Dave and Danny Spitz
This is interview with Dave Mustaine and Danny Spitz, of Anthrax, from about 1987.
Dave: Punk started when I was in my teens and everybody was into it. When I was in
Metallica, I was into Mötorhead and speed stuff was interesting to me. Now, everybody and his brother is
influenced by Metallica. There are kids out there playing stuff that I wrote years ago. It's like "this
kid is influenced by me playing guitar??? It's wierd to come to a scene, like six years ago,
and all of a sudden you have all these new bands that are influenced by bands that also just started.
A lot of bands who say they're influenced by Metallica don't even know their history.
Danny: Half of these kids don't even know what they're doing. Everybody's jumping
on the bandwagon. They're just trying to play as fast as they can. A thousand bands came out and only
the strong survived, and they suck too! They're just following a pattern.
Dave: Look at Cinderella... They're popular now, but that makes you wonder if it's
the typical casting couch deal. Facially, they all look like chicks. Talent-wise, those guys are zeros.
Instead of saying "shake me, knock me out of m tree" and this kind of crap, we have songs that are about
being socially aware of the world we live in. these guys are only talking about having sex.
Danny: Everything they've done has been done before. You have all these other guys
saying rock 'n' roll is so easy to play. But you know if you're a guitar player, it's intricate to play.
It's not just three-chord bullshit and singing about a girl. The only three-chord band that's amazing
is AC/DC. Look at Mötley Crüe. They're supposed to have this heavy image now. Jump on the bandwagon, why
don't you?
Dave: First they're closet queers and they they turn to saint worshippers. Pretty
soon, they're going to be The Village People.
Danny: We just try to write about what's inside of us and what came out every day
with our parents when we were growing up, things that happened to us every day; life. That's why the kids
can relate to it. It's just awareness, that's all. We hang with our audience backstage. If we weren't playing music, I'd be one of those kids hanging out. It's about time someone wrote songs about normal everyday life. That's why music is finally emerging in the United States, which is the last place to grasp this stuff. In the States, it's so hard to break if you're not on an arena tour. But the lable is behind us now. They woke up, man. They saw what happened in Europe and Japan. Chris Blackwell understands. He's the Island Records guy. He signed U2 when it was like "what kind of music is this?" He goes for it. He signed Frankie Goes To Hollywood, which is the weirdest band I've ever heard.
Dave: I think everyone trumped this image that the record companies are this big monster and as soon as you get signed to them, you're naturally wearing pink underwear. That's not true. If you're a good enough band and the company has faith in you, they you have the creative control and a lot of input toward where your career is going. They'll let you do whatever you want as long as you're doing good. We're coming to turning points in our careers right now and I want to make sure that everyone knows that Megadeth is still Megadeth. Just because Chris dyed his hair doesn't mean that the band is going to change. It's pretty open for us to do whatever we want.
Danny: Just last year, the record company didn't know what to do with us. We were signed to Island Records after we recorded Spreading The Disease and they didn't know how to market it. They had to licence it out to other companies. Now, it's on Island worldwide, cause they've got a grasp on it; they know what;s happening, they know how to do it.
Dave: People can relate to the same problems. Face it; we all have the same problems. It's a thread. It's like a good slap in the face to the Yuppies and all the others around here. It's saying "you're the ones that are wrong for thinking that we're not capable of defending ourselves." We played Phoenix and I didn't say one word. As soon as Peace Sells started up, they audience was yelling along.
Danny and Dave go on to talk some techincal stuff, and then get to this;
Dave: Are you endorsed by Jackson now?
Danny: One of six people
Dave: I tried man, I tried.
Dany: You've gotta trash all your other guitars and play this one guitar. Just keep playing that. I'll hook you up. There's only six people in the world what are endorsed by Jackson
Dave: Congratulations
Danny: I've been playing it for about eight years. Nothing else; that's what they want...
They talk some more technical stuff, and then;
Danny: I've been playing guitar half my life; that's 12 years now. I had tried playing other instruments, then I just tried guitar and it worked out. I took a year of jazz lessons with some teacher.
Dave: Tuning a guitar is easier than tuning a piano. I took the guitar and taught myself and watched a lot of people. Lots of blues guys. I'm 25 and I'm playing about 10 years. When I was with Metallica, their music was always 4/4. There were a couple of songs that were out of the standard time signature and I enjoyed that 5/4 kind of stuff like "Money," by Pink Floyd. A lot of other bands are direct and straitforeward; we like to go the other way by screwing around with time signatures. I just didn't want to be stereotyped.
Danny: You'll notice that in the bands that are huge, the members listen to a lot of different music. If the band listened to the same kind of music, it would sound like that. Everybody listens to different music, and you have to tolerate it. In Anthrax, Joey listens to Journey and Scott listens to Suicidal Tendancies, and I can listen to jazz and anything straitforeward; Maiden, Rush, even rap.
Dave: There's songs you can appreciate, then there's songs that you like. I can appreciate jazz, but I don't like it. The other guys listen to it in the back of the bus and we have a war of the tape decks. Every time I have a chance, I throw Gar's tape out the window. There's Weather Report tapes lying across the freeways all over the country. To have the ability and the patience to sit there and listen to something that you know deep down inside you wouldn't listen to twice can be a good thing. I have to wake up every morning and listen to Hendrix. Gar loves Hendrix. I can't stand some of the feedback after a while. I like Hendrix, but Gar's got tapes of this guy sitting there going "ohhhh." It's annoying, but that's when the musician comes out and you can appreciate it coming in different ways. We put I Ain't Superstitious on our last album. It wasn't like we were trying to break a barrier of bringing in an old classic and making is acceptable to our audience. To have a different version of an old classic like that is good. Chris's playing is reminiscent of the Jeff Back style. Sometimes he sounds almost identical. That was a one-take song. We tried it one time and sang along with it and we just re-recorded the vocals. Everything else on there was one shot. It's not like we're trying to do a copy of Paranoid or Zeppelin. We wanted to do a song that was virtually unknown to our audience and give an inspiring, new, innovative approach to the guitar through that song and show these kids that thrash can do something else. We take a song that has no place at all being thrash, like These Boots Are Made For Walking and just thrash it out.
Danny:That's probably my favorite solo on the album... [ he talks a bit about blues, jazz, and a Jimmy Page concert... ] To get that heavy sound, yo've got to be standing right in front of two stacks, or it doesn't dound right and it doesn't even feel right. There's got to be something there. It's gotta be heavy all the time; it's got to be heavy.
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