Gigantour, the group's upcoming summer festival tour with DREAM THEATER, FEAR FACTORY, NEVERMORE and THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow:

On the fact that touring has taken somewhat of a lower spot on his list of priorities nowadays:

"We've been taking a lot of breaks in between. I did that specifically because last time, I wasn't being a good husband or a good Dad because I was gone all the time. I was watching myself have to deal with issues with my son that were the same issues I dealt with growing up because he didn't have a Dad around, and I thought, 'I'm not going to let this happen again.' Touring is not that important that I'm going to let my son have the same kind of environmental situations that I had, because I know how hard it's been for me. I don't want to be some pussy bleeding heart or anything like that. I think I've made my story pretty well known over the course of time in the music business. But Justis deserves my attention. So, when we did these tours, we did the States for a month, took a month off, did Europe for a month, took a month off, did here with Japan … two weeks. That's the whole thing. I think it's a total of maybe 19 days that we were gone. We're going to do the States again this summer with Gigantour. We're going to go back to Europe this summer and do some festivals.

"I remember one year, I did 300 dates in one year and 27 shows in a row one time. And you know what? As soon as you stop doing the cocaine and everything like that every single night, 27 shows in a row are hard to do. I enjoy hanging out and I enjoy having a good time with people. But there's a point when you got to realise that you're killing yourself and you're getting diminishing returns when you play. You show up and you're not feeling good and you go out there and play because you have to instead of cancelling because you're afraid of what's going to happen if you're known as somebody who cancels all the time like my buddy Axl [Rose]."

On putting together the Gigantour tour with the intention of providing a heavy and diverse package of metal acts with a ticket price that won't break the average metal fan's piggy bank:

"The truth is that, I'd done Ozzfest a while ago and it was one of the first American festivals I'd been on besides Clash Of The Titans (which toured the USA in 1991 featuring SLAYER, ANTHRAX, MEGADETH with supports from either ALICE IN CHAINS or SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, depending on the show) which was not really a festival so to speak as much as it was a tour. I'd been on a lot of festivals over in Europe that were really different with a lot of different people playing. I did a festival one time in either Denmark, Finland or Sweden. It was OASIS, REM, FAITH NO MORE, SHERYL CROW, BO DIDDLEY and MEGADETH. . . You see some of the festivals that are going on in America. You've got Ozzfest, you've got the Warped tour, you've got a couple of other ones that … y'know, to me, for a kid who doesn't have $70 for a ticket, what does he do? OK, you want to take your old lady, that's $140. Plus gas, food, booze, whatever else you're gonna get. Get a t shirt and get a program. You spend like four or five hundred dollars by the time the whole thing is done. We just wanted to have something that was a fun alternative that was affordable to what's going on out there where they are really good bands. It's not like you get two really big name bands and then you get a bunch of rubbish underneath it and I'm not saying that about Ozzfest. But for me, I wanted to make sure that everybody on the main stage was really credible, cool bands. With DREAM THEATER, they're not like MEGADETH but they're great players and have got a great following. FEAR FACTORY, not like MEGADETH but they're a great band and they've got a great following. They're not as big as we are but they're as cool in their own respect. DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN I don't know nothing of. But I do know that the Drover brothers (guitarist Glen and drummer Shawn) know them and they think they're fantastic musicians and you know what? I respect that. I look forward to meeting them and getting to know them. NEVERMORE, I know the singer and I think one of the other guys in the band. I know that their guitar player auditioned for MEGADETH a long time ago and I said he was too young and I don't even remember that.

"So I'm excited with what's going on on the first stage. We're going to have a second stage, and a lot of the bands that we had initially had approached to be on that first stage, because they didn't know how big this thing was going to be, they said 'Well we're going to go do something else' and now they're saying 'Please let us on your second stage?'. I'm like, 'Bro, if you just would've believed… if you just would've had the faith, then you'd be on the first stage with us.' I'm not a punishing person. I was in the past. We all have a punishing side to us. I'm like, 'Hey, there's first stage next year.'"

Read Dave Mustaine's entire interview with The Metal Forge at this location.