Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine is the latest musician to weigh in on how financially tough it is to be a touring band nowadays.
The frontman recently took part in an interview with The Jeremy White Show, and during the chat, Mustaine opened up about how expensive it is for Megadeth to be on the road. Among the insight he shares, he provides a startling point about how much it costs the band to “sit still,” which is apparently a whopping “$45k.” Speaking to how expensive it is for Megadeth to tour these days, Mustaine shares the following (as transcribed by Blabbermouth):
“Oh, it’s pretty expensive. I think it’s about 45 thousand dollars a day for us just to sit still. I think — it might be 52. But that’s just sitting still; that’s not doing a show. Show days are more expensive… [That’s] salaries, hotel rooms, insurance — everything. The buses, the bus drivers, the trucks, the truck drivers. Yeah, a lot of stuff.”
It’s surreal to imagine that it costs Megadeth so much just to sit still. If it costs the band $45k to chill, how much does an actual show day cost them?
Speaking of buses, at another point during this conversation, Mustaine commented on M. Shadows‘ past comment regarding expensive busing for Avenged Sevenfold‘s upcoming tour; specifically, the A7X frontman said that the band’s busing will cost $2 million more than it did prior to the pandemic.
Providing his thoughts on this past comment made by Shadows, Mustaine says:
“I think that might be ’cause his band takes out more buses. For example, we take two. I’m sure that they probably take more than that. And I think because they’re so successful that there could be — I’m not saying this — but there could be certain people that would be more willing to give them an incentive to use their company because of what great promotion it would be to have those guys using a bus company. If I had a brand new bus and I wanted to get popular, bands like Avenged would be a great band for promoting your company.
“So you would think charging these guys two million bucks, man, they would either have to have a lot of buses or he’s talking about a long time. Buses are generally between five to 10 thousand dollars a week. ‘Cause that includes fuel and the driver and his hotel. Sometimes you have to do double drives in Europe; you have to do that.”
There are always going to be financial challenges while touring, but it would be great if things could be easier for musicians. What do you make of Mustaine’s point about Megadeth spending $45k just to “sit still”?
