The Joe Rogan Experience - #1861 - Dave Mustaine

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Dave Mustaine is the founder, lead vocalist, and rhythm & lead guitarist of the Grammy Award-winning thrash metal band Megadeth. Look for the band's new album "The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead!" on September 2, 2022. www.megadeth.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Oh, we're up. How are you? Dave, what's happening? How are you? Here we are, finally. Yeah.

I'm excited to talk to you, man. You've had a wild ride for life. I have. You really have. I love people like you. I always get my hands on the wheel. Yeah. No, you, well, you well you obviously you're

here right yes sir yeah and what a fucking white wild ride though i mean everything your religious background the the being the first metallica i mean it's pretty wild what is it like like looking back does it seem i mean being a part of I mean, being a part of Megadeth and being a part of Metallica and like your rock loyalty? Thanks. Thanks. I, you know, first off, thanks for having me on. My pleasure. I'm stoked to be here. And yeah, what was it like? There's so much to explain. Of course, you know, being in showb it like there's there's so much to explain of course you you know being in showbiz that there's different degrees of of you know how excited you can get and then you have one of those days and it's like yeah shit it'll never be better than this and then

you know keep working hard you keep applying yourself associating with the right people and there's always going to be another level. My sensei out in California, he used to train with Sensei Benny the Jet, and he would say... One of the all-time greats. Yeah, yeah, that's my first black belt came from Sensei Benny. That's amazing.

Were you at the Jet Center? Yeah, I'm number 17, so... When I went to California, that was one of the first places I went to. I wanted to go to the comedy store, and I wanted to go to the Jet Center. That got ruined in an earthquake. Yeah, I was there right afterwards. Oh, that's a lot.

And when the rains came, the roof was all fucked up and they wound up having to close the place down. Yeah, yeah. Then he had a place in North Hollywood for a while that I wanted to. Yeah, that was owned by a Vaughn, so I went there a couple times, but just didn't have the magic that the Jet Center did. No, it didn't, right? Knowing Bill Superfoot Wallace and Chuck Norris and all these greats had gone in there. And Blinky Rodriguez.

Blinky, Blinky. I was really close with Blinky. My wife had trained with Sensei Lily Rodriguez, too, before her unfortunate passing. I met her as well. Yeah, she was a badass. When did she pass? She was probably in the last 10 years or so. I remember that there was a lot of talk about her and June Castro at the time about,

you know, who was the toughest. And she had fought June and June broke her leg. And I can't remember how long she had continued to defend herself before she stopped. I think actually someone stopped it. But yeah, just amazing stories of resilience in that family. Really gave me a lot of encouragement and a lot of the drive to get out of the mess that i was uh no doubt going to end up in if i hadn't you know fallen in love with the art found something like that and what a great place to do it too because that that family those people benny blinky lily all those people that were attached to them too that's a giant part of the history of kickboxing in America.

I mean, they were the elite of the elite. Benny was the baddest motherfucker ever during his time. Yes, he was. People don't realize. You go back and watch those tapes of Benny Urquidez when he was young. Like, it's kind of like lost on some people for some reason. But he was phenomenal. Yeah, it's sad to watch how he dismantles people.

some reason, but he was phenomenal. Yeah. It's sad to watch how he dismantles people. There was a fight that I have one of his tapes. I have all of his tapes, but one in particular that I really like, he'd gone to Thailand and he was fighting a guy. He said, look, I'll come to your country, fight your rules, your champ, your ring, whatever. And he went there and, you know, all I can compare it to is in Star Wars where they have those guys with the big hat, you know, the big forehead, the Klingons, whatever they are. Sensei Benny had kicked him across his forehead with a shin kick so many times that his whole entire forehead just had this contusion on it. It looked like almost like a Darth Vader helmet, you know, after he'd had his head kicked. And it was in a way, I guess, you know, maybe he was taunting him a little bit, you know, just, you know, after he'd had his head cut. And it was, in a way, I guess, you know, maybe he was taunting him a little bit, you know, just, you know, slapping him around on TV because it was in front of, the whole nation had shown up there to watch this fight. But I guess he's had a

lot of fights like that. I heard that the story about Frank Dukes was actually about Cincy Benny too. Did you ever hear about that one? No. Well, the Frank Dukes thing was kind of a hoax, right? Like, he had claimed to be a part of some kumite that was proven to not really happen. Is that... What was the exact story?

Okay, so... Because I know they tried to make it into blood sport, right? They did. Yeah. But it's not true. But they tried to... From what I know, this is what I know, what I was told. So I don't know how accurate this is.

But I heard from the people who participated in this whole thing. So what had happened was the movie was Jean-Claude Van Damme and Frank Dukes. I was told that Frank Dukes wasn't the guy who had actually been the fighter in that, and that it was Benny the J. Uquitas. And that when he had come home or something, he had his school in the Los Angeles area, Simi Valley area, somewhere like that. And Sensei Ruben, Benny's older brother, and Sensei Arnold, his other brother. He had nine brothers and sisters.

They were all black belts. And his mother was a professional wrestler and his dad was a professional boxer or vice versa. One was a boxer, one was a wrestler. What a terrible house to break into. Oh, my God. You know, Sensei Benny used to tell me that when the kids would get in fights, the dad would say, go outside and fight barefoot in the stickers. And I thought, wow, that's, talk about getting toughened up. Because he used to tell me he would get his teeth worked on without any Novocaine.

And I was saying, cleaning, right? No, they just, yeah. And so I couldn't do that. I'd drive past dentist offices and I'd get freaked out. I know Benny participated in some kind of a mixed rules Kumite type situation. And I think if I'm not mistaken, I think it was in Hawaii. See if you can find that out, Jamie. The story with Duke, so when Arnold and Ruben, they had gone to Frank Duke's school and this is what the family told me. They walked in, they locked the door. There was a student or two there.

They told them, you need to leave. The students left. And they went in the back office of Frank's dojo. Now, this is what I heard, and I'm not saying this to draw Frank Dukes out of retirement or anything like that. is that when Arnold and Ruben went in there, he freaked out and kind of lost control of himself. And they had words, and fortunately there were no fisticuffs, but that was the story.

So when I watched it again, it was really neat to think that, you know, Jean-Claude Van Damme was portraying Cincy Banning instead of this other person. So I'm confused about the story. you know, Jean-Claude Van Damme was portraying Cincy Bennie instead of this other person. So I'm confused about the story. So Bennie and someone else went to visit Frank Dukes? Ruben and Arnold went there because it was Bennie's story. Oh, I see. So Ruben and Arnold went there to confront Frank Dukes because Frank Dukes had ripped off Bennie's story.

Right, that's what I was told. And this is Bennie's story that was about the Kumite that we'd But it wasn't a real story. Did he really rip off the stories just he kind of made something up, right? Well, I'm not saying he ripped anything off. What I'm saying is that's what I was told The story was about that that it wasn't Frank. It was Benny. I knew a dude who faked a Kumite It's a crazy story. He he told his friend to drive him to the woods And he said and I come back in a day, I'm fighting in like a secret karate tournament. So he goes off in the route and he brings a bag

with him, right? Like a duffel bag. And then a guy comes back a day later to pick him up and no duffel bag, but now he's got a trophy, the same size as the bag. Oh, wow. He said he won a karate tournament in the woods. Did he take the trophy out there and bring it back? Yes. What a dog. It's hilarious. People don't understand, I think, that before the UFC, before we got to watch mixed martial arts,

meaning like an Aikido guy could fight a Judo guy, a wrestler guy could fight a karate guy. Before we saw that, we didn't know what was the best art. We didn't know. And there was a lot of speculation, but very few mixed rules engagements. Like there was judo Jean LaBelle fought a boxer once, and he made the boxer wear a gi.

And he just took him to the ground, strangled him unconscious. Ali. Yeah, there's Ali and Inoki. They had that weird thing where Inoki's on his back and he's kicking him to the ground, strangled him unconscious. Ali. Yeah, there's Ali and Inoki. They had that weird thing where Inoki's on his back and he's kicking him in the legs. But there was very few of those. So you could have room for some person who pretends that they fought overseas. There's no internet back then.

Some person who fought and beat the world in some sort of a to-the-death tournament. So there was a lot of those kooks out there. So that story, I mean, that's not even really based on Frank Dukes' version of what he says happened. It's just kind of Hollywood corny, right? Yeah, well, that happens with a lot of those movies. Yeah, obviously.

But just when it comes to reality, though, like Ben Irquides was, he was a real important force in the early days of kickboxing, particularly in America. One of my favorite martial art choreography things that he'd ever done was with Roadhouse. Oh, he choreographed that? Yeah, I skydived with Patrick Swayze, and I knew that he was Dalton in Roadhouse. And there was a couple moves at the very end, you know, when he's attacking that other guy, the bad guy. And he does this cross punch on the inside of his knees and blows out the guy's knees.

And I thought, I just learned that last week. So it was really cool to see this stuff applied in this almost, you know, like fight to the death kumite. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know how many people know what kumite means. So for people that don't know what that means, it's a death match. So I know there's going to be some people out there that aren't going to know exactly what that means. I think the word kumite just means sparring.

Yeah. It just means fighting. The red sash. Oh, God, what is that called? What is the word when they go uh two guys go one comes back that's a death match do they have those or have they had those i'm sure people have had yeah of course i'm sure over the course of history people have decided to karate fight to the death absolutely they did yeah but i think the word kumite doesn't mean that though i think it

just means fighting yeah right well that's what i was asking you so yeah i'm pretty sure it does you know i that's a japanese word i came from a korean martial art background originally so i don't know that much about it kumite martial arts freestyle fighting so sparring literally sparring okay what does deathmatch say? Is there a Japanese term for karate deathmatch? I had heard it one time. That'd be a good name for a band. Karate deathmatch. What year? Get that website.

What year did you start martial arts? I was 12. Wow. I was 12. So you have a black belt in karate, right? You have a black belt in what else? In Taekwondo. In Taekwondo and you have a purple belt in karate, right? Mm-hmm. You have a black belt in what else? In taekwondo. In taekwondo, and you have a purple belt in jiu-jitsu.

Yeah. That's a very impressive resume. That's really amazing. Yeah. I've managed to be really smart and stay out of a lot of trouble, too. And that was one of the things that Sensei Benny told me when we first started working together was, you know, a guy's coming down the street, and it doesn't look like he's your friend. Change sides of the street.

If he changes sides of the street, turn around. You know, I don't go looking for trouble anymore. There was a period in my life where, you know, that kind of people, those kind of people and that kind of stuff was, you know, go out, get drunk, cause some problems. We lived down in Huntington Beach and all the surf kids would go down there and fight people from another neighborhood or another school or something stupid like that.

A lot of tough guys came from Huntington Beach. That's where Tank Abbott came from. That's where Tito Ortiz came from Huntington Beach. A lot of guys. There was a guy there when I went to high school there named Polo. He was one of a bunch of Samoans that were down there, and I remember I was at a kegger party one night

and some guy hit him right in the face with a crowbar and he did not move. And I thought, oh my God. It was one of those, you know, those hexagonal crowbars, you know? Oh, Jesus Christ. It wasn't like a tire iron where you just turn the knobs

and you just whacked him. And I thought, someone's going to die. Jesus Christ. Yeah, some people can take inhumane punishment. It's a superhuman. Like, I've seen Mark Hunt in the early days. Like, Crow Cop kicked him in the head. Crow Cop kicks people that just go unconscious.

Crow Cop kicked him in the head. He just sort of fell down, got right back up. And everybody was like, how? Hey, did you ever know a guy named Mark Carr? Mark Carr. They used to call him the specimen. Mark Kerr. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kerr, Kerr, Kerr. Mark Kerr, yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, he was in the early days of the UFC. Yeah. I was at a couple of his fights. Definitely one where he tapped a guy by shoving his chin into his eye socket.

Oy. He got on top of the guy. And I think it was Ron Watterson and I think it was Ron Waterman. So Mark Kerr gets on top of him, and he's grabbing the back of his head, and he shoves his chin into the guy's eye socket. And the dude taps. I was like, that's effective. He's a big guy.

He was huge. Yeah, I remember we hung out for a little while, and he was staying at my pad in Scottsdale oh really yeah there was a time he was getting himself straightened out and and you know he knew that I had a history and was this after the smashing machine documentary I think so did you ever see it I heard of it the dog I might have seen some of it it's wild yeah it's why it turned what they were trying to do and like oftentimes in documentaries like they'll start following someone

with a very specific objective but then the whole world changes yeah like and this that's this one is one of those they were following him because he was just like unstoppable force that was fighting in pride that looked like a superhero. This is the one where it shows all the shooting up and everything. Exactly. Then during that time period, they got to realize, oh my God, this guy's addicted to painkillers, like hardcore.

He's really falling apart and he falls apart during the filming of the documentary. It's like this- Sad. Yeah, hellscape of addiction. They didn't intend to capture that. They intended just to capture him dominating like he was. But he was a freak. That guy was so fucking big. When you would see him, pull up a picture of Mark Kerr in his prime.

He was one of the most preposterous guys. And he was like a very, very, there he is. Look at that. I mean, it doesn't even look like a human. So let me tell you this thing. Mark, see that picture on very very there he is look at that i mean it doesn't even look like a human so so let me tell you this thing mark see that picture on the right let's look at that one right there we're screaming my wife came out one night it was around halloween he was staying with us and she heard this noise in our kitchen and there was this pantry that had a bunch of shelves and all of the halloween candy had been stuck up on the top shelf so our kids

wouldn't eat it so she comes in the kitchen and she sees that guy inside of stuck up on the top shelf so our kids wouldn't eat it. So she comes in the kitchen and she sees that guy inside of the pantry on the top shelf pulling down the candy. Because he wanted candy. That's hilarious. I don't know that I wouldn't have... Look at the size of him! He was so fucking big and so fast.

He's a good guy. I hope he's still alive. I don't know what's going on with him, but I had heard he cleaned himself up. That's good. I think he was selling cars for a while. That's good. Buy this or else.

Yeah. He looks different. You know, he lost all that muscle mass. He's a much more normal-looking big guy now. He was a big guy. Yeah. That's for sure. So how did we get on the subject of Mark Kerr?

Just talking. Yeah, just trying to remember I had a did we get on the subject of Mark Kerr? Just talking. Yeah, I'm just trying to remember I had a point. But he's... Specimen. Those early years, everyone was trying to figure out what to do. It was interesting to see the wrestlers come in and just start smashing people. And then kickboxers started coming in and kicking the wrestlers' legs. And then other people started figuring out how to tap people better and no gi.

It's a wild sort of a journey from the early days of martial arts to where we are today. I don't think there's anything. The development of it all. What is this? Oh, this is Benny the Jet. No rules concept with the greatest fighters on earth. Karate meets Kung Fu. Oh, wow.

So this is May 16th. In the L.A la sports arena what year was this 75 this is probably the third event the world series of martial arts put on i think winner takes all masters from hawaii japan the south pacific thailand and the u.s in full contact combat going for the knockout wow seven for tickets. Twelve bucks for ringside. Oh, man. Imagine Time Machine going back to watch that. That would be pretty interesting.

I watched one of his fights, the very last one, and I was such a bad spectator. I was yelling because the guy that he was fighting, I can't remember his name, it was Tanaka, I think, or something like that. But, you know, there were certain rules for that. And, you know, they were putting his head under the towel in the corner, and I heard that that was not legal. That they were what? What were they doing? Well, somebody said something to me that the guy had his head under the towel

and that they were doing something with him in the corner during the fight. I don't know exactly what they were doing. Was this a fight with takedowns, or did he just clinch? No. This is just what we're looking at right here. Who is this, Benny versus? Bill Henderson. Bill Henderson.

And this is what year was this? I think this is from that fight that I just had the advertisement for. Oh, really? This is the— LA 1975. So he took him down, so that was legal in this fight. So this isn't just a... And they're wearing those karate gloves.

Oh, shit. It's really unfortunate that more people in America didn't get to see Benny fight when that whole PKA karate thing was going on. You know, because, like, people got to see a lot of fights where it was really just kind of like sloppy boxing with occasional kicks and occasionally they'd have a guy who was like really good that was like a full like jerry trimble remember that guy no he's bad motherfucker who threw 360 roundhouse kicks and wheel kicks and everything

like that and he and then of course rick rufus and and Rick Rufus was like the big American star who could fight You know that style and knock a lot of people out with kicks Rick Rufus was in his prime He was phenomenal and he was like probably the best of the Americans in terms of like the representation of like a full spectrum of martial arts techniques a Key kid he fought tie fights. He later learned how to fight with leg kicks. There's like one of the most famous kickboxing matches ever was his first fight against a tie because he didn't know how to fight with leg kicks. And so he was fighting with the long pants on.

He gets his legs kicked out. And that like led to this big evolution between him and his brother Duke where they really figured out like, oh, this is the right way. Like you have to use leg kicks. Like leg kicks are a giant part of martial arts that the karate people and the Taekwondo people didn't get. Like the Thais figured that out more than anybody. And the karate people had some of it that they used

in Kyokushin and some other, but it wasn't in terms of like its expression in kickboxing. Nobody had figured out how to do it like the Thais. When you first started training, you said you were 12 years old and what was the original martial art it was uh sherman ryu and uh my brother-in-law was the chief of police in stanton california and my dad and my mom got divorced when i was four so consequently i grew up with male role models surrogate uh parenting and stuff like that. And right across the street from the police center was a YMCA that was having free karate lessons. And so I went and that started it all.

