Category: Podcast

full in bloom: Guitarist Jeff Young talks about Megadeth, Dave Mustaine, and Chris Poland. If you would like to listen to the interview, watch the video clip below (the excerpt has also been transcribed).

TRANSCRIBED EXCERPT:

full in bloom: On that Megadeth tour (So Far, So Good… So What!), when you watch old videos, and of course, all the stories are out there with Mustaine anyways, he looks, especially to me, on that tour, more drugged out than any other tour. What was he like to deal with on a daily basis?

Jeff Young:

I was straight-edge when I met those guys. So, you can imagine it wasn’t a great deal of fun for me and that probably speaks to why my tenure in the band was so short. I didn’t want to be around the junk.

At some point, Mustaine said the reason why Megadeth left Australia early was because you needed heroin.

Yeah, that’s pot calling the kettle black if I ever heard. Blame-shifting, is that what we call that? Cowardly Lying. Buck passing. What do we call that? I think we all know who ran out of heroin. I think we all know Jeff Young didn’t have the power to cancel that tour. What kind of piece of shit does that? Tries to shift the blame and put it on the person who wasn’t abusing.

And then in another clip, Mustaine said you tried to bang his fiancée.

Yep.

Is a true?

Untrue. I have answered all this on Music Without Boundaries (Jeff’s Radio Show/Podcast) and it’s far from true. But if you want to alienate your fans from following me to my next project and maybe keep me from getting a new gig, how would you do it if you were a diabolical piece of shit? And I’ve told this on my show. It’s not like a secret, man. He cried that he gave the girl herpes. That was one of his drunken-pissing-and-moaning things. He told me on the tour bus one night. So, would you go near someone if you knew she had STDs? My thing is like, I wouldn’t go near anyone with a 10-foot pole that he had been near, surely not her.

I interviewed producer/engineer Randy Burns, who recorded the ‘Peace Sells’ record. And then of course we did another interview where he talked about Chris Poland’s recording ‘Return to Metalopolis.’ Randy thought Dave was kind of annoyed with the fact that he was so into Chris when he met him. He just couldn’t believe how gifted he was. What was your initial impression of Chris’s playing?

My initial impression is the same as it is today. He’s one of the greatest unsung players on the planet. The only reason I did that gig was to have the honor and pleasure of figuring out his solos. I went down to Capitol Records, I solo’d all his tracks and I figured them out note for note. That’s one of the things Dave likes to say in interviews because he knows I did that and people can go back on YouTube, you can watch, and you can hear how close I did the solos. He likes to say, I didn’t want to do Chris’s solos. I’m like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about, man?’ Chris has a damaged finger. His first finger was damaged in a shop accident in high school. I had more use of my fingers, so I’m going to play my own way. I’m not him, but I did cop as much as I thought was critical to cop. He’s been on my radio show. He’s a great pal. I can’t speak highly enough of him.

The problem with Megadeth is that the band traditionally needs a guitar player that’s that good. And then the other guitarist can’t handle that. Anyone can get that. It’s not hard to understand the dynamic and the psychology behind what goes on in that band. Dave said negative things about Chris, Marty (Friedman), me, Nick (Menza). It’s a tradition. And all of the ex-Megadeth members, we’re all friends and we have a commiseration society. The day Shawn Drover quit Megadeth, I got a friend request from him. Everyone’s cool but one person. And all that drama, you saw I rarely answered it. But when he said he sang my solos in Guitar World, then it was on. All you’ve got to do is go online and just search ‘Jeff Young Slams.’ You don’t even have to type the last bit of that phrase. You’ll see all the stuff that went down. It’s all still there archived. I wrote a really nice blog on MySpace in response to that Guitar World. It was called, ‘Dave Mustaine, Your Pants are on Fire.’

Excerpt from Jeff’s Blog, ‘Dave Mustaine, Your Pants are on Fire’: “Until now, I chose to keep my mouth shut, even for the VH1 ‘Behind the Music’ episode. And boy, could I have eaten up some serious air time with the truth about what REALLY went on ‘behind the music’ in Megadeth. But it’s been well over twenty years and the guy just can’t seem to stop himself.

“Here he goes again, bragging in the pages of Guitar World about how he allegedly sings the solo melodies to all his lead guitarists!!

“Seriously, folks? This guy should take his comedy act on the road, if you’ll pardon the pun.

“I can’t speak for the others but as exceptional as all the Megadeth lead guys have been, I don’t believe his preposterous yarn for a second.

“Regarding the ‘So Far, So Good, So What?!’-era sessions: Mustaine was nowhere in the building during any of my rhythm or lead tracking sessions. And since I came into the process at the last minute, there were also NO band rehearsals whatsoever. So when, exactly, did he sing me those solos?

“Fact is, from what I heard of his unedited ‘So Far, So Good, So What?!’ lead tracks, the guy can barely play his own lead lines, let alone sing some of the stunning lines that Chris, Marty, or Glen played.”

“Let’s be clear for the record: you were not in the studio with me during any of my tracking… not one song, not one second. You know it and I know it. You need to stop blatantly lying to your fans and in the media.

“Perhaps next time you look in the mirror with the ole’ ‘hello me, meet the real me’ crap, you’ll pause to consider why you feel the need to continually perpetuate ridiculous bullshit and belittle others in order to make yourself seem more significant or talented.

“You consider yourself a ‘genius,’ yet after all these years, you’re still not smart enough to comprehend that when you diminish others, you diminish yourself most of all, even as you clearly telegraph your raging insecurity for anyone with an ounce of insight to see. You may also want to go back and re-read the lyrics you wrote in ‘Liar’. Then consider the giant glasshouse you’ve built for yourself and put your silly little stones down, once and for all. At the very least for all the players that helped create all the success you now so arrogantly and selfishly enjoy.

“Oh, and while we’re at it: you may want to stop telling the world that you invented the ‘spider chord!’ Classical guitarists commonly use that approach and it is considered part of the standard classical guitar technique, you fool.”