Megadeth are a band that has polarised music lovers almost from the outset.
Despite a successive string of hit albums, the band has always been more defined by past members and their ongoing feuds with vocalist Dave Mustaine.
While music will always be the victor, these public disputes have always threatened to overshadow the music and while those spats continue to this second there is also another, more poignant and pressing matter to divert our attention.
The debut Australian tour dubbed Kings Of Thrash which features two of Megadeth’s most noticeable and popular former band members in guitarist Jeff Young and bass player David Ellefson is finally coming Down Under.
After setting stages alight overseas, Kings Of Thrash have landed in Australia for a run of four shows starting in Canberra on July 12 before winding its way through Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney over successive days.
“When people ask me what it was like playing with Dave Mustaine I just laugh.”
Jeff Young
What’s more, the set will consist of two classic albums – Killing is my Business….and Business is Good as well as So Far, So Good… So What – which will be played in full in this country for the very first time.
HEAVY tracked down Jeff Young for his only Australian interview (Ellefson handled the bulk of press).
“It’s a brutal show to perform,” Young smiled. “Our drummer goes through three t-shirts sometimes per show. He rings out his shirt and can fill up a full glass of water (laughs). It’s two brutal albums, a lot of fast tempos and shredding chops abound. We’ve already done this tour. We did about a month and a few days in America already, so I think we got our conditioning up. I think we’re good to go, all systems go.”
We ask if playing albums front to back poses specific difficulties, especially considering when they were recorded the likelihood of them being played in their entirety would not have been considered.
“We’ve really just worked through each song,” he measured. “It was lucky, back when I got the gig I went down to Capital Records and I had the engineer pull the two-inch tapes for Peace Sells and Killing Is My Business and I soloed all the rhythm guitar parts and all the lead solos, and by some miracle I saved those cassettes all these years and that’s what I used to go through each song measure by measure, cell by cell, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence. I was kind of the musical director that had to crawl through and relearn or learn all the guitar parts, because I had done maybe four Killing Is My Business songs back in the day and of course all the So Far, So Good, So What stuff. That was a little easier to pick up because I played on that record. But I spent a lot of time just crawling through in slow motion. I have an app that once I extracted all the notes and the audio from the cassettes and I put it in my laptop, then I could put it in this app and slow it down by percentages to really hone in. So what we’re performing is as close to the record – with a little freedom to improv in some solos – but certain solos I made sure to get note for note. If it’s something really memorable or melodic, something that really sticks in your head… Like, Peace Sells I will do all Chris Poland‘s solos on that note for note. You know you can always expect that in an encore at a show, but some of the other solos we had a little fun with, but it’s a pretty accurate rendering, as they say.”
In the full interview Jeff talks more about what to expect, his time with Megadeth and memories of recording So Far, So Good, So What, the other members of the band and how faithfully the old songs are recreated, Mustaine‘s recent claims that none of the other members aside from Marty Friedman have done anything with their lives, his other musical projects, a possible future collaboration with Ellefson and more.
Tickets www.hardlinemedia.net