And almost 61. So that's almost 50 years. Wow. But it hasn't been consistent the whole time because moving out to Arizona when I left Sensei Cincinnati, it was really hard to find someone else to train with because you get spoiled. And the whole MMA thing hadn't hit. Right. Yeah, now that it's hit, there's places to train all over the country. Yeah. Do you still watch the UFC? I do sometimes when I have the time. I love watching matches if I get the time,

especially now that going from practicing karate mainly to doing grappling and ground fighting and stuff, that was part of the Yuki Dokan style was there was a little bit of jiu-jitsu in it, but nothing like the extent that I've been studying now. And you've been doing it now for how many years, jiu-jitsu? I think maybe three, four years. That's awesome. I love when people just pick stuff up new. It's such an important part of life. And it's so rewarding to learn some new thing, to get into some new thing, especially some new thing like jiu-jitsu that's actually physically good for you. Yeah. The other thing too too, is over the years, having the discipline with the arts,

I'm not chasing my chodan. I want to, you know, when you asked me how long it was, I actually had to think, how long has it been? Because it's a way of life for me, and the rank comes, and you just show up and be a good student. What was the first year you picked up a guitar? I was 13. Oh, so right around the same time you started doing martial arts. Yeah, and what like back then?

What was the music that you were into? Like what did you listen to when I was 13? I had a very limited musical Library my sisters listened to a lot of Motown my brother-in-law's listened to a lot of the My sisters listened to a lot of Motown. My brother-in-laws listened to a lot of the pop stuff that was in America at the time, Frankie Valli and Paul Revere and the Raiders and stuff. This is when I'm just a little kid. Gary Puck and the Union Gap and all those old bands. And it wasn't until my youngest sister, who's a little bit older than me, started dating that I got exposed to a little bit harder music and and that started with a little bit of Deep Purple and then Mata Hoople and a little bit of some David Bowie and then we discovered

Kiss and Ted Nugent and the other one was Kiss, Ted Nugent, who was the other band back then, Led Zeppelin. Those three yeah that made all the difference in the world for me with the guitar and so when you first started getting into the guitar were you taking any lessons or were you trying to learn on your own i'm self-taught so i i um you know i tried to do the lesson thing uh i even tried it again you again a few years ago, and the guy that was trying to explain it to me, he made it more confusing for me than going into it. So, I mean, for some people, lessons are—I think for most people, lessons are important. But if you've already figured out how to do it, don't unfigure it. Yeah, right? Like, I would imagine, like, applying a system, like the system of notes to something that you've sort of intuitively picked up. Like, did you just, you figured out what sounds it makes

while you're moving your fingers in different positions, and then you mimic the sounds that you heard in albums? Like, how does one learn how to teach themselves how to play the guitar? I started with an acoustic and was plunking around a little bit on that. My sister played piano, and Joe, she was so awful. I mean, the music coming out of our apartment sounded like two cats having sex.

And all I know is that there was an acoustic guitar there, and I thought, I need to make some noise to drown out what she's doing. And so that started it. And she liked Cat Stevens. We had a music book of the anthology for the Beatles, which is another huge band for me with my songwriting because of the weird chord structures. They have moving bass note that the chord will stay the same and the bass will move, or vice versa.

The bass will stay the same and the chord will move. So not a lot of movement happens, but it seems like a lot's going on in the songs and then besides uh elton john bowie was uh cat stevens i don't know if i said that or not but he was a huge pop success back in the day you know yeah part of that whole hippie movement and uh he actually went back to afghanistan and and changed his name back to yusuf islam i think yeah and boy, he had a beautiful voice, that's one thing for sure. I think he tours now, but I'm not sure if he tours

as Cat Stevens or Yusuf Islam. I feel like he was not in America, though. See, does he tour in America? I think there was like an issue with the Salman Rushdie comments. I think there was something going on when, you when Salman Rushdie when they before he got attacked recently like when they first instituted a fatwa on him I think he supported it or something there was like some real issue he supported the fatwa yeah

Chronicles yeah yeah which was I'm pretty sure Google that I don't want to have to edit that out. No upcoming events. Did he support the fatwa on Salman Rushdie? I'm not pretty sure. Was that called the Satanic Chronicles or something? Yeah, the Satanic Verses. Verses, yeah. Yeah, and I guess people interpreted it

as being about Muhammad. He did? Mm-hmm. What did he say? He made statements endorsing it. Yeah, his statements generated, yeah. Which is crazy to say. If a guy's a hippie from Cat in the Cradle in the Sills.

Peace Train, no that's from somebody else. Oh who's that? Yeah, who knows, who cares. That's not him. He's the Peace Train guy. Yeah that's right. Peace Train, what else did he do? Yeah, T for the Tillum and Steak for. Yeah, that's right. Peace train. What else do you have?

T for the tiller, minstake for the sun. That's maybe what you're thinking of. He's got a great voice. It's like very soothing and loving. Meanwhile, he supports killing. Yeah. Salman Rushdie for writing a book.

Die, die, die. I think when people say they support killing, I don't think they really understand what they're saying sometimes. I think they're saying it, but if you were there while it was happening while the guy was getting killed you'd be fucking horrified yeah like you what you are saying is that horrific violence is justified for someone writing something down yeah that's crazy talk yeah it's crazy unless you don't know what horrific violence is you're you're talking about it like it's some ethereal, non-existing, non-real thing because you haven't experienced it in real life. Well, maybe he did experience a lot of it in the peace movement in the 60s and 70s because he probably got sick with America.

And going back to Afghanistan and changing your name, and probably had something that spurred that on. It probably wasn't just a knee-jerk reaction. And, you know, I know that the music business is way, way different than it is now. It's so different. I don't know if those two things are related, but, yeah, I'm sure the peace movement, it probably saw a lot of wild shit. Well, he's a musician, right? Yeah.

And the music business is what you survive in. And, for example, Elvis, you know, the way that his life ended and, you know, the way that the music business was back then, it was, you know, throw drugs at the problem, throw sex and money at the problem. And I don't know that had he had modern management or even if he was with, you know, somebody who, um, you know, like a handler, you know, that would say, Hey, it's probably not a good idea for you to say that. You know, nowadays we have people who, um, are, are their, their sole jobs are to help keep us from, you know, stepping on it, you know? Right. So, and I've got people around me, they used to be real busy with me, but you know, fortunately growing up, growing up, I've learned a lot of stuff that, you know, you can and can't say. Well, specifically, I mean, in this day and age with social media, it's so easy for someone to just tweet something really ridiculous without someone saying,

Hey, don't fucking say that. You're on Adderall. Sit down. Don't write that down. Don't say that. You know, it's just back then do you think that the the drug and alcohol thing is the same today in music or do you think it's less do you think it's just not promoted by i mean what do you think the difference is between the influence of drugs and

alcohol in the early days versus now well i, I think in the early days of the music business, first off, the drugs weren't as strong. And they didn't have, for example, something as simple as the marijuana that I used to smoke when I was a kid versus what's being manufactured and grown nowadays is way different. And I think that the stigmatism for people about smoking is less. And I think that there's a lot of other things that people use out on the road to cope with things that could be dealt with with good management, good support system. And most importantly, having somebody who's going to tell you the truth. I'm a grown-up. I'm a big boy. So when I have stuff happen in my career and it could have been

avoided or somebody didn't tell me and I find out later, that sucks. And for a lot of people, when that stuff happens, they respond in a negative way with either self-sabotage or they medicate themselves. And I remember back when I was drinking, there was a thing someone said at one of those meetings, and I thought it was kind of clever. The guy said, you know, I drank when my team won, and I drank when my team lost, and I drank when my team played, and I drank when my team was in the offseason. And I thought, all right, well, that's about me. What team are we not rooting for anymore so but you know there's so many reasons why people make it or don't make it in the

music business and I think much like yourself you know in our getting to know each other earlier this afternoon you know you have to take care of yourself you really really do and and there's so many things in the music industry that, that, um, you know, the, the history, the, uh, the, the people that you're working with, you know, a lot of people don't want to say anything bad about somebody, but I mean, imagine how much better things would be if somebody really said, you know what, that he's a nice guy, but he stole from us. Or, you know, this guy is, he, he's's good at this but he's terrible at that you know everybody's afraid to offend anybody with with uh stuff like that but yet you know in other areas of life offending people doesn't mean shit you know so we we've had some times we've had some people

on our on our uh crew and um tours that we've been on the The last tour we were on, not my band, but another band, their bus drove right up to the Canadian border and the driver got out and left them all sitting there. So yeah, it's the music business

because he had a DUI or something like that and you can't get up into Canada. Oh my God, that's hilarious. It's so convoluted, all this stuff.

But see, like back in the day, you know, back in the 60s or 70s, I was talking about, you know, different eras, different or 70s what i was talking about you know different eras different messes different managers you know managers used to manage the mess they don't manage the mess anymore they don't want to tolerate that shit because there's always somebody around the corner that's ready to work harder than you it's like that motivational thing

that arnold said long time somebody's out there getting stronger running farther you know all that stuff i love those motivational tapes yeah well someone is out there doing stronger, running farther, you know, all that stuff. I love those motivational tapes. Yeah, well, someone is out there doing it. And if you do fuck up and you want to just take Xanax all day and do coke and you don't write new music, someone's going to come along. They are. And unfortunately, everybody, but that's, isn't that a part of like the whole rock and roll mystique?

A part of the whole mystique was the guy who did crazy drugs, was kind of half out of it, but would go on stage and be brilliant. Sometimes, you know, Keith Moon, you know, yeah, that worked for Keith, but I think that's, you know, a player like Keith is so all over the place, you know, he doesn't have a song with a pattern, so it's just go out there and just hit everything.

I know of a lot of musicians that will drink when they play. I know a lot that don't. I don't know very many anymore that do drugs. That's just something that's been kind of... Phased out? Yeah. Just because of the impact it has on your body? Well, not only that, but the things that it makes the people do

and the kind of people that are around that. I think that, you know, again, like I was saying, herb is less of a stigmatism, so people are a little bit more open with that. But, you know, as far as coming backstage and it's smelling like, you know, somebody's back there burning chemicals or something like that, or, you know, people falling out in the hallway from heroin or tweaking around on meth or coke or something. We try and associate with people that are like-minded with us, the people that are about their careers and that really are into taking care of themselves. Two of the guys in Five Finger Death Punch do jiu-jitsu.

They have a sensei out with them. We all are doing jiu-jitsu. When we were out with Trivium, the singer for that band does jiu-jitsu. So we try and hang out with bands that are really health-centric, that are really looking into it, not just from here down, but here up too. When you were a kid and you first were hearing about bands and getting into bands, was that always a narrative? Was that something that was discussed a lot,

that a lot of bands did drugs? I don't think it was because it wasn't something we were preoccupied with. We were, at the time when I first started playing around by myself with other little small-time outfits and stuff like that, it never was really drugs per se. It would be like maybe get a six-pack of air and maybe smoke a joint or something. But it wasn't until Megadeth actually got going and we met Gar and some of the people in that circle

where we started to experiment with other stuff. And we had a manager at the time who was very, very bad off. And he would try to always keep us loaded. And we ended up having to fire the guy because it was for our own health, our own safety. I mean, you know, if I was a cheap bastard and didn't have any money, I would say, this is great. You got it for free. But, you know, the thing was, you you know the guy was keeping several members of the band sick yeah there's guys that do that there are guys that do that there's guys that that'll do

that just to sort of corral you and keep control of you i've seen managers do that where they're brian wilson story was a great story too what what happened with brian wilson the uh the movie that he had about the doctor that he had he had had some psychiatrist that kept him all whacked out. I watched the movie that Paul Garganimus or whatever his name is, the one guy from Billions, was the doctor. And I can't remember who played Brian Wilson, but it was a great movie. What is it called? The Brian Wilson story, I guess.

I don't know. I haven't seen that one yet. But John Cusack played it. And I know John Cusack's practitioner, too. He'd trained over with Cincy Benny at the Jet Center, too. Yeah, I remember he used him in one of his movies. There it is. Love and Mercy.

That's it. Giamatti. Paul Giamatti. Oh, yeah. The guy from the Howard Stern movie, too. That guy's awesome yeah that that whole thing with psychiatrists or doctors

or you know whether it's a manager or someone that you have that can get you drugs and that keeps you on them that's a long standing story that's been going on a long time especially with really talented people a lot of times that that person that they can benefit financially from controlling them so they

get a hold up they go look i'm just going to babysit you keep you on drugs and then suck money out of you and and then there's a lot of those guys that wind up keeping these incompetent managers for years longer than they should because the guy gets some drugs too right because the guy gets them girls he gets some drugs he sets up parties, he does all the stuff that doesn't help the band and doesn't help their music, but it helps keep him around. In the picture. Yeah. Those guys are real.

I've met those guys in comedy too. They exist. They exist. And it's always been a longstanding story in comedy. Sam Kinison was into coke, and Richard Pryor famously had a problem. But you only hear about those kind of people when they make the news, when something happens. So I was always wondering, like back in your day when you first started,

was that a trope? Was that something that was discussed a lot with rock stars? Not being in the news? No, the drugs, the drug thing. Because it seems like so many guys from your era were doing drugs. Yeah, they were. Well, I'll give you a scenario. When we got signed to Capitol, we went up into the tower.

We went into one of the little rooms there, and the guy slid his desk open, and there were lines everywhere. So, yeah, they gave us a box of Nike shoes and all the blow you could eat. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. When I was a kid and I worked at a comedy club, they offered me Coke or money, or a combination of both. You get paid in cash or Coke. I was like, this is crazy.

I heard about a band with a front man that I really respected that wanted to be paid in crack. And I just thought, you know what, I've lost all respect for you now. Well, maybe he knew he could get it at a good price and sell it on the road. Yeah, you never know. It's hard to get good crack. Yeah, there's a lot of people that get really lost on drugs. But that's why I'm always happy to speak with a person like yourself that you know had your problems and put them aside and bounce back yeah and you know

got healthy and and is open about it you know I think that's it's so important for guys to hear and also got that it's a trap too that you can get you get sucked up into that tribe you'd be a good person a solid person who's a you know got confidence you can accomplish things but you can get still sucked in that trap yeah you can you can because it's it's like people call it the big lie for a reason yeah the big lie they call the tour books the big lie too so speaking of touring the tour books yeah when you're out on tour you know you get these these itineraries and and i don't know when you you travel if you go for long stints at a time or not,

or if the UFC, when they travel, if they go for long stints at a time. But when we go, we usually have an itinerary, which is our little book, and we call it the Book of Lies because all the information when the tour starts is all accurate. But by the time you get out to that first date, stuff starts changing. Oh, so you called that the big lie. Yeah. What was the longest time you've ever been on tour for? 72 weeks.

Oh, my God. Yeah. That had to feel so bizarre when you came off the road after that much time. Yeah. It was back in the day when beds had quarter slots on them, too. So we were sitting in these cheap hotels and watching wgn all day long i i sure learned a lot about the atlanta braves during that period but uh yeah it was rough quarter slots meaning you put a quarter in to pay for the television no the bed would vibrate oh remember those that's like bygone past boy i do remember

that now that you bring it up i don don't think I ever experienced it personally, but I think I saw it in movies or something. Maybe one time when I was a kid they had that. I don't know when they got rid of that, but that was the most bizarre thing. Yeah. We stayed at all those nice, fine establishments. Is that supposed to enhance sex?

You put a quarter in and your bed vibrates? Well, if you're having sex with a bed, I guess. Yeah, I don't understand why that would be a net benefit to have a vibrating bed but people would pay for it i think everybody forgot about vibrating beds you might have just revived an industry there you go because i completely forgot there it is magic fingers relaxation service for your comfort this bed is equipped with The same what is it the same magic fingers? Why does it say the same?

That doesn't make any sense. Maybe it was what it was looks like they copyright it So it was like maybe people were trying to steal there, but why was it say what what who that's why it's out of business trying to steal their... But why was it saying... That's why it's out of business. They're terrible at marketing. For your comfort, this bed is equipped with the same. The same Magic Fingers relaxation service.

I think it's supposed to go all together. Right, but that's terrible. Like, shitty font. Everything sucks. Yeah, it's formatted wrong. It's a whole sentence, but they put an image in there. A bottle and seven grand a month off of a bed.

What? They can make seven grand a month off of a bed. What? They can make seven grand a month just off each bed? You just got to put a vibrator in between the pillows. Oh, my God. How ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Shitty hotels, all that jazz.

And then coming back home after 72 weeks. Is that what you said? Yeah. 72 weeks in the road? How long were you home for? Let's see. We went right in after that and did piece sales, but who's buying? And I think that record took a couple of months to make. We weren't home for long. We weren't home for long.

That's a hard life. Yeah. In the beginning, it was a lot of traveling. And since I was homeless, you know, having a hotel to live in and a venue basically to live in, that was good for us. You know, David Ellison didn't have to go home ever because he had his family to fall back on. I had no home to go to, so I had to make it last. And so to a degree, being on tour in the venues, in the hotel rooms, it was a step up for me from being a fan. Yeah, I guess. It still had to be kind of, I mean, for every musician, the dream is to record and to make a living touring and to have fans. So when you started having that, I would imagine you would want to ride that as quickly and as long as possible.

Like if I was in a band, I would imagine I would want to tour for 72 weeks in a row, too. It's happening for you. What was that like when I mean, you were successful pretty early on in your life. Like how old were you when you were in your first band? Panic was the band before Metallica, and that was only for a short period of time, and I was 20 when I was in Metallica. So I probably started when I was around maybe 17, 18.

But just think of that. Just that statement. I was 20 when I was in Metallica. I mean that. Yeah, fuck you all. That is crazy. I was 20 when I was in Metallica. That is a crazy statement. Because if you just think about the average 20-year-old's life and that.

And this is, look at you guys, little babies. Yeah. So cute. That's amazing. Does that freak you out when you look at that? No, it doesn't. It kind of brings me a little bit of some sadness. Because of the way it went down with you guys?

