MEGADETH leader Dave Mustaine will appear at the Kaufman Music Center in New York City on Tuesday, September 8 at 7:30 p.m. for a public conversation marking the release of his new memoir, "In My Darkest Hour".
Tickets are on sale now at $50, with a signed copy of the book included in the price. The date is not incidental: the book arrives that same day via Da Capo, the recently relaunched music imprint at Grand Central Publishing.
"In My Darkest Hour" covers the seven years that began in 2019, when Mustaine was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue — a location that put both his voice and his career in immediate question. The book tracks him from radiation and chemotherapy appointments straight into hours-long recording sessions for MEGADETH's sixteenth album, "The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!", which arrived in 2022, and into the private business of mortality, family and faith.
"One of the most harrowing experiences of my adult life has been my seven-year journey through cancer treatment and onward into remission," Mustaine said in a statement. "This story is considerably more than just, 'Go to the doctor, get diagnosed, get treatment and hopefully I live happily ever after.' This was a journey of me saving myself, staying alive, keeping my family together, and continuing to make music through it all."
Notably, the book is not a solo account. Everyone who appears in it was asked to write their own version of events. "Each one of the people that were part of the book, they were asked to share their experience with everything," Mustaine said, "and I think it turned out really great to have all those different outlooks towards it."
"'In My Darkest Hour' is Dave Mustaine at his most revealing, vulnerable, and true," said Ben Schafer, Da Capo's executive editor. "With lacerating honesty and soulful reflection, he speaks to the universal human experience of facing serious illness and how it changes a person, their family and friends, and one's relationship with creativity."
Mustaine co-wrote the book with journalist Joe Layden, his collaborator on 2010's "Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir" and on Ace Frehley's "No Regrets". Layden also wrote "The Last Great Fight", about James "Buster" Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson in 1990.
The Da Capo name has some history of its own. The imprint is a revival of Da Capo Press, the long-running music publisher absorbed into Hachette Books after the 2016 Perseus acquisition, and dissolved in 2024 during restructuring.
Source: blabbermouth.net