Dave Mustaine ”“ Megadeth

Gigantour ”“ any chances of it coming to these regions?

Gigantour is basically a festival that is meant to be more than one show. Coming here, I think, it would hurt our promoter unless we did it as a team. And out of respect for him and the Indian metal audience, we want to be supportive here, not divisive. And I think that if I brought Gigantour here, I would want to do it with the promoter’s blessings and also take into consideration what the fans really wanna hear. That’s how basically we pick the bands. Listening to what the fans suggest and I’ll see names and stuff and I’ll listen to somebody and see if I like them. Some of the bands that aren’t there, I like them. Some of them, they aren’t”¦ they’re good”¦ I respect them but it’s not necessarily something that I would listen to while having sex.

Is there a dream band for you at Gigantour?

No. It’s very fair. It’s very democratic. Megadeth and Gigantour are not connected. It’s not Davefest. The beautiful thing about this is that we can step off Gigantour and it can go on, we can rest and be with our loved ones. Because we are going home for a month and we are going back after two months. James has a daughter, I have children. He’s got a wife, I’m divorced. We’ve got family at home. Shawn is married with two children and Chris has a girlfriend and you know, there’s loved ones at home”¦ we can’t be away forever. I think the guys that tour and don’t go home are hiding something or they’re hiding from somebody.

Something a lot of Indian fans would want to know. When are you guys coming back?

Well, honestly, when we go home tomorrow, there’s this month off”¦ we end this tour”¦ June 11 is the last date.. we’re gonna go down to South America on the 11^th of June, and 12^th we’ll be going home. They’ll be going to their houses and I’ll be going to the hospital”¦ [laughs] and we’re gonna be going into the studio to wrap up some projects that we have. Little things that need to be fixed like bonus material for the last record, some stuff for the Gigantour DVD from last year, stuff that’ll kinda keep us busy and occupied while the ideas start rolling. We got a recording studio that travels with us, basically a porta-studio – that’s what you call it – and once we got Chris up to speed on everything, we started on putting stuff into the porta-studio.

This is new material?

Yes. Right now, the stuff that we have ”“ that James [Lomenzo, Megadeth bassist] and I have been working on ”“ is transferring the stuff that we have at my house in all of the drives into one particular place where we can see what the next record is gonna consist of. With my stuff and as that gets laid out, James is gonna get a chance to listen to it and see if he has anything compatible with it or how we do the old stone suit where everyone joins in and adds something. Same thing for Chris. As we work together – since Chris is right down a freeway from us”¦ actually north a couple of hours – he’s gonna be at an advantage to be able to hear those pieces. Because Shawn’s already heard them all – we listened to them last time while we started the last record. And we got to the studio and they said we want you to do two more records. Two more songs is what a record is called you know”¦ basically in a contract. I said no, the contract is for eleven and they ended up getting us to agree to twelve and they ask for two more and it’s like their guts”¦ It’s not cool”¦ So we had to go back in and add two more records and during that process we learnt a lot about ourselves.

This story originally appeared in the Rolling Stone India October 2008 issue.