Oh, I don't care about that. Because Cliff. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you left Metallica, and then when, did you go right into Megadeth? What did you do right after Metallica?

I think in my mind, I went right into Megadeth, but at the time, I was still kind of trying to you know um digest everything that took place we were still only 20 yeah yeah the thing that bothered me the most was i had all my music and i left it behind and i said don't use my music and of course they did oh really yeah they used it on the first record on the second record there's parts of my music on a song on the third record all the solos on the first record are mine except that they're just performed by kirk and close but not the same you know he's not a bad guitar player did you get royalties for that uh well uh most of them yeah but kirk got my royalties for metal militia for many many years and you know he has to see the check so I know somebody saw that I wasn't getting paid.

So there's a sadness and bitterness. Not bitterness. No bitterness? I'm over it. A little upset? It's just money. Like you said, at the end of the day, my happiness and my family, my wife and my children are more important to me

than anything in this world, and I love our fans. I have so many things in this life that And, and, um, you know, I, I, I love our fans. I have so many things in this life that I'm happy about, but man, it's, it's, it's my family and, and obviously my relationship with God. I, I, I take that very, very personal and, you know, I don't talk to people about it. I don't, I don't push it on them at all. It's my thing. and uh i just look at it like where i'm at right now um yeah 20 in metallica and now look at me i'm 60 and make that and and i'm a grammy winner i'm a new york times best-selling author all these things that if if you know i was signing autographs the other day joe and and i i had these boxes there 3,000 jackets I had to sign.

And for a moment, I flashed back to elementary school when I was in front of the chalkboard. I swear to God, and I had to write. Did you ever have to do that? Yeah, sure. God. And I don't know what brought that up, but I thought, oh, my God, I can't even believe that. And thinking about where I'm at now today and just how the slightest deviation from where I was going could have ended me up anywhere else in the world because I wanted to do so many things I wanted to be a professional athlete I wanted to play

baseball you know I I thought about I had a cousin who was a fighter pilot and I thought that would be really great too but you know Dave I think that's the case with a lot of people that wind up becoming successful at things. They could have gone in a bunch of different directions. They just chose to go in this one, but they still have other interests in things. Because I think the type of people that become really successful, like with you at playing guitar, are the type of people that can kind of be good at anything. They just have to love that thing. Like, I'm sure you love playing guitar, which is why you're so good at playing guitar if you loved something else as much as you love that you'd

be just as good at that i think it's an expression of who you are as a person and i think that's one of the more unique things about guitar playing to me it's like we were talking uh outside earlier about gary clark jr about like if i listen to gary Clark Jr.'s riffs, I can tell it's him. Like his sound is so distinctive. He's playing with the same instrument that other people play with, but his sound is so uniquely distinctive that I could pick it out.

And that that was the case with Hendrix, and that's the case with you. It's the case with a lot of great guitarists. Like you hear the sound and you know who's playing it, which is really crazy. If you think about this instrument that basically anybody can buy, you can get them in so many different places and so many people know how to play them,

but some people specifically, who they are comes out in their music. And as a fan of music, that's one of the cooler things about guitar playing to me or any kind of music playing, is that there's like a expression of who the person is who creates it that comes out when you listen to it. You're a big Hendrix fan.

Love Hendrix. Did, I don't know if you knew this, but a couple of years ago before I got diagnosed, I had the privilege to do the Jimi Hendrix experience. And the family did this thing where they go out and they have all these marquee players and they do Hendrix songs. Oh, wow. They asked me to go do that. I thought, you know, I mean, I was not influenced by Hendrix at all. But I loved him as a musician and I respect his work.

So, yeah, I'll do it. And, of course, I'm playing a flying V and he had a flying V. So I had the flying Vs painted like his, which was really cool. I have two of them still. I have one with the Wang Bar and one without. I'm probably going to get rid of them at some point, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. But we did three songs. I think it was three songs we did, and he uses a Strat.

So the sound difference between a Flying V and a Strat is very significant. And for me to try and work that out, I was having a hard time and I want to just say this to share how cool these guys were. Dweezil Zappa, I don't know if you know him. I didn't know him very well. Eric Johnson is another guy I don't know very well. But I came out one day and the two of those guys were sitting there working on my amps. And I thought, wow, this is so rad because Eric is an amazing guitar player and Dweezil is no slouch on his own. His dad, Frank Zappa, was an amazing guitar player too.

And they were sitting there working on my guitar sounds because they've been doing this Hendrix thing for so long. They know how to make the instrument sound right. And they did it. I played it. It felt awful because it wasn't what i was used to but it sounded great and i was so uh grateful to those guys for doing that it was really neat you know being around the whole hendrix family listening to those songs too it's mind-blowing how much he influenced musicians today i mean if he was alive today be one of the greatest guitarists alive not just one of the greatest ever.

Like, even though things, look at this right here. That's his psychedelic V. Wow. There was a photo, a bunch of photos that were released that someone sent me today. I don't know when they came out, but it's Jimi Hendrix in Ringo Starr's apartment. So you can find those. So someone sent me, there was like 10 of them that I'd never seen before. Of Jimi wearing this like cool blue suit, hanging out in Ringo Starr's London apartment smoking cigarettes.

Yeah. It's like he's cooking. Look, he's on the kitchen stove. Very interesting. Yeah. Wild pictures. And you think that guy was only 27 when he died on the kitchen stove. Very interesting. Yeah. Wild pictures. And you think that guy was only 27 when he died, which is amazing. If you go back and listen to some of his stuff, listen to Machine Gun, you know, listen to Voodoo Child, listen to All Along the Watchtower.

Yeah, there's the photos. That's it. See, that was different, man. Look at that cool suit, man. People would go and hang out and there was no, there was no posses and there was no, you know, shootings. Look at that cool suit, man. People would go and hang out, and there was no posses, and there was no shootings and stuff like that. And everybody just loved to be around each other. That says the time Ringo Starr evicted Jimi Hendrix

for being a shitty tenant. 1967. Look at, that's wild. That might be clickbait, whether you evicted him for being a shitty tenant. Who knows? That doesn't look bad. That's so cool, though. Look at his fucking suit.

That's clean compared to my apartment growing up. Well, his suit is amazing. Did you ever have a blue velvet suit? I mean, come the fuck on. No. It takes a lot of balls to wear a suit like that. I may have when my mom was forcing me to be a Jehovah's Witness, though. Who knows?

I could have had velvet everything. What year did that happen? Oh, God. I, um, when I was seven. Seven. Yeah. So do you remember a time before the Jehovah's Witness? Do you remember having to join?

Barely. Barely. My mom and dad got divorced when I was four, like I said, so there was a lot of disruption. My friend Kurt Metzger, who's a fantastic comedian, he was raised Jehovah's Witness. He has some crazy fucking stories about it. And he managed to escape. And one of the things he said that it's helped him with is he sees cult-like thinking in like political ideologies. He sees it in like social movements.

He's like, oh, you're not allowed to question this. No, no, I grew up with this. I know what the fuck this is. This is a cult, you just don't think it's a cult because you think you're out to do good. And so you're not allowing any discourse or any discussion. You're in a fucking cult. You don't know when you're in a cult, but you're in a cult.

It's interesting to hear it from guys like that. It's like people who come from communist countries that become very conservative when they come to America. They don't want to hear any Marxism talk. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. We grew up in a communist country. Get the fuck out of here with that.

It's like that's how he is with what happened to him growing up as a Jehovah's Witness. It's a weird religion. What was weird about it? Like, when did you realize that things were weird? I mean, you're seven years old. That's probably the only life you know. It wasn't that it was very far away from any other kind of religion. You know, they believed in God and Jesus, and it was just the order of things, right?

And the thing that I didn't like was, I'm a kid, I want to watch fucking cartoons on the weekend. I don't want to go out and sell these magazines. You go and knock on the door Saturday or Sunday morning, hi, I've got this magazine. Fuck you! You know, guys hung over, slams the door in your face. That just was, I don't't think a cool way to have my

childhood i wanted to watch wonderama it definitely sucks but do you think that any part of having a sucky childhood is responsible for like the amount of energy that you had that put into music that like i think sometimes when kids grow up in a sucky way those are the kids like with athletics that's often the case it's often the case with comedy that when kids grow up in a sucky way, those are the kids, like with athletics, that's often the case. It's often the case with comedy, when kids grow up in a sucky way with a lot of bad experiences, those are the ones who wind up pushing harder

to do great things and other stuff. I think it's the wolf nipping at your heels. Yeah. And it just, there's something there that just wants to keep you not looking back. Right, like you don't feel stable ever. You're stuck in this shitty place that you want to get out of as a young kid. There's so many great artists.

That's how they grew up. They grew up in this place where childhood sucked, like assholes around you, and you wanted to get the fuck out of there. That's such a reoccurring theme in people who become great artists. Yeah, there's a lot of that. Yeah. It's always interesting when you look back though, right? Like being a person now who's gone through all that

and you went from that and all the drugs and then into, was it Alcoholics Anonymous where you became a Christian? Did you do it from getting sober or were you a Christian before that? No, well, again, Jehovah's Witnesses are a form of Christianity. Right, but not, it's kind of recognized

as sort of a cultish, well, they're all kind of. Well, here's the thing, real simple. I believe in Jesus. I believe that God's God and Jesus is Jesus and the Holy Spirit's the Holy Spirit and that's it. And if you want to go to church, go to church. And if you want to read the Bible, read the Bible. And if you don't want to hear about it, don't listen.

And if you don't want people to tell you about it, then tell them to shut up. For me, I try and set a good example with my behavior. I don't ever try and proselytize or whatever they call it. Proselytize. Proselytize, yeah. Or even the same thing with drinking or anything like that. There's a saying, there's nothing worse than a newly sober drunk.

So I try not to tell people how to live their life. But one of the things I didn't like about that was they had this thing when they didn't agree with something, the elders of the church would gather together and they would talk about the person in question and they would disfellowship them. Or a lesser degree would be disassociate. And what is disfellowship? What does that mean? You are ostracized. Ostracized. You're not. You still have to go to church. You still have to show up. You still have to do all of the rigmarole. They cannot. Yeah. They're not supposed to. They're not supposed to. My sister got disfellowshipped and the girl that brought

the accusations against my sister had lied. She had said something about my sister and this other dude being together, and I knew that it wasn't true because my sister liked the other brother. So she got disfellowshipped, and that was pretty much when I started to want to get away from it all because I wasn't really old enough to see any other inner workings of organized religion or stuff like that. But there's a lot of exposés out on that. How long does a disfellowship last? Who knows? They could just decide? I guess. And so it was sins. You'd have to do a sin. Is that what it is to get a transgression? Something that was unacceptable in their eyes. And then you got de-fellowshipped. She did. Or that's, I mean, a person would get de-fellowshipped.

And so what was wacky about it in relationship to like standard Christianity? Okay, well, I couldn't have any friends that were normal guys. Like you and me, we couldn't be friends because I would have been a witness and you would have been of the world. Of the world. I think they changed that witness and you would have been of the world.

Of the world. I think they changed that now to non-believers or something. They used to call them worldly people, right? So you have to hang out with only Jehovah's Witnesses. Yes. And when you stood up at school, which back when I went to school, we were a very patriotic country and kids would stand up and they'd say the Pledge of Allegiance and, you know, do whatever. But we could not.

We were supposed to stand with our hands at our sides. And you did not get to celebrate Christmas. You did not get to celebrate birthdays. And that's enough right there to get just about any kid in their right mind to say, screw this. You take away my birthday. You take away Christmas. you take away all celebrations, and if I do something wrong, in your eyes, I'm set outside of the fence?

Uh-uh. I don't want to be part of this. So those are control issues, but was there anything wacky in their belief system that separated them from Christianity? Like, I'm not really totally aware of what Jehovah's Witnesses are into. Right. Well, again, they believe similar to what most Christians do. I never really got into wanting to be part of that religion. So- When did you bail? 13. 13. So right when you started playing music, perfect timing. What a quick life right into

some wild ass music though, to just have a life like that. And then bam at 20, you're one of the founding members of Metallica. That's crazy. So it's, and then 40 years later, still banging. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Thanks. It's amazing. Thanks. So when, but when did you get out of the Jehovah's Witness and into what you would call, what denomination are you involved in now? So I had to do like any normal guy would do. You get out of one thing that sucks, you do something else to extreme. So when I bailed on the JW thing with my mom, I ran away from home up to Idaho where my sister lived. And she was practicing black magic.

So I got into black magic. And she did not practice black. She was doing white magic. But I had practiced some black magic on two people. What does that mean? Well, I don't want to get into it, what the whole thing is. But as simply said, you know, you have somebody that you don't like and, and the power of suggestion in your mind, you could, um, say or do something

and then, you know, uh, hope and pray that something will take place, uh, that will even the score, so to speak, you know, uh, do I believe that if I prayed for your shirt to be white right now that it would happen? Well, if, you know, the powers that be, you know, the spirits of the universe want things to change, I could be struck blind right now by a white light. But if you turn my shirt white, I think that would be a waste of a curse. It's really not a bad curse. Well, so the curses I did, I did one on one guy that I was at school and my nephew had told him that I was practicing Kung Fu Sun Tzu at the time. And so he was like the school tough guy. And it was my first day at school.

So he walked past me and sucker punched me in the stomach and I buckled over and I thought, oh, here we go. This is going to suck, this school. So we're going home and the bus is a two bus ride, a big bus to a small drop off, a little all right, here we go. This is going to suck, this school. So we're going home, and the bus is a two-bus ride, a big bus to a small drop-off, a little bus out to where we lived, out in the rural area. And we get off the first bus, and everybody circles around, and he's going to beat me up, and nothing happens. And so I get in the bus, and he gets in the bus,

and he walks out and elbows me in the back of the head when he's getting out. And I had some chewing tobacco in my mouth so I swallowed it. And I got so sick and I knew I had to do something or it was going to keep happening. So I put a hex on him that he would get physically injured and he did. And the other hex that I did was a girl in night school we went to in Marina. How did he get physically injured? It was just something that had to do with. But do you think...

He sounds like an asshole. Guys like that get hurt all the time. He did get hurt. Yeah, but do you think that he got hurt because you put a hex on him, or do you think he got hurt because he's an asshole and he's probably doing stupid shit every day? Guys like that always get hurt.

I think he got hurt because he's an asshole and I put a hex on him. Both. Both those things. Yeah. What's that like? How do you do a hex? The whole reason I wouldn't play conjuring anymore was because right has the instructions on how to do it So I don't want anybody to learn how to do this, but I will tell you this much the it involved

Using some food sources and and making an effigy of sorts. Jesus. And then you have to do certain things to identify the doll. And then you break off a leg or an arm of the doll. And it's basically what he did. I broke the leg off and the guy got in a car crash, and his leg got mauled. And this was 45 years ago, so the statute of limitations have expired. But even still...

I don't think you can get in trouble for hexes. Maybe. In the spiritual world, you do. Yeah, but I don't think there's a statute of limitations in the spiritual world. No, there's not. I think eternity means eternity. But the other one was much more fun. I think you probably would have liked that more.

It was a sex hex I did on this girl. You did a sex hex? On this girl named Susanna. And I went to night school. That's a good band, too. And we were, I mean, I was like a skinny, redheaded kid going to night school after surfing. And she would be there, and everyone loved her. And I was just some sweaty kid you know and and uh she came

to my house one night to go buy some hash because I I had a roommate that was selling pot and hash and stuff and um so uh I had already done this this incantation on on this girl you know I can I ask before you go any further what you use for a good incantation versus a bad one? Like if you're gonna do a sex hex, do you make a doll? No. You don't have to make a doll? No. What do you have to do?

Paper. Paper? Yeah. You just gotta conjure something down on paper? No. Conjuring is in the air. Paper you would write. Okay, so you write something down on paper

and that conjures the sex sex? You have to do a prayer to invoke a spirit to be conjured. So anyway, so the girl, everybody loved her and they thought she was just so great. And I liked her too and I just, we'll see if this works. So you wrote some stuff down. Yeah. Do you have to write it in a specific language? English.

It's English. So I wrote her name, my name, and I drew some little pictures on there and then I burnt it and then said a prayer. And the next night she came over to my apartment to buy this hash, right? And, you know, I don't know anything about anything. So she comes in and she goes,

hey, what's your sign? And I said, I'm a Virgo. She goes, oh, my horoscope says I'm supposed to make love to a Virgo in a tropical surrounding. And I went and screwed a blacklight bulb in my bathroom and plugged the tub and said, here's a waterfall. Let's go. And I completely forgot about it until the next morning when I woke up. She had these geraniums in her hair, those red little flowers. And they were all over my bedroom, all over my bed,

and that's the only way I even remembered. Are you sure that wasn't just because you're a cute guy and you were good at guitar and she liked you? No. No? You looked cute to me when you were 20. She was like the most prettiest girl in school. Maybe she liked musicians.

I don't know. Do you really think it was the sex acts? No, I think it's all make-believe, actually. Oh, you're being sarcastic. No. See how he's doing? No, I'm not. I think a lot of it is power of suggestion, you know?

I wonder. That'd be pretty crazy if you could actually do that, though. That sounds like a Stephen King movie. I think people that like the great, whatever his name is, the guy that can bend the spoons and shit with his mind. Right. There's a lot of people, but you know how they do that? They have a very specific spoon and it reacts to the heat of you rubbing your fingers on it.

Oh, now you've ruined it. Sorry. Sorry, it's not magic. Yeah, well. I'm not opposed to believing in magic. What's his name? Kaczynski. The great Kaczynski.

