There was never a question of who steered the ship in Megadeth.
After his firing from Metallica, Dave Mustaine’s next band was his first shot at going solo.
While the rest of Deth have been a revolving door, Jeff Young isn’t looking for a pat on the back from Mustaine either.
When asked about why he was kicked out of the band, Young blamed it on Mustaine’s drug paranoia saying,
“I remember telling [Mustaine] ‘just stick to one thing, pot, coke, whatever it’s going to be. Then he called me up saying ‘You’re trying to make something happen with [my girlfriend] and I’m gonna fire you from this band. I think it was coming from the freebasing he was doing.”
After years out of the fold, Young has been working with former bassist David Ellefson in Kings of Thrash.
While the band features some classic Megadeth songs, Young isn’t going to ask Mustaine for permission to cover the songs saying,
“We couldn’t care less… and it’s a win-win for him. Because all the publishing, he’s getting all that money. We’re making him money and he doesn’t have to do anything. So, we’re performing the songs because they’re part of our history. The fans want to hear them and we will benefit from that, and so will he.”
Despite not being on the best of terms, Young likes to remember the good times. When asked about putting Kings of Thrash together Young said,
“It’s a way for us to give fans what they want. Because in the age of social media, you can imagine, we get emails with people asking us, ‘would Megadeth ever do a reunion?’ or, ‘God, I’d love to hear those songs from ‘So Far, So Good So What’ played live’, and Ellefson was getting that about ‘Killing is My Business.’ This is the only way they’ll ever get it because you’ve got to have a singer that can sing the songs and pull it off.”
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