Dave Mustaine Explains Reason For Megadeth's Big Risk

Megadeth surprised fans with the musical direction of their 1999 album "Risk" and now frontman Dave Mustaine explains that the change in style was motived by former guitarist Marty Friedman's "desires to be more of an alternative band."

Dave explained the reasons for the mellower sound on the album during a recent appearance on SiriusXM. He said, "The 'Risk' record had great players on it. You had Marty Friedman playing guitar on it. That was me, personally, capitulating to Marty's desires to be more of an alternative band, and we kept slowing down and slowing down and slowing down.

"If that record would have been called The Dave Mustaine Project and not Megadeth, I think it would have been successful. People wanted a Megadeth record. They didn't wanna see Dave bending over backwards to keep Marty Friedman happy, 'cause Marty wanted us to sound like f***ing Dishwalla."

Despite that Mustaine said,"I don't regret anything that I've released. I think that the record came out at a time when, like I said, I was trying really hard to keep the band together. Marty and Nick [Menza] were... everybody was just fighting all the time, and no one was happy.

"Just think about it: okay, on the surface, what would Dave Mustaine have to do in order to have his management and his band convince him to do a song like 'Crush 'Em'? Which I don't regret at all, but the type of a song that it is, it's not our style of music. It's very kind of like... God, I don't even know how to say it... To me, it sounds like an electronic song; that's the purpose of it, but somebody who didn't really know all of the crazy keyboard sh*t behind it.

He concluded, "That period for us was... I just wanted Marty to be happy, wanted him to stay in the band. I wanted Nick to be happy, wanted him to play. And it just seemed like a Chinese finger puzzle. Every time I would move, it would just... it was the wrong thing. And after a while, I just figured, 'I don't need this sh*t.' And Marty went this way, Nick went that way, and we just all kind of broke up."

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