No, that's not his name. Oh, I don't know. I mean, James Randi did it and he's a non-believer But I mean Penn and Teller can do it all those music magicians can do it I saw a banner check do it per in person. I saw him do it in front of my face. He did it Yeah, and he didn't tell her those guys are yeah, they're amazing They're amazing and they're so good for for magic too because you they'll tell you that it's bullshit Hmm, and you know, they're I've seen that show. Yeah Well that the show bullshit was about all kinds of things.

Some of the things that aren't even bullshit, like yoga. But one of the things that they were doing was doing magic and letting you in on the joke. Like letting you know that it's bullshit, but still doing it in such an amazing way that you were blown away by it. It's a genius show. But anyway, I don't not believe in magic.

It could be real. I just haven't seen it. But it doesn't mean that weird things can happen with people's minds, especially when people believe things. And I'm not exactly sure if I understand the interface between people's minds. I think there's a lot more going on with people and their minds, like the way we interact with each other, than I think we would like to believe. We like to believe that we're independent thinkers and that we're not that influenced by other people's thoughts. But I think we are in a big way. You certainly are. Imagine the propaganda that they could say, like if this whole thing – here's an example of what we're talking about, magic.

I had heard that David Copperfield had marched an elephant out into the middle of the Lakers Court this is what I heard it was a magic trick and he made it disappear or something like that during halftime Now I don't have any proof to that. I don't know if it was ever a real story if it was just some idiot Let's find out let's google it heard You need to go to that one because if he did we need to have to talk with mr. Copperfield He might know some things. I Mean if you had real magic and that's what you did, you just decided to do a Las Vegas show. There it is, the vanishing elephant.

So this was on television? Is that what this was? He supposedly did it at the Lakers. So he closes the gate. And a puff of smoke. Oh, they're going to show you how the trick is done. And then two hours go by Yeah they're showing how they do it

The unmasked magician guy Yeah When he went and ruined everyone's fun Okay in case anybody needs to get rid of an elephant Right Oh you bastards Right. Aw, you bastards. Oh, that's genius.

Ah! He's still there. Genius. This makes it appear as if the elephant has vanished. All right, well. Fucking genius. Still did it. There you go. It's a trick.

It's a trick just like the sex hex. You ruined it. Jamie's got some paper right now. He's writing some sex hexes. I saw them. All right, I'll do a sex hex between you and Jamie, and we'll see if it works. No, don't do that. That'll ruin our relationship.

All right, I'm sorry, Joe. There's no need for this, Dave. Okay, let's just play. So, but when did you become a born-again Christian? Like, what year did that take place? God, you know, it just was such a natural thing. I can't even remember when it was. I was in Texas, in Hunt, Texas.

Remember how old you were? Not too long ago, maybe 15, 20 years ago, maybe. Okay, so this is after all the chaos. I mean, Jamie could find it because they made fun of me a lot when I got... Who was they? People on the net and shit like that. Those terrible people. I was just saying that I would get wimpy with my playing,

and it certainly didn't change anything because, you know, if you look at any of my lyrics, a lot of them are from the Book of Revelation and Daniel. There's a lot of, you know, those scary nightmare stuff that they talk about. And, like, Washington is Next is about, you know, Daniel talking about dreams and interpreting dreams. And, you know,'ve holy wars of course blackmail the universe there's so many so many many many songs

that that talk about you know um end time stuff you know stuff that's gone on during time any kinds of super awesome stuff like with the spiritual stuff in nature where great things happen to good people, you know. Like on our new album, Soldier On is a song about kind of walking away from something. You know, some people have said that it's a song about abandonment and some people said it's about perseverance. For me, the song is about knowing somebody in your life, like you and I talked about earlier, you know, the difference between people who make it and who don't. You have to make that painful decision to walk away. And in that song, I talk about somebody that I knew

that was making some really bad decisions in their personal life and that I needed to walk away from it. I needed to soldier on in order to take care of myself. It's like the masks that come down in the airplane. They say, if you're traveling with a little bastard and he's fighting you, put your mask on, let him pass out.

Then put your mask on him after you're safe. That's how they should say it. Yeah, you have to be safe first. You always have to put your mask on first. Or carry oxygen. Yeah, but if you do that and you're the responsible one, that's the idea behind it, right? Right.

You don't want to be out cold with a five-year-old trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Yeah. Yeah. I should have a parachute. Even then. Can opener. Yeah. Even then.

So when you first became a born-again Christian and then there was this whatever you'd call a backlash, that's died off, though. Sure it has. Yeah, because people realized you didn't change the way, I mean, you just. I changed internally. My heart had changed. But, I mean, the music was still just as hard. I mean, everything was still.

So it's like people want this, people are very afraid of people changing. Yeah. You know, very afraid of like when. I was just thinking that right when you said that. Yeah. They're often afraid of artists changing, you know, very afraid of like when, I was just thinking that right when you said that. Yeah. They're often afraid of artists changing too. Like even though like artists like oftentimes want to make different kinds of music. Oh,

come on. You remember when Coke changed its formula to new Coke? What the hell's wrong with you people? That didn't make any sense. Cause did they keep original Coke too? Did they have the original? I don't know. Do you know the whole story behind Coke?

And one of the reasons why I think they changed it to new Coke? No, but I know the really old, old Coke. Well, Coke was still not old, old Coke, still new Coke. The Coke that you have not right now, not new Coke, the flavor, but Coke that's available in 2022 is made with cocaine. They process cocaine. They take out all the cocaine, and that's part of the flavor of the Coke formula. This is like fact. It sounds like conspiracy theory.

But if you find the company in this country that processes the most medical, pharmaceutical cocaine is the same company that supplies the... Let's make sure this is true. God damn. I guess if you find somebody in a parking lot with a bunch of Coke cans laying around him, you know what he's OD'd on. No, it doesn't have cocaine in it.

The original Coca-Cola had cocaine in it, but the Coca-Cola of today is free of cocaine, but it gets flavoring from coca leaves. Yeah, the guarana. Remember that stuff down in Brazil? Yeah, guarana. That's a different thing. That's actually like a stimulant, more of like a caffeine. That's like in acai that has Guarana berries. I love that stuff too.

That stuff's great. But they use these coca leaves, they process them, they take out all the cocaine, and it's part of the secret flavor of Coca-Cola. Because whenever anybody does a cola, like RC Cola or something like that, it tastes good, but it doesn't taste like Coca-Cola. No. They don't exactly get it right, right? Right, right.

That Coca-Cola taste everybody fucking loves. Yeah. Well, part of that Coca-Cola taste comes from coca leaves. So let's make sure that's true. It's so terrible. I'm pretty much 100% positive that's true. I've not tried any cocaine. No, no, no, no.

Mexican Coca-Cola. Yes, I have with sugar. Extra sugar. Yeah, it's delicious. It's very good. true I've not tried any cocaine no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no I know it's a true story. So once he finds a good version of it, we'll read it. But the crazy history of Coca-Cola is really interesting. I mean, it really originally was like a cocaine supplement. Like you drink Coca-Cola and you get a little jolt of cocaine, which was normal. Okay. Pharmacist John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola in 1885, making the original formula for the beverage in his backyard.

He advised Coca-Cola as a patent medicine that could cure headaches, upset stomach, and fatigue. Patent medicines weren't regulated. They often contained addictive ingredients like cocaine and opium and toxic ingredients like mercury and lead, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The NIDA said a 2020 blog post that Pemberton's recipe contained cocaine in the form of an extract of the coca leaf

Inspiring part of the soft drinks name the coca leaf in its natural form is a harmless and mild Stimulant compared to coffee cocaine can be extracted from its leaves according to the Transitional Institute. That's why people chew it. When they chew the coca leaves, it's really like a mild stimulant. Gregory Collins, PhD and associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Texas, San Antonio, also told Verify that the cocaine alkaloid is present at very low levels in less than 1% in most coca leaves. The cocaine alkaloid can then be extracted and purified to produce the drug cocaine. Coca-Cola likely contained cocaine alkaloid as part of the coca leaf extract at very low concentrations and similar to the coca leaf teas. Cocaine was legal and a common ingredient in U.S. medicines aimed at curing a wide range

of ailments when Coca-Cola was invented, which is pretty wild, according to NIDA. People thought cocaine was safe to use in small amounts at the time. It probably is. In 1970, cocaine became an expensive recreational drug. Now, find out about Coca-Cola in today's form, because in today's form, I know they use something from the coca leaves. They're trying to say, despite this, Coca-Cola U.S. directed, verified to a statement that says, cocaine has never been an added ingredient in Coca-Cola,

and the drink does not currently contain cocaine or any other harmful substances. No, it doesn't contain cocaine anymore, but I think it's flavored with the coca leaves. I think they use coca leaves, and I'm pretty sure that the company that does it also makes, I think they process out the cocaine, and they use that for medical-grade cocaine, which is still a thing. Like, lidocaine, I believe, comes from that as well, which they use as a... Cheese. Well, yeah, they use it for other things, too.

It's like a... Anesthetic. Anesthetic, that's it, exactly. It numbs you, I guess. So does boring people. What's that? So does boring people. Yeah, boring people numbs them.

Or just like putting them in a job that sucks, that numbs them, too. But it's not as effective, apparently, as cocaine. That used to be the thing that people did when they would go to parties they would just do a little cocaine have some fun end up in the bathroom yeah it's uh now with fentanyl being added to cocaine you're taking a giant risk so number one uh cause of death between people 18 to 49 in this country now is overdoses well it's it's that they don't think they're getting a speedball. They think they're getting cocaine, but they're getting cocaine that's cut with fentanyl,

or they think they're getting ecstasy. They're getting ecstasy that's cut with fentanyl or street Xanax. There's a lot of different things that people get that they don't know. I'm so glad I don't know all this anymore. Fentanyl, the doses that kill you are so small. It's like not even as big as like a pencil eraser will fucking kill you.

It's really potent stuff. So like, I mean, in a flat circle, like the size of a pencil eraser, I don't even mean like a thickness, that will fucking for sure kill you. But just the surface area of the eraser of a pencil will kill you. It's a terrible, terrible thing. Okay. Just one company in the U.S. is licensed to import and process coca leaves. The Stephen Company of Northfield, Illinois.

After Stephen processes coca leaves at its Maywood, New Jersey plant, it extracts the cocaine. The company uses the spent leaves to create a cocaine-free extract and sends the extract to Coca-Cola. Good, I was right. Coca-Cola is grandfathered in as far as receiving the extract. It's the only company in the U.S. licensed to have it, making it the only soft drink to have coca leaf extract as one of its ingredients. Pretty fucking wild. The cocaine that's been extracted from the leaves is sold to

Mallin Cropped Pharmaceuticals, the only company in the US licensed to purify cocaine for medical use, specifically cocaine hydrochloride, a prescription jug used in hospitals as a local anesthetic by eye, ear, nose, and throat doctors. Mallin Croopt is a longtime St. Louis company that was sold in 2000, but its operations headquarters is still based in St. Louis. Wild shit. Did you ever chew coca leaves?

No, I used to stick paste in my nostrils. Hey, that's more effective. I was just thinking that right now. You're talking about all those gorillas dragging backpacks full of shit up into America or getting it into the vacuum coming up to America, some of this stuff. You were talking about them chewing, and I just pictured guys stuffing that stuff from the pirate movie with Tom Hanks in it.

What was that stuff? Oh, cat. Cat, yes. Yeah, that's some weird narcotic, right? Yeah, yeah. Cat is, it's K-H-A-T. Yeah. I think that's another kind of an alkaloid that's a stimulant

that's supposed to have almost like methamphetamine effects. I don't know. I thought it was supposed to be more like opiates, but. I feel like it's like a speed. I'm pretty sure it's a speed. Again, I don't know anybody who's tried that stuff, though. That sounds pretty interesting. Yeah.

Did you find any of that? Cat? What is that shit? That was a good movie. That was a good movie. I thought so. Oh, I never saw that movie, unfortunately. Cat is a stimulant, and chewing it can make people more alert and talkative produce feelings of elevation

suppress the appetite huh Yeah Isn't it more potent than that? Yeah, I think they're being really they're probably selling it being pretty liberal Yeah, pretty pretty general in their talk. I guess do you know how that all started the the pirate thing? Started from people it was they're originally just fishermen General in their talk, I guess. Do you know how that all started? The pirate thing? Mm-mm. It started from people.

They were originally just fishermen, and people were dumping shit off the coast of Somalia. Yeah. I think they called themselves the People's Coast Guard of Somalia. Google that, the People's Coast Guard of Somalia. I'm pretty sure that's what they originally started calling themselves. They were fishermen who were dealing with people dumping toxic waste into the ocean. And they were killing all the fish. So they were violating international law, these people that were doing that.

So what they would do is they'd kidnap those people and hold them for ransom for what they did to the ocean. And then they realized, well, fuck this. Let's just start kidnapping people. And then they just chewing cat and jacking people. Here it is. Jacking people. Here it is. Somalis initially banded together to protect more than 1,000 miles of the country's coastal waters from illegal fishing vessels and the dumping of toxic waste.

When Mohamed Salbar was ousted in 1991, Somalia disintegrated into warring clans, each with its own militia. Fourteen different national governments followed but have failed to unite the country. Ethiopia inspired and supported... Yeah. So they started off just trying to protect their waters.

They got turned into characters in a Tom Hanks movie. Yeah. I didn't see that movie. That seems like it would really suck. I remember when they had that thing going off the coast in the Gulf. It was that deep water something. Deep water horizon?

Yeah, yeah. That was gnarly. That was really gnarly. I remember seeing pictures of the smoke coming up off of the sea when you're flying. Oh, yeah. People were taking pictures up there. I don't know how many more from sky lab a lot of them looked like they were just commercial pictures but boy that was sketchy that's what's so nuts about pulling stuff

out of the ocean pulling oil out of the ocean when you realize they have to cap a broken pipe at the bottom of the fucking ocean that's spewing oil out like and you're like hey do you guys have like a backup plan yeah do this quick like how long does this take and it turns out takes a long ass time sure does is that it right there is that you can see it from the sky is that a satellite view of it that's not the smoke though is that just the oil spill holy shit you can see it from space Well fortunately the ocean is really fucking big So even when they cap these things

Even when they dump trillions of gallons It's temporarily horrific But the ocean eventually sort of like Absorbs it yeah Look at that look at the fires though That are coming off of that thing That is so crazy That that's in the middle of the ocean

That a hole that we dug into the ground is on fire and fire right through the ocean yeah that's pretty gnarly oh my god we're so nuts it's like to be able to do that like that to me is like a lot like the early nuclear power reactors like the the problem with like the fuk thing. It's like they didn't have an ability to shut them off. Yeah. What are you doing? No contingency plan. What are you doing?

You guys, you're literally making nuclear waste. You've got a nuclear reactor going, and you can't shut it off. You know, we have a song on the new record about Chernobyl. Oh, yeah? And it's called The Dogs of Chernobyl, which was about when people got the evacuation notice. I had watched that B movie. It was just something like an extreme vacation thing where these guys were going into Chernobyl. And then they had something else that was on TV in L.A.

I think it was a series on Chernobyl. And a lot of people thought that I wrote that about that, but I'd watched that other movie. And there was a scene where the kids that had gone on this extreme vacation had seen all the dogs that were left behind in Pripyat, in the city where Chernobyl is. And the song, Believe It or Not, it's a love song. It talks about abandonment and where the person realizes the girl, the person he loves or whoever, left him behind without a peep. And he's like one of the dogs at Chernobyl because, you know, I was listening to the movie and watching the guy and he said they just left. And imagine what it must have been like to be a pet owner and having to leave and you can't take your pets. Well, imagine what it's like to be the pet and be completely abandoned or whatever.

So I use a lot of weird metaphors like that. When you were saying about, you know, the meltdown and stuff, I did a lot of research. In fact, my radiologist who did my treatment for my cancer helped me write some lyrics on the end part of that because I wanted to know what the terminology is I mean you seem very uh very uh well um with your vocabulary I know what I'm trying to say but um I didn't know a lot of the terminology that I want to use with with radiation chemotherapy any of that kind of stuff so I asked him and he came back with this stuff was magnificent about um radiation poisoning and all the different stages. So that's an interesting thing for me, too, just not being an observer in life

and making sure that when I meet people, just kind of try and learn a little bit about them. When you were talking about the meltdown again, it's like I can see so many pictures from that movie. And trying to get that across in a lyric is really, really tough. I don't know if you've ever really talked to any of your guests about getting into research on lyrics and stuff like that. But that's usually the thing that takes me the longest to get a record done is doing the research on the lyrics. That's interesting because I've never talked to anybody who's done research on lyrics most of the time i guess you know it's obviously there's different ways of writing lyrics and different kind different things you want to project have you always been a kind of guy that like when you write a song you have a kind of like a theme to it that you're trying to express

like with this chernobyl thing and you want to make sure that you get it through research you want to make sure you get it through the proper use of terminology but also like cre like has that always been a way that you've done music or do you just i've tried really hard to to uh do that yes in fact in the very beginning when our albums were uh just just first coming out i'd always try and use some words that that would require the listener to look it up you know not just because i was being some kind of smart ass or anything but i just wanted to to you know use something a little it up, you know, not, not just because I was being some kind of smart ass or anything, but I just wanted to, to, you know, use something a little bit different and, you know, simple lyrics or have to dummy down a lyric because I can't find anything that rhymes with quarter or orange or something, you know? So like with conjuring, like that was something that you

would, you, there's something in that that you don't even want to sing anymore because of it, because you had the history. No, there's there there's something missing something's missing from that hex so that you can't do it even if you even if you knew how to unjumble the the words in there there's a couple things missing that's fascinating and do you do that with all your songs where you have like sort of like a a theme to it where it's like something there's a message in it try to to. Let's take the title track, for example, The Sick, the Dying and the Dead. People think that's about the pandemic or the, you know, scamdemic, depending on who you are. I know that when this happened, I was going through my cancer treatment and I wanted to just put one foot in front of the other and get to the studio, do my job.

