Continued from page 24
ble-gold awards earned by the classy
Mustaine wine that he and his wife
launched three years ago, in honor of his
playing a tuxedo-swank concert with the
San Diego Symphony, “My wife said,
‘Why don’t you make something that
would help both worlds – the metal com-
munity and the classical community – con-
nect?’” he remembers of a project that led
to a new vintage called She-Wolf. “So my
wife is the brains behind our wine – I’m the
taste buds. And the wine was a complete
success.” And it got him thinking – why
not try his hand at beer, too? He tested out
several different breweries, until he finally
– and wisely – settled on posh Unibroue up
in Quebec, home to strong concoctions like
Maudite and La Fin Du Monde. “And now
our beer is one of their top three beers right
now,” its creator enthuses. “It’s gone from
being a brand-new beer to being one of
their top sellers, and it’s already won a
gold medal up there. There’s a beer chart
for ratings, and Iron Maiden’s Trooper beer
showed up on there, and I believe it got a
40.” He guffaws. “But our A Tout Le Monde
got a 93! You can really taste the difference
in its quality.”
So life is good for Dave Mustaine, He’s
been jamming – and hanging out with –
some cool session cats in Nashville, and
he’s been befriended by Music Row leg-
ends like Naomi Judd and her husband
Steve Warriner, who actually attended his
birthday party last September. (“Country
royalty sitting around on my porch!
Who’da thunk it?” he laughs.) And he’s
doing his best to let his daughter Electra
find her own voice, laissez-faire, as she’s
getting ready to record her all-important
debut disc. “I usually don’t give her advice
unless she asks for it, and even then it’s
pretty short,” he allows. “They say that the
attention spans of teenage kids now are
around that of a goldfish, supposedly
seven seconds. So I try to do these advice
bursts in seven-second intervals.” He
pauses, gulping. “Uh-oh. Electra’s across
the room, giving me the death look right
now. I think this might be my last-ever
interview!”
Although Mustaine claims that he’s fig-
ured out the ins and outs of Megadeth’s
celebrity, every once in a while, he admits,
he screws up on that of other stars. Like the
time this year when he was strolling
through LAX and came face to face with
one of his own heroes, imposing UK actor
Vinnie Jones, of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking
Barrels renown. “Nobody really impresses
me enough to approach someone, but with
him, I actually walked up and said, ‘Hey,
dude – can I take your picture?’ And he
goes, ‘Aww…okay,’” he concludes. “And
by the way he said it, I knew how he was
feeling, because I’ve said that so many
times myself, and I could tell that I was
inconvenien cing him, because he was real-
ly in a hurry.” Then he pulled out his cell-
phone, eagerly pointed its camera,
and…nothing. “The battery was dead.
And I felt so small. And I was like, ‘Fuck!
This is so bogus!’
“But I get it. I get it when people get
excited about seeing celebrities. Because I
get excited, too….”
Appearing 7/14 at Chicago Open Air
Festival, Toyota Park, Bridgeview, IL.
july
2017
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