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Story Behind The Song - Megadeth's Hidden Treasure
05 June 2003
Story Behind The Song - Megadeth's Hidden Treasure


NO MORE MR. NICE GUY
This was one of the tunes that I had learned for my audition, but when I got there, the guys only talked about how much they couldn?t stand the song. Oddly enough, this was the tune that made Megadeth a ?household name? in the UK, but the guys wanted nothing to do with it. I didn?t mind, because even I thought it was a bit out of character for Megadeth.

BREAKPOINT
This was done during the ?Countdown? sessions, and we intended to put it on that album. At the end of just about every record we did, we wound up with a few tunes too many, so we had to choose which ones we would cut from the album and use as B-sides, etc,. This tune has some cool rhythms and leads in it, probably cooler than anything else on ?Countdown?, but I guess it was the least consistent with the rest of the record, that?s maybe why we booted it off.

GO TO HELL
So many memories! Working on the song during soundchecks on the Japan ?Rust? tour, Ellefson?s wife doing a great job with the ?prayer?, listening to rough mixes in Mustaine?s car at a formal party in North Hollywood, the video in Chicago was literally as hot as hell; especially for our bodyguard who we convinced to play the part of the devil and had to shoot his part for endless hours. Dave also worked his ass off in that one. The shoot was relatively easy for the rest of us (pix of me from that shoot are in the gallery) and I spent most of the time hanging with my Chicago friends. This was the first tune we recorded after ?Rust In Peace?, and the first songwriting credit for me on a Megadeth song. Very ?marty-esque? soloing here, and Dave came to the party with some cool stuff too.

ANGRY AGAIN
We all had kind of a break from each other and the highs and lows of the ?Countdown? tour, then we reconvened in a dingy little Phoenix studio to do this one tune with Max Norman. We stayed at this swanky Scottsdale golf resort in these funky bungalows. I thought that the studio was not so good and the sound of this tune was inferior to anything else we had done. The solo I did was very ?un-Marty-like? for whatever reason.

99 WAYS TO DIE
One of my all-time fave Megadeth tunes. While recording this at The Enterprise in North Hollywood, the 2 inch 24 track tape machine ATE the tape!! And this was after we had done the large majority of the tracking-vocals, solos, drums, bass, everything!! We were lucky because the tape got eaten during a chorus of the song. Since there were a few identical choruses in the song we could splice in another chorus in the messed up one?s place. Had it been during a verse, or the intro or the solo, we would have had to do all the tracking again from the beginning-for everybody!!

PARANOID
We went in the studio to do a Black Sabbath cover for ?Nativity in Black? and being the huge Sabbath fan that I am, I brought in 5 or 6 Sabbath discs. We couldn?t choose a song, mainly because the sound of the early Sabbath recordings sounded so tiny compared to what we were recording at the time that we kind of got discouraged on the whole thing and almost gave up. Then Dave launched into ?Paranoid?, and David, Nick and I joined in. Tape was rolling, and we got it in that one take. I love the ending where Nick keeps playing after the song ended and after Dave shouts, ?Nick! Nick!? you can hear Nick say, ?Fuck me running? through the overhead drum mics. A natural Megadeth moment.

DIADEMS
I don?t know what a ?Diadem? is, but this tune was a departure for us arrangement-wise, and had some cool acoustic parts. We did this in the Youthanasia sessions, I used the same Alvarez acoustic guitar that I used on ?A Tout Le Monde?.

PROBLEMS
I always liked the fact that Megadeth had a punk element in it despite us being this razor sharp tight metal machine. Odd combination. I grew up on the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, so doing this song was a blast.
 
 
 
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