Right. You know, and when this lyric started to come together, it was actually several years ago, Joe. I was watching Frankenstein, I think it's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the one with De Niro. Oh yeah. He was playing, he had that fucking badass jacket.

Oh, I wanted that jacket so bad, man, it was so cool. Anyway, so. Let me see. Oh, yeah. He was playing, he had that fucking badass jacket. Oh, I wanted that jacket so bad, man. It was so cool. Let me see that jacket, Jamie. There was one scene in the movie where this guy's walking through somewhere and he's collecting

bodies and stuff and it just made an impression on me and I thought, you know, that to me is... There it is. Look at that thing.

Yeah. It's so cool. If it was only washed. He was a cool Frankenstein. It was interesting to watch De Niro play Frankenstein. Yeah. I mean, after Raging Bull, after- Was this before or after the one he did with Juliette Lewis?

Cape Fear. What was that one? That was great. That was great. He was great. Well, he is great. De Niro's the fucking man. Anyway, so this is what the inspiration was, you know,

was bringing to life the reanimation of Frankenstein or Steen, if you're Gene Wilder. So I thought, wow, this would be a really great thing to talk about instead of being about, you know, the pandemic, which is obvious to sing about that, would be to talk about the Black Plague, you know, the pandemic, which is obvious, to sing about that would be to talk about the Black Plague, you know, because that's more along the history of what Megadeth writes about, you know, scary things that have happened in history.

So that's what this is about. It's about the Black Plague. It starts off, it says, the ship sailed to Sicily, and it was the fleas that bit the rats that bit the people that infected blood, and the stage was sad. And that's basically how the lyrics on that song. That's a dope album cover. Look at that.

I love that you still make albums. I love that bands, like you brought in vinyl. I love that bands still do this because when I was a kid, and I know I'm old, but for kids today, a big part of the getting an album experience was the artwork. Yeah, absolutely. Like, look at that fucking artwork. Absolutely. That's a big part of it.

For kids, when I was a kid, to look at it, you'd be like, fuck. You'd open it up and check out the liner notes. That was a big part of the experience. And unfortunately, that kind of went away with CDs, where it was this smaller, sort of less compelling version of it. You still had CD art. You still had a cool cover. And some of them, like Dr. Dre's The Chronic,

they were very iconic. A lot of them were iconic. You could see that image. But there's something about an album, an actual physical album, that was so important when we were kids. It was such an important part of the experience. You listen to music, an album at a time.

You didn't listen to a song at a time. The good thing about this record, we have a couple different versions of it. We have the version that you're holding with that lenticular cover. It's like a 3D cover, and it has bonus tracks on it. We also have a 180 gram German vinyl that we had made. It's a two-fold album. Three songs each side so the grooves are very

far apart. Sounds really great. Unlike Black Dog. When you listen to that it goes Hey Mama! Hey Hey Mama! Because the grooves are so damn close together. You hear it bleeding through the track. For this album it's just pristine. We had Ted Jensen engineer, master engineer it.

And Chris Rakestraw and I produced it with Josh Wilber mixing it. And God, I just lost my train of thought with this. The last thing I was talking about was the vinyl. Oh, I know what I wanted to say. One of the vinyl has rare tracks on it. It has a cover that we did with Sammy Hagar, Displant Us on Fire, from when he left Montrose before he got into Van Halen. He had this raging song called Displant Us on Fire.

So we did that, and I called Sammy up, and I said, hey, would you want to play on this? He said, yeah, sure, send me the track. So we sent him the track, and he goes, I'll sing on it, but dude, I ain't fucking playing on that with you shredders and and i went oh man that's cool because i really looked up to him and we played that song this planet's on fire in panic before i joined metallica oh wow almost probably would have played it in metallica if i would have stuck around a little longer wow that's fucking awesome when you were uh and when you were in metallica what was the stuff that you

guys were listening to back then all kinds of stuff i think i listened to uh different stuff than james and lars james was kind of being held hostage in ron mcgevney's house so whatever was being played there or whenever they would go to the local import record store they would get cool stuff we usually went up to the record plant in san francisco there was a really cool store up there and they had the greatest vinyl patches, t-shirts. Every time we'd go up and play the Stone or the Mabuhay, we'd go in there and we'd get patches and t-shirts and stuff. And not so much vinyl because, you know, you're traveling, you don't want to get vinyl and take it home and have it all foobar by the time you get home. But that was a real cool thing was the trek from LA up to San Francisco

and whatever souvenirs we'd bring home. How was James being held hostage? He had to live at Ron's house. He had to? It's a metaphor. I'm joking around. So what was happening was James, I think he mentioned something about, I can't really remember much about him when we were growing up together, but I think his dad died, and then his mom got really sick, and he moved out.

He was living with Ron, and I'm joking when I say he's being held hostage by Ron. But he was living at Ron's, and then when we kicked Ron out of the band, James moved in with me and my mom down in Costa Mesa, which was really uncool. Me and him sharing a bedroom that was about the size of this table here. And, uh, yeah. Um, that's rock and roll though, right? We used to, yeah, yeah, we would get so, I mean, he loved to

drink vodka. I don't know if he's still drinking or not, but we would drink vodka like crazy. And, and, um, he had this little pickup truck and we would drive from Costa Mesa up to Huntington Beach where we would celebrate and party with all my friends from Huntington Beach that James didn't know because James was from Norwalk and Downey, kind of an uncool little area where he was living at. They covered it with a freeway now, so it gives you an idea how significant the neighborhood was. But I remember driving back and forth at PCH, and it was foggy. I mean bad fog. And this guy would be driving pretty quickly down PCH, and we were both drinking. And it was probably a safe bet if we would have done that too many more times,

we were going to get in an accident because I lost a friend. The very first time we played down in Dana Point with Panic on the way home. The drummer in the band got in a car crash along PCH coming home. So it's always been a sore spot for me, that area in Huntington Beach and the coastline. Well, the coastline has always been a really dangerous place, particularly for car accidents and drunk driving, like around Malibu and that area. There's a ton of accidents. I know multiple people that have been in accidents there. It's also, it's like, it's easy to get distracted.

The ocean's on the side of you and it's only a two-lane road in some spots. It's like, yeah. And there's a lot of bars around that area. You know, there's a lot of people. I didn't spend much time in Malibu. I preferred, you know, when I went to the beach, I went down by Huntington and Newport. I used to surf down in Newport.

And that's where a lot of the punk rock stuff that influences this new record came from. I was a big fan of Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys, and we ended up doing a Dead Kennedys cover on this record. Again, Police Truck. I don't know if you've ever heard that song or not, but the Dead Kennedys got banned playing up in San Francisco because of some of the things that the frontman Jello had said. I think it was either in an interview or in his lyrics, but they weren't having any part of it anymore. And I just loved that band because, you know,

I was a little surf punk and I thought, yeah. What did Jello Biafra say that got people? I don't know. Jamie can probably find out. He's a fascinating guy. There's a lot of his spoken word stuff that's to music. Have you ever heard of that? His stuff? No. He gives these long rants to music that are very interesting. I've heard his rant done by someone else.

I heard when Ice-T did the beginning of his album, he had Jello do something on a song called Shut Up, Be Happy. That's how I ended up becoming so close with Ice. We met at our management's company, Lipman and Kahane, and Ice and I were in there talking. And I said, you know, that's the desk that Gretchen or whatever the girl's name from the nymphs or the pixies or whatever pissed on their manager's desk. That was the famous desk he was sitting on. And so I told him, yeah, i might want to stand up so then we ended up becoming friends i did a radar record one time and the guy says what's your top five records and i said og og og og and uh he heard about that and he thought it was really cool you know i i had heard

some of his stuff and i had no idea it was even ice like colors that's a great song that's a great song it is a good movie too man yeah that movie that That was, God, it had to be like 88 or something like that, right? Was it Penn and Dreyfuss? Was that who that was? Yeah, Sean Penn. Richard Dreyfuss. Yeah. Was it Dreyfuss or was it?

No, no, no. It's the wrong name. That's the guy from Jaws. It was, right. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't. I can picture him right now. Oh, God.

Bald guy. He's in a lot of shit. He always plays like the old cop that knows better. God damn it. He's a fucking brilliant actor. He always plays the old cop that knows better. Yeah, damn it He's a fucking a brilliant actor colors Thank you Godfather using the Godfather. He's a lawyer right he was in a lot of things that guy's amazing Yeah, but yeah that that was a that was a fun movie, but that song colors. Yeah, that's a good track Yeah, oh iced tea had some great shit. He asked me to do a couple tracks on his body count stuff,

and I was really eager to do that. It was a song called Civil War. I played on that and did some spoken word on that, too. Yeah, cool talent. You know, he's the longest-running male actor on a TV show in history. Isn't that crazy? And he plays a cop. Yeah.

The guy who wrote and sang Cop Killer. The guy who is a jewel burglar yeah i'm reading his book split decision right now and it's crazy longest running cop ever on television that's hilarious yeah that's great good for him yeah he's killing it he's uh he's one of the ogs of the la rap world you know when when gangster rap became giant ly popular in the late 80s Yeah, ice-t was one of the oh geez he was is yeah I mean he has some fucking great song six in the morning some great songs You know it's uh I love seeing those guys still doing it today, too You know I when I was a kid and rap was first sort of coming out was wondering like we're gonna see like

Rappers tour in their later years the same way that we see rockers tour in their later years because when we were a kid we thought of it as being a young person's game you know rap or rock and roll really right you know but it seems like there was a renaissance somewhere at some point in time where people wanted to see those old guys get back on the road again and still do the same shit and still kill it. You know, I have never really gotten that immersed in the rap or hip-hop world, so I don't really know a lot of the players. You know, I know the regulars, you know, NWA. Right.

You know, obviously Ice Cube and all those guys. And there's not anybody that really came to mind to do that part. We have Ice singing on one of our songs, I think. Did I tell you that? Mm-hmm. So on the Night Stalker track on here, we actually had him do a guest voice appearance for me now, because we're ping-ponging back and forth the guest appearances on each other's records so he is playing Colonel Kretz from Apocalypse Now so to speak in the lyric where we in the Night Stalker song on on the new record I was going to write it about Richard Ramirez and then

I did some research on him and Joe I thought this guy's just too evil too sick I would never want to write anything about him. So I ditched the Night Stalker thing. And then I found out my daughter was dating a fighter pilot for the base up in Kentucky with the Apaches. And I thought that was pretty cool and found out that the battalion up there is called the Night Stalkers. And I went, all right, I got my title back. I got my title back. So I met a friend of mine who I'm very close with named John Clement, who was a pilot and told me a lot, introduced me to several of the people up at the base. And we started our relationship with the Night Stalkers there. The song has Ice in there playing pretty much like how Lou Gossett Jr. did in Officer and

a Gentleman when Gear goes, I got nowhere else to go while he's holding his nuts, right? And I think he was the one that got kicked in the balls. And I just thought you got to have that kind of grittiness, you know, and then cross that with Colonel Kretz and see who could do the ice. Ice is perfect. And then, so I said, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to say. And I gave him artistic license to do whatever he wanted to do to what we sent him.

And I hope when you hear it, you like it because it's pretty cool. Well, what's also awesome is that you guys are constantly putting out new shit still. That's really cool. I saw the Stones when they were in town, and it's amazing. But it's mostly, Keith Richards played a couple new songs, but it's mostly the stuff that they've been known for for all these decades. But it's still amazing to see. Yes. Like at 70, he's fucking Biden's age. Yeah. Mick Jagger's out there fucking dancing around yes like at 70 he's fucking biden's age yeah

mick jagger's out there fucking dancing around on stage and he's biden's age yeah it's wild yeah i mean when we were kids we never thought of 78 year old rockers that would i didn't know anything that was 78 years old right but you would never imagine that because no none of those people from the early day i mean i guess i mean i don't wonder how old james brown was when he stopped touring but most of those guys that you didn't see them in their 70s doing rock and roll songs that they would sing when they were in their 20s it's wild to see yeah yeah well lyrics can change meaning for me it's kind of hard to sing about anarchy when i've got Aston Martin in my driveway. Of course, right?

I thank the fans for that, and I don't want to ever lose sight of that and think that this is my own doing. I work my ass off, Joe, and I know you do too. And the things that I have I know came from the support for what we're doing. And we sing about stuff not everybody wants to sing about. There's a lot of stuff on this record, like Junkie, for example. We started off really heavily on this conversation with drug talk and stuff. But I think the beauty about that was we talked a little bit about it. We, the people who are out there that are struggling, heard what we

were saying. I heard maybe something in what I said that maybe made them, you know, not hear me but listen to me and maybe find out, you know, I don't like Dave. But I like the fact that he was dying and that he was able to pull the nosedive up. And, boy, things have sure gotten good for me lately. Well, that is always a great message for people to hear, especially someone they admire. Someone they admire that has gone through everything that you've gone through, that you've been open about from drug addiction and chaos and then and now health, cancer free, doing great, doing jujitsu, doing great, living healthy. That's so important for people to hear because so many people when they're on a certain trajectory,

they feel like there's no way getting off the train. They're on the train. They're stuck. Yeah, yeah they're stuck they're headed to a fucked up life and when a person like yourself can say you know what i was on that train too and i said fuck this i'm getting off and turned it around a lot of people are afraid to make that that that jump though they're afraid to take both feet off of first base and consequently they'll never get to second base and for me I look at a lot of the things that were holding me back and I needed them Joe I needed them to beat my ass I needed to I needed to get all of the stubbornness whooped out of me you know I was a person that you know if if I wanted something done I was going to get it no matter what. And now I step back and I say, you know, if I want something done, it's what's right that needs to be done.

And if it's not what I want, it doesn't matter. It's what's right because we have a huge, huge organization, and there's a lot of people who are counting on us to be able to bring them entertainment, especially now with the way the economy is, the way that people are just feeling like, what's the use? We come there, we help them just let go, just for that hour. We've got 55 minutes. We get to play with Five Finger Death Punch, and we make the best out of it. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing for a fan, you know, that you're continuing to do that. And for fans of everything and anything that artists produce it's

when your life is shit but you know the fucking new Megadeth album is coming out and you get pumped and you hear it, it elevates you that's the beautiful thing about art the beautiful thing about someone creating something that people can enjoy is that for those people that it hits them like

oh yeah they feel better it really can music in particular is amazing that way it actually changes the way you feel it's like David Goggins won't listen to music when he runs cuz he thinks it's cheating I say that too I used to say that too but I'm a hypocrite because I started listening to it when I work out because it really does make working out easier if you listen to a great soundtrack like when you're on like an elliptical machine or one of those airdyne bikes, it sucks. It's boring.

You don't want to just fucking sit in there and huff along for an hour. But if you listen to good music, you get fucking pumped. Yeah, yeah. It's like a drug. It really does hit you. Yeah. There's a motivational thing I was mentioning earlier with you about Schwarzenegger was on it, but it was this hour

long motivational thing called let's fucking do it. And I downloaded it. And I remember I was going through a real hard time in my life at the time. We just moved out to Nashville and I was having this real awful human being in my career. He was trying to say he was working with us as a manager, but it was farther. Nothing farther could be from the truth because we went 60 days one time without talking. And I wrote him a letter that day and I said, look, man, you know what? You're done. We're out of here. And I went over to 5B. The last seven years of my life has been the Dave Mustaine Charm Offensive. And we've been really, really working on getting our rightly space in history and our position in the whole touring world and recording world. Some things we had to let go of, like some people that we

were really close to. And they were just bad for us. Yeah us yeah well that's one of the unfortunate things that does happen in a journey and that's one of the things that i admire most about bands is they can figure out all those internal disputes between band members which are inevitable the band members and then also members of the crew members of the management and so it's always it's constant conflict it's hard for people to like find peace in that. It's amazing when a band can keep it together. You know? I mean, artists are crazy. I mean, everyone.

There's a lot of stuff. So many crazy people. You know? And including guys like yourself who have come out of that with peace. It's like, in the beginning, people are nuts. You know? And they're trying to make nutty music. You know?

It's like, there's a lot of uh a lot of thoughts that don't gel together you know a lot of people's ways they're living their lives you know i think what's cool is what you're saying that's so important for people is to see that you can you can have those things in your life and still get past them and get past them and then be a guy like yourself as a very specific ethic that he lives his life by. And that's available to other people too. They can hear you say that and go, you know what? I want to do what Dave's done.

I want to live my life in that manner. And it's really positive. Thank you. And I know you realize it's positive too, which is really cool because you talk about it and you know that it can affect people. If you think about who you were when you were a 14, 15-year-old kid, if you'd heard a guy like you that you admire talk about that, it puts it in their head. And they realize like, oh, yeah, there's a right way to live this life. There's a way to live this life.

It's a seal of approval from someone that you look up to. Yeah. It's almost an endorsement. an endorsement and you know that's one of i think a very strong benefit of religion for a lot of people is that it gives them a very strong moral scaffolding to live their life by good word you know what i mean i mean sort of like it's a structure that allows you to sort of like you always have a place to think always have a place to go this is it's like there's there's ways you live period and in doing that it makes trials and tribulations difficult moments easier because you do recognize that there's a process to life and that there's a way to do this

where you're going to be a good person you're going to feel good about yourself and still you can overcome things and succeed there's a lot of stuff that that uh you need to i don't know you got to have the the common sense to know you've got to overcome it. Some people, they just get trapped in that place where you get the, like we were talking earlier about the Brian Wilson story and all these other stories like with Elvis and where you have enablers around you. And an enabler is a word that signifies exactly what it means it's just people helping you do things that aren't good for you sometimes that could be good for you but most generally most often it's not and those are the people I was just working with my son he was managing a group with

Danny Nozell over at CTK and they were managing a group with danny nozell over at ctk and um they were managing a band one of the band members just died because he had someone um that he started seeing who um the guy would wake up and and she would give him four beer cans in this vest he used to wear so he'd start his day with beers all over jesus christ and he was staying at a house my my son went over there with someone else to go move him and the dresser all the drawers were full of empty beer cans it was so so bizarre you know so and and this is someone that's coming in there and sneaking booze to a guy that's supposed to be drying out to save his life. And consequently, he's dead now, which is a bummer.

