{"id":473807,"date":"2026-02-14T04:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T04:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473807\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T04:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T04:53:13","slug":"megadeths-dave-mustaine-on-health-issues-2026-tour-hitting-no-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473807\/","title":{"rendered":"Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine on Health Issues, 2026 Tour & Hitting No. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDave Mustaine couldn\u2019t have asked for a better start to Megadeth<\/a>\u2018s new self-titled album.<\/p>\n

\n\tMegadeth, the thrash group\u2019s 17th (and, according to Mustaine, final) title, put the band at No. 1 on charts around the world after its Jan. 23 release, including for the first time ever on the Billboard 200. The single \u201cTipping Point\u201d topped the Hard Rock Digital Song Sales chart last October, while \u201cI Don\u2019t Care\u201d was No. 5 in November. \u201cPuppet Parade\u201d debuted at No. 9 on the Hard Rock Songs survey earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow\u2019s that feeling to Mustaine? \u201cIt\u2019s been like a really big chubby,\u201d he tells Billboard \u2014 with a smirk \u2014 via Zoom from his home office in Franklin, Tenn., where his Grammy Award for \u201cDystopia\u201d sits behind him. \u201cThat was terrible,\u201d he adds quickly, going on to express a more genuine reaction for how well the set is being received.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cIt is gratifying,\u201d Mustaine says. \u201cI hope the fans will fall in love with this album and keep it on the charts. Ever since we started getting those No. 1 tracks, this has had a really profound effect on everybody around us. They\u2019re all feeling vindicated because of their belief and their hard work to make this happen, \u2018cause this was a bona fide team to make this record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s also, of course, \u201cbittersweet\u201d for Mustaine and the Megadeth team, which begins touring to support the album with a 12-date Canadian tour that kicks off Feb. 15 in Victoria, B.C.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe quartet \u2014 with Swedish guitarist Teemu Mantysaari making his first appearance on a Megadeth album \u2014 was \u201cway past the halfway point\u201d of making the album when Mustaine\u2019s many physical ailments began taking a greater toll than before. \u201cI said to [son and co-manager] Justis, \u2018I don\u2019t know how much longer I can do this. My hands are killing me,’\u201d he recalls. \u201cI\u2019m gonna be 65 this year. I\u2019ve been ridden hard and put away wet \u2014 the cancer, the (spinal) fusion, the Saturday night palsy, the arthritis, the stenosis and the reverse stenosis, the bulging discs, the fractured vertebrae\u2026that sh-t catches up to you. And there\u2019s only so much aspirin you can eat before your kidneys start saying, \u2018Me too! I\u2019m gonna stop working, too.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were all talking about it and everybody said they understood and they were supportive, and that to me was so refreshing. I remember when I got sick one of the ex-bandmates called up my wife and said I was being selfish, and I thought, \u2018He said what?!\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNothing surprises me with some of the guys in the past,\u201d adds Mustaine, who\u2019s seen nearly three dozen musicians come through the band he formed during 1983 in Los Angeles after parting ways with Metallica. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s so refreshing with these guys I\u2019m playing with right now. We really love to play together. If that\u2019s what you\u2019re about, you don\u2019t let the fly sh-t on the dancefloor trip you up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMustaine says he did have all of Megadeth\u2018s songs written by the time the farewell decision was made, including the aptly titled \u201cThe Last Note,\u201d at the end of which he intones, \u201cHere\u2019s my last will, my final testament, my sneer\/I came, I ruled, now I disappear.\u201d \u201cObviously there was some oppression in my mental state,\u201d Mustaine acknowledges, \u201cand once I started writing that stuff, it just came out. The good thing is it\u2019s out there, and it summarizes how I feel and what it\u2019s gonna be like that last night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso raising eyebrows on Megadeth is \u201cRide the Lightning,\u201d the title track from Metallica\u2019s second album and one of two on that set that Mustaine co-wrote. It was recorded as a bonus track, and at the suggestion of management. \u201cWe went in and talked to the (Megadeth) guys,\u201d Mustaine says. \u201cI said to the guys when we started, \u2018We have to be as good or better than the original track,\u2019 and there\u2019s only a few ways we could\u2019ve made the song any better, \u2019cause it\u2019s a great track. It was great when I wrote it with James (Hetfield), it was great when they rerecorded it, and it was great when we took it apart and put it together now for the new Megadeth album.\u201d Mustaine is confident that Megadeth will start playing it live, too, \u201cat some point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just wanted to do the right thing,\u201d Mustaine says. \u201cI wanted to respect James and close the circle with those guys with that track and just show my respect for my time that I had in the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMustaine says Megadeth will start out playing four songs from Megadeth during the Canadian trek, which will feature support from fellow Big Four thrasher Anthrax and Exodus. The group plays South and Central America during the spring as well as the Sonic Temple festival in Ohio on May 17, then heads to Europe. A run of North American dates begins on Aug. 8 in Sturgis, South Dakota, and runs into late September, with more on the horizon. In fact, Mustaine says, Megadeth is booked throughout 2027 and could stay out even longer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMost tours that we do are two to three years,\u201d he explains. \u201cI can\u2019t see it coming any shorter than two years, unless my hands give up on me. The time\u2019s coming, but right now I can still play, and I want to go out on top. If I feel like it\u2019s starting to suffer, that\u2019s when the end will be near and that\u2019s when I\u2019ll probably look into changing my life. I think this is a great way to say thank you to the fans for everything. I\u2019m just hoping that any of the fans who have moved on will remember Megadeth and go get this album.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for after the tour, Mustaine says that \u201cthe future\u2019s pretty much an enigma for me.\u201d But he doesn\u2019t think this will be the last we hear from him, either. \u201cJust because I don\u2019t play live or I can\u2019t record anymore doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t write songs,\u201d Mustaine says. \u201cWe have so many songs in the archives we just never worked on, so that\u2019s a possibility, me meeting with other writers and working on songs with them.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHonestly, if I could do that I would rather do it with my guys first, so we could keep making music in the future. I just know that I\u2019m gonna keep putting one foot in front of the other, and for every live show we do right now I\u2019m gonna play it like my life was on the line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dave Mustaine couldn\u2019t have asked for a better start to Megadeth\u2018s new self-titled album. Megadeth, the thrash group\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,5453,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-473807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-genre-rock","12":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}