Dave Mustaine went live on TalkShopLive on Friday, August 14, for a question-and-answer session about "In My Darkest Hour", the memoir arriving September 8 via Grand Central Publishing's relaunched Da Capo imprint. Co-written with Joe Layden, the book covers the treatment Mustaine received after being diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue in 2019 — and how he went from radiation appointments straight into sessions for MEGADETH's sixteenth album, "The Sick, The Dying … And The Dead!"
Asked whether the illness pushed him toward a more spiritual outlook, the 64-year-old said no, because there was nowhere further to go. "I was pretty set spiritually before this all happened… But I have to remember my whole thing — God wanting me to be healed — and that that was it. He said that was gonna happen, and I got healed."
What kept him working was the room around him. "Great bandmates. A really professional co-producer. We had a really great thing working." He credited drummer Dirk Verbeuren as unfailingly supportive and was candid about then-guitarist Kiko Loureiro's discomfort: "Here's this guy that he just met that he really looks up to, and we've become friends, and the next thing you know, I'm looking like I'm gonna die on the outside."
The bluntest passages concern the treatment itself. "A lot of it I don't remember. That was one of the terrible things… It's called chemo brain, where your brain is, as is your entire body, is being attacked, and your body's dying. So, it was mentally a complete mindfuck to go into some place and to willingly say, 'Okay, kill me. Kill me a little more today.' It was very terrifying."
He is clear that he wrote the book from a position of luck, not virtue. "I had money to get good treatment. I was living in an area where the doctors were fantastic. And not everybody's gonna have that same opportunity. So, I wanted to make sure that I was available to tell my story and share that story of hope. 'Cause even if you do have access to all that stuff, you're still afraid… And you're gonna go put your head into a machine that's meant to fucking kill you."
Layden previously worked with Mustaine on 2010's "Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir", which reached No. 15 on The New York Times hardcover non-fiction list.
Source: blabbermouth.net