Oh, man. Yeah. That's the worst, when someone finds an enabler instead of someone who can pull them out of it. Someone just lets you keep doing it. It's such a normal part of people that are going through any any sort of success in the public eye too there's so much pressure that's involved whether it's performing in a band or you know anything where you're doing it publicly it's sort of uh people look for a release valve they want what they want yeah and they also want escape you know they want to escape from the just the angst of being

you know and that's alcohol's one just the angst of being you know and that's alcohols one of the best escapes because you just don't give a fuck you get hammered you don't give a fuck yeah you're slowly killing yourself you know and it's one of those things where it's so common you know that term common sense is such a strange term right because it's not that common it's people call it common sense but it's I but it's less common than not having common sense. Yeah, unpopular sense. Common sense is probably like 20% of the people have it.

50, if the most. If you're being really, really generous, 50% of the people have common sense. I heard Einstein had said that people use between 3% to 8% of their brains, and 8% obviously would be the geniuses. Imagine what it would be like if that was really accurate and people could access more than, you know, the 8%. That was the premise of that movie, Lucy. Did you ever see that movie, Lucy?

No. It was a movie with, was it Scarlett Johansson? Yeah, Scarlett Johansson plays this woman who gets a hold of this drug accidentally. She's involved in some sort of drug trade thing that goes sour, and she gets a hold of this drug accidentally that turns her into a person that can use 100% of their mind, and she becomes like a god. Oh.

It's a really wild movie with Morgan Freeman. I think I saw this. It's great. It's fun. It's really fun. It's really interesting. It's kind of like a superhero movie. I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but it's a great movie.

If you haven't seen it, go check it out. But the idea of using only like 7% or 8% of your brain, I think that's not real. I think they used to think that at one point in time, but now they think there's different parts of the brain or for different things. And their understanding of the brain still relatively speaking kind of, they don't know really a lot of like what's going on in there. They know specific areas of the brain create memories or was where you store memories and motor skills and they know that like when you get injuries to specific areas of the brain that's where there's problems and they can sort of isolate that. But I don't think they think you use only 7% or 8% of your brain anymore. Well, that's Einstein's quotes. I would probably tend to go-

Did Einstein say that? Yeah, he did. Maybe he was being like, I mean- I didn't make that up. Right. I know, but people say that. It's one of those things. I mean, it's in that movie, Lucy. That's why I said that. And even in the movie lucy when they said that i'm like i don't think that's true i think that's uh well i don't feel like i use 100 of my brain i can tell you that much well i don't think anybody does yeah but it's like what does that mean using your brain

your brain varies with how tired you are whether you're sick whether you're sick, whether you're stressed out, whether you're at peace, whether you've exercised, whether you're in love, whether you're happy with your life. Your brain varies constantly depending on how many things it has to think about. That's why I love the sensory deprivation tank, that thing that we talked about earlier. Altered states. Yeah, the ability to separate yourself from as much physical input as possible is pretty

amazing in the way your brain can function. Okay, here it says, others have claimed that Einstein attributed his intellectual giftedness to be able to use more than 10% of his brain, but this is itself a myth. Another possible source of the 10% myth is neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield's discovery in 1930 of a silent cortex, brain areas that appear to have no function when he stimulated them with electricity. We now know today that these areas are functional. Okay, so it was just a... I think it was just a thing that people used to say.

Where does the myth originate? No one knows for sure. I think it was just a thing that people used to say. Where does the myth originate? No one knows for sure. Popular theory is the journalist Lowell Thomas helped spread this myth in his preface to Dale Carnegie's blockbuster self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. There it is. So he misquoted the brilliant American psychologist William James as saying that the average person specifically develops only 10% of his latent mental ability.

Okay, so it's just a misquote. Fuck them, man. Fuck them, yeah. But we all know that your brain, or at least your mind, like the way you think, works better if you're feeling good and if you're healthy. Sure. And if a person's constantly whacked out on coke, it's probably not so good for the way you think and live your life no are you happier now i think so i i think what makes me happy is different joe it's uh

you know it's relative i think when you're around people that that are are complaining all the time you know you're going to want to either help them or if they don't want help and they keep complaining you need to kind of change your address. Yeah. You know, has that been like a consistent formula for you in terms of like living your life in a happier way? Just get rid of the people that suck. No, because there wasn't that many people. Uh, I think what, uh, needed to happen for me was just to kind of get my priorities in order and to learn a little bit more about what I'm doing that's right and and stuff that could be better you know in all areas you know with with uh being a husband being a dad being a friend being a leader you know it's it's involved to have an organization

this big you know um so there's a lot of stuff there and i think that you know the the cancer was a lot of perspective and um you know some people can have chronic perspective loss uh with the music industry you know the uh just how extorted how distorted things are from reality and and um you know i i guess uh as i started to get healthier with the cancer and the success of everything now, it's making me want to help people more. I've been saying this in some of my interviews lately about being more philanthropic with some of the younger bands that reach out for advice and stuff. I mean, you can't teach, you know, some people. You just can't. But I like to help when I can if they ask.

But you can teach the ones who you can. If they want to learn. Right. But there's enough of them out there that it really does make a difference, right? Yeah. There's a lot of people out there that want to learn, that are just looking for somebody in their life like me, man. I was searching for a male role model since my dad was gone. My two brother-in-laws were both dealing with their own kids you know how

weird is that to go over and have to spank somebody else's kid i'm sure yeah it was weird when you're um thinking back on the moment where you got cancer and like the shift in your mindset because of that like other than being philanthropic, what, what, how did it alter the way your, your perspective was? Well, I think you tend to, uh, look at the calendar a little different. You know, I, I never really looked at it like I've got such and such amount of days left to live. I've always tried to look at my life as every day as a gift and, and, um, you know, just try my best to, to, you know, go home, not have made any trouble in anybody's life. So I heard this saying a long time ago, somebody was saying it in a, in a meeting and he said that

if, if you meet three assholes in one day, chances are one of them's you. And I thought, you know, I don't like that saying, so I'm going to not meet any assholes today. And you'd be surprised how it works if you just kind of take a step back sometimes. Right. And people don't always need to know what you're thinking. Yeah, that's true. You can avoid conflict. I had to learn that.

That's something to learn in life. You can avoid and you're going to create more by talking. It's like that saying the cops say, you have the right to remain silent. Yes. I think more people should say that. Anything you say can and will be held against you. Yeah. When you're experiencing a giant health scare, that's generally for a lot of people, that's a moment where you either wake up or you go further to sleep. And some people like yourself chose to change, chose to see things differently.

I think that's great. I fought. I wasn't going to take it lying down, although I know that it could have been a lot worse. I caught it early, and I did everything the doctor said. What were the symptoms? It was a tumor in my throat from—it was on this side on the back of my tongue. And inversely, the lymph nodes down here had been affected. So they were swollen?

Two of them were affected here and then the tumor was on my tongue up here. And they didn't have to take the tumor out. They hit it so hard with the radiation that I think I had 31 treatments. I think you said I had something like that. I think I had 13 doses of chemo. It was really, really heavy. And we got it in a short period of time. You know, that much over a long, long period of time is, I guess, not that bad. But, you know, we really wanted to hit it and make sure that we didn't have to go in there and start cutting things.

How did the chemo affect you? I had two bad days, Joe, where I was thrown up. We were in the studio, and I got up to go to work and just kind of felt nauseous. Fortunately, my doctors were great and I had some additional medication for nausea. And I took that. I threw up a little bit. And then the second day that happened, kind of the same drill, and that was it. You know, I had icky days, but there were no other, you know, rough days.

It was just those two rough days. Everything else was pretty, I'll get through it kind of a thing. Just not comfortable, but not horrific. Yeah. I mean, it felt like a bad uh taco tuesday the next morning you know what i mean um so i i guess i just uh um you know during the course of it with all of the medication coursing through your body you know uh the doctors are trying to kill off a big part of what's wrong inside of you and so your body's going like, hey, what's going on here?

So eating became a chore. I still can't eat very well because of spices. I was drinking that delicious drink you gave me earlier, and all I could taste was the spice in it. So you become more sensitive to spices? Spice. I can't hardly have spice anymore at all. It's ruined my sushi experience. It's ruined my Mexican food experience.

Two of my favorite foods and I can't do it anymore because I take hot and it's... Oh, wow. So that's been the big, just a shift in taste buds? Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like using mace for banaca, you know? Really? My mouth just goes nuts. Wow.

And were you allowed to exercise during this time? If I wanted to, I was still doing jujitsu. Really? While you were getting chemo? Yeah. Wow. How did it affect you on the mats? Well, I wasn't really, I mean, I wasn't rolling really hard with anybody. Were you just drilling while that was happening? Yeah, and it was still early enough where I think I was still a blue belt at the time or I may have just been ready to get my blue belt when this happened.

So I know I got my blue belt when I went to Europe two times ago. So I don't remember. That's one of the bummers is there's some gray spots where memories are coming back, but they're not really 100% right now. Was that from chemo, you think? I don't know. You put your head in a microwave, you know, see what happens. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not like the comic books. No. Where people come out with powers. Well, you know, I wish I had powers. You know, the funny thing is that I went in there to have the little mask put on when they clamp your head down because you can't move your head around when you're doing the radiation. They don't want to miss with those lasers.

So your head's all clamped down in this piece of plastic, and they said, well, we've got to heat the plastic up, and you're going to sit there for 15 minutes. And I'm thinking, I can't sit anywhere for 15 minutes and not move. So I said, OK, I'll try it. So I sit down, they click everything in and a drip of water because the mask is all wet, drips down my scalp into my ear. And it was like I had a boar worm going into my brain. All I could think about was that water dripping into my ear.

I couldn't handle it. I said, I got to come back. So I told him, I said, there's no way I can do this and sit here for 15 minutes. I just can't do it. I have claustrophobia. And, you know, whenever I do those CAT scans and stuff, I have to be knocked out to do that. So I finally got it done. But, yeah, it was a trying situation, man.

You don't really know how involved all the technology is until you have to go through it now because it's gotten so much more advanced. When I think about stuff you would see on TV, you would see people that had cancer. They were bald or skinny, and, you know, you don't see how the medication and the techniques have improved. I didn't lose any hair. Like I said, I only had two bad days. That's amazing. That's amazing that they've advanced to that form.

And isn't it also amazing that just a drip of water will fuck with you so hard? That's Chinese water torture, right? They make people lay there and just drip water on their head, which is so crazy that that bothers us so much. Such a weird thing about the human mind and human senses because if you're walking in the rain, it doesn't really bother you at all. You would think that that would be excruciating. It would be impossible to deal with. But if you're walking in the rain, you're like, I'm fucking wet, whatever.

It just sucks. And maybe nice. It might be nice. It might be a hot day and it rains out and it feels good. The thing about the mind and the senses sense is that a drip of water can fuck with you that hard it's crazy yeah it did especially if you're a person that freaks out about closed spaces a lot of people ask me that about the sensory deprivation tank like oh man i've i've claustrophobic i don't know if i could do that i'm like i think you can because it's not

like you can't get out easy there's a door right there. Just get into it for a little bit, get comfortable with it, and then do a little bit more next time, a little bit more. And then after a while, your body gets accustomed. It took me like a year to get used to what you're doing when you lay in there. You're just going to just chill, just chill. This is what you do now. And so now I can just do it. I can just get in there.

But I remember when I – it's like the cold plunge, the same kind of thing. Yeah. I don't think I could do that. I don't think I could do that. You say that, but you could. I guarantee you could. If I was thrown off a boat in Alaska maybe, I don't know. You could do it.

People say they couldn't do it, but you could do it. You could do it for 10 seconds, right? If you could do it for 10 seconds, you could do it for a minute. We do the cryogenic chamber down by our dojo. There's a place you go into, but it's not the same. No, it's not the same, but it's still great. If you can do cryotherapy, I used to do cryotherapy in Woodland Hills, cryo healthcare. It was great.

You go in there for three minutes, you wear a face mask and gloves, and I would just listen to Queen. I listened to Dragon Attack. Ah. Because it do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Yeah. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I listened to Dragon Attack. I just move around. I'm freezing my dick off song. So I would always listen to that when I would go in there. It was cool though because they could play music in there. It's three minutes. You could do it. But you'd get out of there. It took so long for your body to warm back up, but manage you feel good

Yeah, going outside. It's always been great. Yeah Good makes the Sun feel amazing. Yeah, it does, but it's a super good for you We were talking earlier about sauna too. We're talking about doing that You know that we have one here and then you have one But you just haven't haven't been't been on a regular use of it. Well, I don't know the proper way to use it. I know in Finland that they swear by sauna and that you have to do a hot-cold thing or that you have to be so hydrated or not hydrated.

I want to do it right if I go in there. I don't want to just fall asleep in a sauna and come out weighing 30 pounds. You won't fall asleep, guaranteed. It's too uncomfortable. Yeah. But just, yeah, hydration's key. Do you take any electrolyte supplements or anything like that? Let's see, what do I take?

I take so much nutrients and supplements. Do you? Yeah, a lot. Oh, that's great. A lot. I take DTA, pregnenosal, whatever I think it is. Do you take anything like liquid IV? Do you know what that stuff is?

I've had that before, yeah. Yeah, or Element. Those are all really good. It's hydration supplements. You just add them to water, and there's a bunch of electrolytes in there. It's really good for— I did the thing where you go to a doctor's office, and they hook you up with an IV. Oh, okay.

Yeah. One of the things was they were radiating your blood. Your blood would come out and it would go into this machine. Oh, that's very different. It was really advanced. And there was another one you would go in there and you'd get like a vitamin cocktail. They're radiating your blood? Yeah.

It was some crazy technique. I can't remember what it was. We were just starting to do it right when COVID hit, and then the guy closed his practice. Have you heard of that, Jamie? Yeah, they take your blood out. What's the benefit of it? Cleaning your blood.

Clean it? They just had something, and it went through this crazy machine, and it would spin around. Like an ozone or something? It wasn't it wasn't like you know one of those i've heard that before you know you weren't spinning it for you know stem cell stuff or like that i just think like prp right yeah yeah but they would take it and treat it and then put it back in your body i don't think it ever really actually well it came out to go

through the machine but i don't think that there was ever really leaving you, per se, because there was a connection made. Right. And it wasn't like they took it out of you and took it someplace else and came back and put it into you. So it sort of pumps into the machine and pumps back into your body? Yeah, and it went past this crazy light. Okay. Okay, so some sort of, wasn't that what they were talking about with COVID and some other things, that they had exposed it to ultraviolet light and that you could, they were taking, one of the therapies that they were considering is that they were going to put UV light into people's lungs. Like they were going to like anesthetize them. Yeah, I just heard about this too.

Yeah, they were going to put them under and then they were going to use UV light on their lungs to kill not just COVID, but other things. Ultraviolet blood treatment. There it is. Ultraviolet blood treatment is simple intravenous therapy, which a small amount of blood is drawn from the patient's body through an ultraviolet light emitting machine and then reintroduced to their system. The UV light acts as a cell cleanser, killing bacteria and viruses in the bloodstream. Unhealthy cells absorb five times as much photonic energy and die off, while healthy cells remain intact and the blood gains oxygen.

The effect is a vaccination-like response in which patients' immune systems is activated to counter the specific virus or bacteria the body is trying to defeat. In our clinical experience, this treatment has been highly effective against viral infections. Is this a real thing? Born clinic? But, hmm. Why don't you Google ultra-violent blood treatment debunked? Google debunked. It sounds interesting. What a great thing that would be. Every time you had a virus, just go and get hooked up to this machine. It would just clean you out real quick. They do know that these viruses, that many viruses rather, are killed with the introduction of ultraviolet light. That's why they have these things called. Let there be light. Have you ever heard of a SteriPEN?

Explain. A SteriPEN is something that hikers and guys who go into the backcountry for multiple days at a time, they need water sources. There's a thing called a SteriPen, and you can literally take water from a lake, and then you dunk this SteriPen in, and there's a specific amount of time that you expose the UV light to the water, and it kills all the bacteria in the water. So you can drink it. Yeah, so you can drink it. So Google that, SteriPen. We've got a bunch of stuff like that.

When we were living in Fallbrook, we had a bunch of stuff for water problems. Here it is. Fact check, UV light is not an accepted medical treatment. The cure that time forgot. Is it legit? So what, did we just wake up today to debunk all Dave's theories or what? No, it's not debunking theories. It's just when we bring up something, we have to make sure it works.

I don't even know that's what he was talking about. I mean, I just brought it up. No, that's right. Thinking that was the thing he was talking about. But that SteriPEN thing is 100% legit. I know they absolutely do use that. I know they have used UV light to kill bacteria and viruses. But the SteriPen

thing, how does that thing work? Google that, SteriPen. It's like the military pens. You can drink ocean water with the desalination stuff and you can take crazy sewage water and make it drinkable. I don't think that's the same pen you're talking about, but I know they've got a lot of stuff like that.

The desalination things. Yeah, there it is. UV water purifier. It's pretty fucking wild. Just with light. So if you see how it's used there, about but i know they got a lot of stuff like that the desalination yeah there it is uv water purifier which is pretty fucking wild just with light so if you see it how it's used there they just dunk that sucker in the in the water and it kills everything which is wild you just have this little pen that you dunk into a nalgene bottle filled with pond water and you could drink that shit yeah it's very interesting. Yeah. So did you find a good benefit when you did that?

