Layden Joe - Mustaine: a heavy metal memoir

Photograph by Daniel Gonzalez Toriso.

HUNT, TEXAS

JANUARY 2002

I f youre looking for bottom, this seems to be about as good a place as anyalthough Id be the first to admit that the bottom has been a moving target in my dark and twisted, speed metal version of a Dickensian life.

Impoverished, transient childhood? Check.

Abusive, alcoholic parent? Check.

Mind-fucking religious weirdness (in my case the extremes of the Jehovahs Witnesses and Satanism)? Check.

Alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness? Check, check, check.

Soul-crushing professional and artistic setbacks? Check.

Rehab? Check (seventeen times, give or take).

Near-death experience? Check that one, too.

James Hetfield, who used to be one of my best friends, as close as a brother, once observed with some incredulity that I must have been born with a horseshoe up my ass. Thats how lucky Ive been, how fortunate I am to be pulling breath after so many close calls. And I must acknowledge that on some level hes right. I have been lucky. I have been blessed. But heres the thing about having a horseshoe lodged in your rectum: it also hurts like hell. And you never forget its there.

So here I am, staring down the throat of another stint in rehab, at a place called La Hacienda, out in the heart of the pristine Texas Hill Country. Its only about two hundred miles or so from Fort Worth, but it seems a world away, with only cattle ranches and summer camps for neighbors. The focus is on healing... on getting better. Physically, spiritually, emotionally. As usual, Ive brought only modest expectations and enthusiasm to the proceedings. Aint my first rodeo, after all.

You see, Ive learned more about getting loaded, more about how to get drugs, more about mixing drinks, and more about how to bed the opposite sex in Alcoholics Anonymous than in any other single place in the world. AAand this holds true for most rehabilitative programs and treatment centersis a fraternity, and like all fraternity brothers, we like to swap stories. Its a ridiculous glorifying of the experience: drugalogues and drunkalogues, theyre called. One of the things that always bothered me most was the incessant one-upmanship. Youd tell a story, sometimes baring your soul, and the guy next to you would smirk and say, Ah, man, I spilled more than you ever used.

Oh, really?

Damn right.

Well, I used a lot, so you must be one clumsy fuckhead.

For some reason, this sort of interaction never did much for me, never made me feel like I was getting better or improving as a human being. Sometimes I got worse. It was at an AA meeting, ironically, that I first learned about the ease of procuring pain medication through the Internet. I didnt have any particular need for pain meds at the time, but the woman telling the story made it sound like a great buzz. Before long the packages were coming to my house and Id fostered one hell of an addiction. By this time I was a world-famous rock starfounder, front man, singer, songwriter, and guitarist (and de facto CEO) for Megadeth, one of the most popular bands in heavy metal. I had a beautiful wife and two wonderful kids, a nice home, cars, more money than I ever dreamed of. And I was about to throw it all away. You see, behind the faade, I was fucking miserable: tired of the road, the bickering between band members, the unreasonable demands of management and record company executives, the loneliness of the drug-addled life. And, as always, incapable of seeing that what I had was more important than what I didnt have. The joy of writing songs and playing music, which had sustained me through so many lean years, had slowly been siphoned off.

Now I simply felt... empty.

And so I went off to Hunt, Texas, hoping this time the change would stick. Or not hoping. Not caring. Not knowing much of anything, really, except that I needed help getting off the pain meds. As for long-term behavior modification? Well, that wasnt high on my list of priorities.

And heres what happens. Early in my stay I wander off to get some rest. I remember slumping into a chair and tossing my left arm over the back, trying to curl up and sleep. The next thing I know, Im waking up, dragging myself out of the fugue of a twenty-minute nap, and when I try to stand up, something pulls me back, like Im buckled into the seat or something. And then I realize whats happened: my arm has fallen asleep and its still hooked over the back of the chair. I laugh, try to withdraw my arm again.

Nothing happens.

Again.

Still nothing.

I repeat this motion (or attempted motion) a few more times before finally using my right arm to lift my left arm off the chair. The moment I let go, it falls to my side, dangling uselessly, pins and needles shooting from shoulder to fingertips. After a few minutes, some of the feeling returns to my upper arm and then to part of my forearm. But my hand remains dead, as if shot full of Novocain. I keep shaking it out, rubbing it, whacking it against the chair. But the hand is numb. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. I try to make a fist, but my fingers do not respond.

Out the door, down the hall. My breathing is labored, in part because Im kicking drugs and out of shape, but also because Im scared shitless. I burst into the nurses office, cradling my left hand in my right hand. I blurt out something about falling asleep and not being able to feel my hand. The nurse tries to calm me down. She presumes, not unreasonably, that this is just part of the process anxiety and discomfort come with the territory in rehab. But its not. This is different.

Within twenty-four hours I will be on hiatus from La Hacienda, sitting in the office of an orthopedic surgeon, who will run a hand along my biceps and down my forearm, carefully tracing the path of a nerve and explaining how the nerve has been freakishly compressed, like a drinking straw pinched against the side of a glass. When circulation is cut off in this manner, he explains, the nerve is damaged; sometimes it simply withers and dies.

How long before the feeling returns? I ask.

You should have about eighty percent within a few months... maybe four to six.

What about the other twenty percent?

He shrugs. The man is all Texas, in movement and delivery. Hard to say, he drawls.

There is a pause. Once more, nervously, I try to squeeze my hand into a ball, but the fingers are unwilling. This is my left hand, the one that dances across the fretboard. The one that does all the hard creative work. The moneymaker, as we say in the music business.

What about playing guitar? I ask, not really wanting to hear the answer.

The doc draws in a long breath, slowly exhales. Aw, I dont think you should count on that.

Until when?

He looks at me hard. Takes aim. Then he hits the bulls-eye. Well... ever.

And there it is. The kill shot. I cant breathe, cant think straight. But somehow the message comes through loud and clear: this is the end of Megadeth... the end of my career... the end of music.