The, the, the blood thing? Happy wife, happy life. It made your wife happy? Cause I went with her. Oh. Yeah. But did you feel better after doing that treatment? I'm sure I did a little bit, but I think, you know, the going with her was, was better than, than not, you know, it was a fun thing to do for us I think, you know, the going with her was, was better than, than not,

you know, it was a fun thing to do for us to just, you know, do health together, you know, you're married and, uh, I'm sure your wife is probably very happy, very healthy. And, and, uh, I think, you know, it's, it's a good thing when you can, um, do stuff like that with your significant other, um, for sure, find things outside of the norm that you guys have in common that you like to do. Health is something that's really important with us. Pam's been my Florence Nightingale when it came down to the whole illness and helping me with not only my current issues with the longevity and the continued maintenance that I'm

under for my, my skeleton that's been damaged from the fusion and all the other stuff that I've had done to my body. And just, you know, being, being a great moral support. You know, there's times we fight. Yeah. I think every couple does. And we've been married over 30 years which is a huge accomplishment that is especially when you think about uh some of the people that um in the music business i can't think of a lot that i know that have been married that long alice cooper is my godfather he's been married 27 years i think so um yeah you don't find a lot of people that have been married for a long long time you don't find a lot of people that have been married for a long, long time. You don't find a lot of people that are married a long time in regular jobs.

Yeah. But in rock and roll, I'm sure it's way smaller. Well, that probably had a lot to do with Britney Spears and that Kevin Federline 45-second marriage that they did in Las Vegas so many years ago. That had to do with it? I think what happens when you have a bunch of little impressionable fans that are listening to a band and the front person or the leader of the band does stuff, absolutely right that people can be influenced. Do they get influenced? Do I think that people went out and just got married and got divorced right away because of that?

No, but I think that the institute of marriage has been cheapened from people not taking it seriously you know if you're going to marry somebody it's supposed to be your your your soulmate you know um you see beautiful things in nature like those eagles and their death spiral when they're mating and is that beautiful i think the flying and and you know a lot of like the courting that you see these other uh birds and animals and stuff when they change their color to appeal to the mates. Yeah. That to me is really neat. I've often wondered why in the animal kingdom that the males are so much more exotic looking than the females.

It's interesting. But there's so many different things, you know, for for me, when I look at how my relationship with Pam is, because I've tried to really, really be in the marriage and in the parenting when we would come home from tour. I'd be gone so long that, you know, she obviously had to leak over into being the dad every once in a while, which she didn't like. And, you know, I don't think the kids liked it either. So when I came home, instead of coming home and saying, okay, this is how it is, this is my way. I had to really quickly ascertain everything and see, you know, what, what's going on and to help. If I didn't like what was going on, I needed to address that privately in front of the kids and make sure that we were, you know, we were

properly aligned, that we were equally, evenly yoked, you know what I mean? So that if I come home, because one time I came home and Justice had said something really awful to his mom and I spanked him on the butt and his mom goes, or he goes, you didn't give me many chances. And I went, okay, your mom's busted. And, you know, I wasn't a spanker with my kids. You know, I wasn't a spanker with my kids. You know, they got spanked a couple times. But, you know, it was not something that was done a lot in our house because I'd been spanked so much as a kid.

But I think about when, you know, you have two parents and one's gone for so long, especially, you know, in the military too. You know, you come home and you've got to learn that family dynamic. That's why it gets so difficult because one person has to make do and then someone else comes in and maybe screws everything up, maybe doesn't. That's the dilemma of being on tour for so long, right? Yeah, it is. I remember the guys in Iron Maiden. There was a guy that was their tour manager. I think his name was Dickie Bell.

I think he was their tour manager. And he would come home from touring and and this is a known thing with the tour with those guys from maiden that the guy would go to a hotel and stay there for a week after every tour just a detox from being on tour and and i get it you know when i go home the last thing i want to do is pick up my phone and not get room service. Spanking is a very controversial topic with people. It is with a lot of them. A lot of people don't believe it's ever justified in any way.

You know, I'm kind of on the fence about that. I think there's a fine line between spanking someone and beating them. Yeah. You know, and it's like when I lived in Florida, when I was a kid, I got paddled once at school. Yeah. They used to hit you at school. Me too. Me and this kid got in a fight and we both went to the principal's office. You got a swat. And we got one swat on the butt and it hurt. Yep. It hurt. And it was humiliating. It was humiliating that a man like makes you bend over and wax you on the ass. I don't think it was good, though.

I don't think it's a smart thing, and I don't think they do it anymore. But I get what they were trying to do. They had order, I guarantee you that. They definitely had order in the class because of that. That threat of paddling was real. Right. Well, I guess the motive behind it is what's important.

If you discipline with anger, then you're not disciplining because disciplining is supposed to be a conjunction of discipline and teaching. So if you're disciplining your child, you're supposed to teach them. You're not supposed to hit them. ask me about you know advice for parents i i always say kiss your wife good night and tell you you love her don't ever uh discipline your kids and anger and um kids need structure and do you think that spanking is still good do you still believe in it do i like if you were to do it all over again if i spank kids well it depends on what it's about. You know, Lecter never got spanked. So, I mean, she was a child that could be reasoned with. And Justice only got, like I said, spanked a couple of times. And, you know, he was, there was a lot of stuff that was going on, behavioral stuff that Justice was struggling with because I wasn't there. So I know that the family dynamic really needs to have two parents there. I mean, it takes a village thing, that quote, whatever the saying, idiom, cliche, epithet. It's true.

You need to have more than just one person parenting. You need help sometimes because the parents will get exhausted and overwhelmed. And sometimes you need someone to just step in for a second and say, I got this. I think people are missing the village these days. There used to be a thing where people would help with each other's children as well. Children would learn from other parents as well the other men in the tribe yeah you know um and and if the dad couldn't handle a boy then another dad would come along and find out what the interests were and you know um what was that is that lightning geez yeah that was loud this is they agree yeah they agree the lord has spoken um you know just just to come alongside people you know for me i think part of the only reason that i made it was because i did just to come alongside people. You know, for me, I think part of the only reason that I made it was because I did have people come alongside and did have them speak into my life,

you know. And it is difficult when you've got someone who's not your dad or your mom, you know, trying to tell you how to do things. You want to say, you're not my dad. Well, that's one of the things that really helps young men with martial arts is to find these figures, these male senseis and martial arts instructors that they look up to that have great morals and ethics and talk about things in front of the class. And when you're a kid and you admire your instructor so much and it's such an important role model and such an important authority figure.

That has a great benefit on kids, too, in terms of, like, ability to recognize the importance of discipline and being able to do things that make that person proud of your behavior and the way you conduct yourself and also your work ethic. Right, right, right. Well, my work ethic changed tremendously once I started working with Sensei Benny. You know, also my ability to be able to tolerate people when they would say stuff to me that I didn't want to necessarily hear, you know, because before, you know, people would say sit down and I would sit down, but on the inside, I was standing up, you know. uh nowadays it's like I I don't

need to be in the front row I can I can enjoy the show just as much from the second or third row don't you think that benefit that comes from martial arts training also is in the exertion itself there's something about the explosive nature of martial arts like hitting the bag hitting pads sparring all that stuff that it exhausts all this need for aggression that a lot of young men unfortunately have like in our genes right right you can get that out and it makes you a more reasonable polite person yeah yeah i just was talking to justice when we were coming back from class the other day um he he's uh just started training with uh professor reggie he's got his first stripe. So he's really excited about it. And I said, see, the thing, son, is that you never know who you're

going to come across who's going to have more knowledge than you. And right now, you know that as a white belt with even just one stripe, you really don't know very much at all. And that you never know when you're going to come across somebody who may look like they're just somebody that you can push around and you say the wrong thing. Just like that one fighter down in Brazil who tragically lost his life. I can't remember what his name was, but Professor Richard was talking about that guy. Oh, Leandro Lowe.

Yeah, Lowe. Terrible, terrible story. Yeah, I mean, that's the reality of violence, right? And avoid it whenever possible. Absolutely. That's a terrible, terrible story. Yeah, I mean, that's the reality of violence, right? Yeah. And avoid it whenever possible. Absolutely. And I really do believe that for young men in particular, that it's great to find some sort of an outlet in that way

where you can express all the anger and all the shit that just comes with being a man. You can get that out in training, and it makes you so much more reasonable in regular life right it's a giant benefit how did you uh wind up hurting your neck is that from music from it was from headbanging yeah yeah i had been headbanging for so long um i got degenerative disc disease in my neck and then i have uh there's two forms of um stenosis stenosis there's the one where the bone closes in on the nerve and there's two forms of stenosis. There's the one where the bone closes in on the nerve and there's the other one where the nerve swells up inside of the hole.

So I have both of those. And they were going to do, I think it's called a framinectomy or something like that, a frenectomy or something where they go back in and they bore a hole around the nerve. And I said, no way. I was in an emergency room and it was right near my birthday and we were supposed to play Yankee Stadium with the big four. And I couldn't move my arm. It had frozen. And I went in and the guy said, you need emergency surgery right now. You're probably not going to

walk again. So I said, okay. And I told my manager at the time, this guy named Mark Adelman. We were managed by Irving Nesoff's group up in Hollywood. And he called up and told Metallica's management that I needed emergency surgery on my spine or that I wouldn't be able to probably play or walk again. And the guy called me a pussy. And I thought, oh, boy. Jesus Christ. You're a bad manager. Yeah.

Oh, my God. They gave me a shot. They fixed me up. I flew out there. I drove to the stage in a golf cart with a neck brace on. All over the stage there was paper that said, don't headbang. Because my neck was barely holding on. And then I went home and I went to Marina del Rey, I should say, and had my neck

fused together. It took a long time. I still have that neck brace. I need it from time to time because my neck kind of leans forward a little bit. All the headbanging and stuff has made these muscles in here really disproportionate because they had to go through the front in order to get to the bone here. And this muscle in the front is much like a corset. So they pulled it aside and this side had to come across farther because they had to go in here. So when all these muscles grew back, they kind of grew in sideways and then they had to grow over. So there's all this, you know, weird stuff. These two lines coming down right here are a byproduct of trying to stretch a lot, you know, and I don't mind about getting old, but I do mind getting stiff.

Do you do exercises for your neck to compensate for it? What do you do? Yeah. Well, I have a couple of things. I have a traction device that you stick your head in, you sit down and it pulls it up like this. And, I've got one of those. And then I've got a rack that you lay on and your neck gets slid that way. I've got another rack that you put on and you pump it up and the front goes up. Yeah. And then I've got another one that I've got one of those guns like you have at the front door, the HyperVolt gun. Yeah. Those are very, very helpful.

Yeah. Have you ever done stem cell therapies on your neck at all? Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. I've been trying to see what's going to happen with, you know, where we're at if, you know, with my whole situation with cancer before I start taking on any more new surgeries or anything. Have you ever used a device called the Iron Neck? Have you ever heard of that?

Never heard of it. Well, the good thing about it is you're not articulating those discs. You're not moving them, but it still strengthens your neck. You put it on your head like a halo, and it has a bungee cord that attaches off the halo, and you vary the amount of tension on the bungee cord based on the position you are in relationship to where it's connected. So if you pull back further, it's more tension. You're just using your head like this? No, you don't bend your head back and forth at all.

You turn it sideways. There it is right there. See that thing like there? We'll give you one. We have one here if you want it. Excellent. Yeah. So what you do is you pull, see, so see how his muscles are engaged and then he's going to turn to his right shoulder and turn to his left shoulder. And as you do that, it strengthens the muscles on the neck, but without bending your neck forward and back. So if you have, you know, from head banging, I'm sure that area gets irritated very easily. Yeah. Bending forward and back.

In the back. In the back is hot. So what this does is it strengthens your neck while it's in a straight posture. So you do this and this with it on. So it's strengthening the neck but it's, see how he's using it? See there? Oh, yeah. See, that's actually right here at the

honor gym that's here in austin um so as he's doing that the tension on the actual halo itself you vary so in the beginning like you could do it very easily and build up to it and then eventually you can get it to where see that thing as you adjust that little red dial that red dial is it like a trx2 where you're leaning out and it increases to this? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And also because it's a bungee cord, it's a direct connection to the amount of tension. It's just directly proportionate to how far you pull it backwards. Yeah, it's great.

So see how he's doing this? They call that the Stevie Ray. Or the Ray Charles, rather. me i'm at ray charles so as you uh because you know ray charles used to move his head like that um so as he's doing that he's strengthening all the muscles in his neck but he's not putting undue stress in a forward and backward way yeah there's a bunch of different exercises you could do with it but it's videos online we'll give you one of those. It'll help you. Thank you. When anybody has a fucked up neck, I always have a lot of advice

because I've gone through a lot of shit with my neck and luckily figured out ways to strengthen it and make it much better. But that's just sort of a common thread in Jiu Jitsu. So many people in Jiu Jitsu wind up with fucked up discs. You know, the first couple months that I trained, I had so many injuries.

I sprained my right elbow, and then I had ribs on both sides that got— Separated. Beat up pretty—but they didn't break. I don't think they—I don't know what happened to them, but they hurt. A lot of times you get the tear between the two ribs. They'll get pushed forward, and you'll get injuries inside the ribs. That's really common i was just saying when i started i was you know obviously uh not in great health and and uh not very flexible either so i think a lot of that happened when you know we

were doing some tosses and i would grab on because i didn't want to go flying through the air i wasn't comfortable you know hitting a mat yet and i used to do that with with uh you can't call all the time i you know i just had gotten out of it and i'd forgotten so it's also age my brother yeah it is cocoon yeah father time beats us all yeah there's no if fans or butts about that but i i love the fact that i mean we were 58 when you started jiu jitsu somewhere around i think so yeah that's amazing about 57 maybe and you've got the purple, which means you can get the black belt. Yeah. Once you get the purple belt,

you can get the black belt. Yeah. It's just a matter of time and effort. It's the hump between white and blue that's the big hump. That's what Professor Reggie told me. He said that most people quit at that part right there. And I was thinking,

God, that's the part where I'm the most angry that I want to get through. And I've since changed my mind because I looked back and I remember Sensei Benny through, you know, and I've since changed my mind because I looked back and I remember Sensei Benny saying, you don't digest, you just chew. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, you gobble, you just chew, you don't digest the material. And I went, okay, okay, I'm slowing down now. Because I just wanted to train every day with him. And he would say, no, you need to take a day off.

You need to take two days off, whatever. Well, there's a thing in learning technique in particular with any kind of martial art that's very important to learn it correctly. Because you can learn bad paths. And then those paths, even if you get past them, when you get tired, when you get fatigued, or when you're under stress, you'll revert to your earliest teachings. Yeah, to the bad habits, yeah. When I was teaching Taekwondo, I had a really hard time trying to teach people that had learned something the wrong way already. Yeah.

So they threw kicks, but they didn't have the right amount of power because they weren't using their hips properly. So I try to express, there's a way to articulate your hips. You're not doing that. You're just kicking with your leg. And when they get tired or when- Just flop it out there. Or they get nervous if they're competing.

It would just fall apart. And they would go right back to the earliest teaching, which is really, to me, ingrained early on in my mind. You've got to learn something right the first time. You don't want to unlearn shit. It's very hard. Like you were talking about guitar. It's very hard for want to unlearn shit. No very hard like what you're talking about guitar It's very hard for people to unlearn like once you learn something you I guess the guitar It doesn't really matter because some of the greats like Hendrix, I think didn't he learn wasn't he self-taught as well?

You know, I don't know and I'm not exactly sure but god. I didn't know you're such a big Hendrix fan I love him. That's why his posters of them everywhere You know when I was a kid I just was blown away when I would when I don't remember what the first song I listened to but the sounds that this guy was making with his guitar I was like this is insane yeah yeah it's like it is as I was saying before about music one of the things that's so fascinating to me is that it's your someone's expressing their creativity through these sounds and these sounds literally change the way you feel they

they do something to you that just excites all of your nerves and all of your sensations to this point where it's it's a great song that comes on at the right time is an amazing drug it really is it's a drug that your mind produces based on someone else's creativity pick you up pull you out yeah that's why i named this the joe rogan experience it's based on the jimmy experience that's excellent that's excellent yeah it just it seemed like the only name for it at the time but uh it's perfect yeah we're very fortunate and especially today that you know someone can tell you about a song and you can have access to it almost instantaneously you know and just pull it up on your phone and then bam, next thing you know

you're listening to it in your car. It's a wild time for the consumption of other people's work. Whoever thought Captain Kirk would have all that stuff on his wrist at one day. Screw Captain Kirk. What about Dick Tracy with the watch that calling Dick Tracy, calling Dick Tracy. We thought that was so impossible. Now it's 100% normal. No kidding.

There's so many people out there with Apple Watch. I have friends that wear an Apple Watch when they go out, and they don't even bring their phone. They just have, like, earphones, like earbuds. So they'll put earbuds on, and they'll talk through their goddamn Apple Watch. Yeah, yeah. You know, that's one of the things I can't stand is going out to dinner with people, and they sit on their phone across from you.

It's a bummer. Well, I think one of my friends who does it says that this makes me not look at my phone. I'm not looking at my phone, but if someone needs to call me, I could still talk to them on my watch. That's justification of abuse. It is, but at least he's not on Instagram checking Facebook all day.

He's just using the watch and making phone calls and stuff. It's probably a little better, right, if you're only getting phone calls and text messages through your watch. You ever do that, Jamie? You ever leave the house with no phone, just a watch? Or running, like if I go on a run or exercise. And do you ever make phone calls or talk to people when you're doing that? Yeah, and it's actually come in real handy.

One time my phone fell out of my pocket in someone's car and I was like, oh fuck, how do I get a hold of them? Hopefully this watch thing works. Oh, that was the first time you used it? Yeah, to call you, hey man. Come back? You got my shit?

Do you ever get on social media? Do you do any of that? We had the very first website back in 1994 when Countdown to Extinction came out. Wow. No, when Euthanasia came out, and it was called Megadeth Arizona, and we had the first chat room. Really? Yes, I remember being immersed in every waking moment of my life when that came out.

There was a guy named Charles who was the webmaster and and we were in telnet and and and all that sounds my god the modem sounds yeah and and so we uh we were so far ahead of everybody else gene simmons even said hey man i want one of those band website things like megadeth does wow so. So, yeah, we had the first website, and we've tried to always be at the forefront with our band, with what we're doing. This record is no different. We have NFTs that we're going to be releasing with our fans.

Do you understand NFTs? Yeah, I do. Do you? Tell me. Because I don't understand it. I have something for you. Oh. A very special gift for you. Oh, I'm excited. Yeah, well, now that I think about it,

I was thinking about something else because I've got some little souvenirs and stuff from touring over there, so I have a little teeny thing from the Hendrix experience I was thinking about sending down here to put up on the wall

or something. Oh, fuck yeah. I would love that. Thank you. Yeah, it might not be as cool as your other things you got here. It'll be fucking cool as shit. Yeah, but the other thing,

what were we talking about? The other, what was the other thing we were talking about just now? Not the hanging in the- Oh, your website. We're talking about social media. Social media, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so in the beginning, I did the Twitter stuff.

We were very, very, very active with Megadeth Arizona, which was our chat room, and then we had Megadeth.com, and we had uh what was called um the diner was what they called the chat room with with megadeth arizona and um that that lasted for a while then there was some woman who said she invented it all and and um we we kind of said look we don't want to be part of this website over here we want to take megadest.com and and we want you to let us free you know so the label was basically doing the the website uh domain hosting at the time and and i knew the future of the web i knew what was going on with uh you know the beginning uh internet and now that we're on the cusp of web 3.0, you know, with cyber currency and cryptocurrency,

I mean, and with the NFTs, you know, we've got our NFTs are going to be launching September 13th, which is going to be my birthday, consequently. And we also have a lot of things that are membership oriented, where all you need is a little Megadeth coin to hang on to, and it gives you access to all kinds of other really cool things like meet and greets, concerts, early ticketing, different merchandise nobody else is going to get. And with the non-fungible tokens, it's so involved with everything.

All I can tell you right now is I've looked at other people's NFTs that they have. And I think we're a little bit farther ahead from other people with their NFTs. You know, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, however you say it, was really a cool kind of thing in the beginning. And it's taken on life all of its own. And then, you know, you look at the NFTs that Ozzy did, the Cryptobats, you know, a lot of people like it because it's 8-bit and it looks like it's, you know, old, old school Atari kind of stuff, you know. But I think that when you do something like that, you also run the hazard, if you will, of somebody saying, you're not doing it. Somebody

else is doing it for you. So we try and be as authentic as possible and make sure that we know what we're doing. We know what we're talking about and we know how it's going to benefit the fans. I think people really like that in terms of like social media too. When they find out that someone's posting on social media for you, like in pretending that they're the band or pretend they're the comedian or whatever, people get upset at right well i don't post on the megadeth uh socials because that's the whole band for my own personal stuff i do what is your personal account just dave mustang that's it you know um we did this long enough ago where there's no real challenges to the name and the social um services, the different ones you're talking about,

they're congenial enough, I don't know if that's the right word, but to work with us and make sure that, you know, hey, you've got some imposters, got Dave's name out there. It's not like, you know, Buck Owens where everybody, you know. Right, Dave Mustaine's pretty distinctive. It is. It's hard to find another guy like that out there. Yeah, so that's one of the things.

You know, the thing I'm most excited about right now is what we're going to be doing with the whole Web 3.0 experience for fans. I don't want to see this turn into an isolation kind of thing where the fans, you know, they get into the Web 3.0 stuff and put on their Oculus Rift helmets and start going into this world and not coming up, you know. But in the same token, it's also going to be exciting to see who's going to be able to pull off the first legit, authentic concert in in that virtual yeah because I mean you know you look at a lot of it and stuff that people are doing like the hologram stuff that was going and everybody was saying like holograms Tupac Shakur Elvis oh my god are you kidding right but then when you get there in the concert and you see it it's a little bit wanting well also tupac looked like a cross fitter like they they made it a little too vain they didn't really duplicate tupac's body they

made tupac super jacked oh ha did you see of course no i didn't oh let's pull it up because it's really interesting because like tupac was always like a pretty thin healthy guy but in this it looked like he had done a cycle the He's on the weight pile? Yeah and started fucking hitting hitting look at that I mean come on that dude looks like Kamaru Usman look at his six-pack that's incredible look how jacked he is in that photo down there Jamie look at that. Which one's real? That's that's the fake Tupac but he's pretty skinny but the real Tupac did not look like that it wasn't that and that's it that's a hologram? Look how jacked he is.

That's not fair. Because if you were going to bring back Hendrix and make Hendrix look like a bodybuilder, people would be like, what are you doing? I mean, look at that. Look how jacked he is. That's like a legitimate 20 pounds heavier than Tupac really was in real life. That's crazy. That's silly.

That's the first time I saw that. I didn't think it was going to be that. I thought it was going to look like R2-D2. Right. Like what if they brought Biggie back but they made him look like Mike Tyson? Everybody's like, come on, man. That's not what Biggie looked like. You can't be vain. That's the real Tupac.

See, he's pretty thin. Pretty, like in the right-hand corner, that one next to that, Jamie. Yeah, I mean, he's in... That's not him. That's not him? That's from a movie. That's not him? Yeah, the pictures are getting confused. What is that?

That's an actor. Oh, wow. He looks a lot like Tupac. Sure did. So that's him. Okay, so that's perfect. Look at that. So he's thin.

He's got a six-pack going on, but, I mean, he does not have nearly the bulk. The fake one was just super jacked. That's him for real life. He's good shape good shape yeah but like you know thin like a thin boxer you know like someone who's fit for sure yeah but not like fucking super jacked like that hologram dude if i saw that hologram i'd be like damn man i wish i looked like that for real yeah get in shape man time to get in shape yeah there's the hologram I mean the hologram is fucking jacked yeah but it's uh the virtual world to me what's interesting about that is people that don't have access to your concerts can't go I would like it as like a supplement thing it'd be fucking amazing if you had a virtual

reality concert where someone could sit there in like the second row and see people in front of me it feels real and they get to see you guys actually perform their actual real high definition video of you there but in a virtual space where you can move around and actually watch you right in front of them that's an amazing experience so you're saying like set up some of those 360 cameras in the second row and have people be able to look all around. Yeah, that sounds totally doable. I know ZZ Top was doing that when they were filming themselves live, but ZZ Top isn't a really high energy band. You would need a real live crowd too, though.

I would think you need to do one of your real concerts and have people with the cameras in the crowd so it feels like you're there. That'd be incredible. like people with the cameras in the crowd so it feels like you're there yeah you know we incredible we won a cleo award for um having the best uh virtual reality performance it wasn't about the virtual reality performance it was the best business idea and uh this company is known for giving out awards to honda to palm olive to procter and gamble and stuff like that. And we got the award because the forward and extra cerebral thought process that comes from our brain trust and doing a 360 degree virtual reality concert where they came, they got the- Is that this right here? Yeah. They got the CD package and the CD package came with the helmet that you had to wear. And what you would

do is you would slide your cell phone into this helmet and then you could go through here while we were playing and you could get any position that you wanted to, to watch how we were playing from there. That's amazing. This is some of the songs that had the quartet in it. So that helmet, does this 25,000 units worldwide are these helmets? Is that what that's saying? That's the CD and the app. I can't remember how many of these things there were, but we had, that was the thing right there I was holding, yeah.

And does it matter what kind of phone? There's the camera. Wow. No, I think it was a Droid. Right. A lot of them are Androids. Yeah. That's like Samsung has- Oh, there it was, there it was I think it was a droid. Right. A lot of them are androids. Yeah. That's like Samsung has.

Oh, there it was. There it was. That is it right there? They were just showing you how to make it. Show that again, Jamie. Right there. So this is the box. You take it out.

You open it up. And was this like a specific droid that would do this? Because I know Samsung had a thing when you would buy their phones. Yeah, that's it. And you'd put the lens in there. Wasn't that what Samsung was doing for a while, Jamie? Do you remember that? They had a thing that came with one of their Galaxy phones.

That was like sort of a headset type deal. Yeah, but the Oculus has now erased all that stuff. But yeah, there was an option for that for sure. Yeah, but I don't think they do it anymore though. Probably not because, yeah oculus is so good so do you guys have this available for things like oculus and that version i think it's sold out i don't think they made any more of those it was a limited edition um have you thought about doing that for like htc vive or oculus or any of these platforms that do virtual reality you know i did the very first interview that oculus ever did they came to my house in Fallbrook,

and the guy brought a duct-taped together prototype of the Oculus camera and gave me the headset, and I put that in. And the very first scene that I ever saw was a dog walker walking dogs down the beach in San Diego because the guy had just gone there before he came to my house, and he filmed some dog walkers, and I thought, this is the coolest thing ever, and I think you might be able to find it online.

They show this picture of me by my pond in my house we used to have in Fallbrook. It's a beautiful, beautiful place, but the picture made it look like five times as big. It was really amazing. And seeing the Oculus Rift thing in its beginning stages, you know, I didn't really have a lot of oomph with my desire wanting to pursue this.

I knew it was something neat. I knew it was cool. But, you know, he told me that the guy from Doom, I think it was. John Carmack. Yeah, he was going to get involved in that. He did. And he put like $75 million or something into the company.

Because I wanted to get in on that too, and I don't know whatever happened. We talked. I did some press for them, and the next thing you know, we've got this opportunity to do the performance. We win an award. Gone. Now we're on to the next thing. There's a lot of really cool things you can do with those Oculus now.

And one that you might enjoy as a martial artist is they have boxing games. Oh, really? Yeah, they're great. And it's a surprisingly good workout because you hold the hand things and then you put the helmet on and you're in this ring with like this virtual boxer, this cartoon boxer. And every time they hit you with a jab, your vision lights up. Oh, wow. Like you got rocked. Sensory, yeah.

Yeah, it's really cool. It doesn't hurt, you know, obviously, but you get the sense like, oh my God, I got hit. There's multiple games that are available for Oculus Rift. No, Fight Camp is different. Fight Camp is pretty cool too. I got Fight Camp in my house. It's great. Fight Camp is essentially like Peloton, but with combat sports.

So you have sensors that are on the heavy bag, and you have sensors that are in your gloves, and then you follow along with a video that will tell you what to do. And it's great because it forces you to do what they're doing, and you don't work out to your pace. You work out to a trainer's pace. But these games, there's more than one. There's a ton of them. There's a ton of them for archery, a ton of them for other things too that are fun to do. But the boxing one is a particularly good workout.

I was surprised. I was like, oh, my God, I'm gassed out. This is crazy. Because you're really going after it with this. And you're not hitting anything, which is actually sometimes when you're moving fast is harder because nothing's absorbing your shot. So since nothing's absorbing your shot, you have to kind of like slow it down yourself. So as you're throwing these punches and you're moving around, because you're doing it pretty fast.

You're not doing it just like you're just shadowboxing and moving in front of a mirror. You're doing it where you're trying to hit this thing that's hitting you. And so as you hit it, it registers. Like you see, like as your gloves touch it, it reacts to it. So it feels... You don't hit anything, but it feels like... Yeah. This is one of them. There's many of them though. So you can actually duck under punches and move around. It recognizes where you are in 3D space because the playing area is mapped out. So you map it out on the floor, and if you walk past those ropes,

it would give you a red screen that shows you that you're fucking up and you're in the wrong spot. It's really fun, but it's good for people for a workout. It's a game that you play. Yeah, here you go. I see you got a guy doing it. You know, I got one of Raging Bulls boxing gloves. Oh really? Jake LaMotta? One of Jake LaMotta's boxing gloves. Yeah. Oh wow. I got, I got a picture of him signing it too. Oh,

that's very cool. Yeah. When did you meet him? I, when I first came to Nashville, there was a boxing match that they had. It was a celebrity boxing match and this attorney fought this other attorney and I thought, good, kill both of you. Jake LaMotta. Wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah,

Doug Stanhope used to party with him. He was living in Bisbee, Arizona for a while. These photos of, Doug Stanhope was a brilliant comedian. He's a good friend of mine

and he lives in Bisbee, Arizona. Can you say his name's Doug Standup? Stanhope. Oh, Stanhope. Yeah.

I was going to say, what a great comedy name. Yeah, I would be suspicious. Doug Standup. I'd be like, let me see your birth certificate, bitch. Here it is. Jake LaMotta smoking cigarettes with Doug Standhope. Oh, my God. Isn't that great?

Drinking and smoking cigarettes. He looks tired. Wow, he's 150,000 years old in this picture. Yeah. I mean, everybody in this era is long dead. I mean, Ray Robinson, long gone from that era.

The golden years. It was a great year. Yeah, it sure was. A great time, rather, for fighters. I mean,

it's not so great for their health, but man, those guys fought hundreds of times. When I was a little kid, I used to have these little plastic models

that you would make, you know, like the Revell ones. And, you know, they'd make like cars and planes. Revell. Revell? Revell was the name of the company. Oh, like a glued together ones. And, you know, they'd make like cars and planes. Ravel.

Ravel? Ravel was the name of the company. Oh, like a glued together model? Yes, yes, yes. And I remember having this one model where it was half of a boxing ring. And it was Gene Bell and Jack Tunney. Oh, yeah. Sure, Jack Tunney.

I think that's what it was. It was a real old boxing match. This is like back in the 60s when I was a kid doing this. And I thought it was the neatest thing because I'd never seen any models of boxers before. That is cool. I don't know why I thought of that, but I remember distinctly now seeing the two fighters. Do they even make those anymore? They don't want to come for kids because they sniff the glue.

Probably not, yeah. That glue's toxic. It is. That shit's terrible for you. I always used, as a kid, I had one of those. You always used glue? Yeah. I did a lot of models when I was a kid.

I had, like, when I was a kid, one of those TIE Fighters, those Star Wars things. You glue it together and shit. Yeah, there was always a bunch of, like, cool little models. Cars. He was always putting together model cars. That was a thing. Yeah. Remember the guy that did the bug-out kind of hot rods?

You know, the guy with the big eyes and bloodshot eyes? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Daddy Rat, Rat Fink, whatever it's called. Yeah, that was the stuff that I used to make, too, when we were making models. It was a lot of those, like, what did they call it? The Snake and the Mongoose Dragsters and Boot Hill Express. They had all these crazy

cars that were like Mattel cars too. That was really fun. Are you into cars? Yeah, I am. I've got I did some foreign car mechanic work when I was younger. I just did R&R stuff, remove and replace, and mostly on English cars and mostly Triumphs

where you had to take the clutch out. And in order to get the clutch out of those things, you had to take the whole front, down where your feet are, the whole console out of the car and then go under the car that way. And I thought, surely these guys are making me do this the hardest way possible. What kind of cars are you into now?

Well, I have English stuff. My wife and I both have a Range Rover. She's got a Bentley and I have an Aston Martin. And my daughter, she has a Range Rover Justice. I gave him an Aston, and he traded it for a Raptor, which I think a lot of people would say he's nuts, but I think here in Texas, a lot of people would probably say they understand.

Those things are fucking great. Yeah, they are. Yeah. They are. But why English cars? Why are you so into English cars? Well, I don't know. I used to hate English cars.

And I had Mercedes for pretty much all my driving adulthood. And I had a manager at one point, he said, yeah, you should just get an Aston Martin. And I said, really? And that was the one after Pierce Bronson, who I thought was the worst James Bond of all. Who's the best? Huh? Who's the best James Bond of all. Who's the best? Huh? Who's the best James Bond of all? I think now,

because I've been able to see some living, breathing James Bonds. I thought Daniel Craig was good. Thank you. I thought Sean Connery was cool until I found out that he likes to smack his ex-wife around or whatever. Everybody's got skeletons in their closet,

and it's better not to even hear about it. When I find out stuff like that, it's so disappointing. You know, that's why they say never meet your heroes. Yeah, I think Daniel Craig was the most believable of all the James Bond. Like, I believe he was an assassin. That made sense to me. Looked like it. Fit the role.

He wasn't so artificial. Right. You know. Yeah. Well, it's also a product of the times, right? Like during the Roger Moore days, it was like more silly. Like James Bond was silly. You know, it was like half of the, it was comedy.

Yeah, it was all the smarmy talk and, you know. Yeah, silly. One-liners. One-liners, yeah. Yeah. Catch phrases. In the Daniel Craig era, it was like more a realistic action movie It's not necessarily realistic that first movie when he started off on that crane. Mm-hmm. I was hooked

Yeah, you know what? He could have been dead right there and I would have watched the rest of movie. I love it It was so great. Yeah. Well, listen Dave. I chewed up three hours of your time Appreciate my flight. Yeah, I hope so too. I appreciate you being here though It's great to hear your story. It's great to meet you. here. I hope I make my flight. I hope so, too. I appreciate you being here, though, man. Yeah, you got it. It's great to hear your story. Thanks. And it's great to meet you finally. You, too.

It's cool. So thank you very much for everything. You're welcome. I have something I want to give you, too. All right. Well, thank you for that, too. And that's it. All right. Thank you.

Bye, everybody. Thank you.