Your Favorite Band: Dave Mustaine

For this installment of Your Favorite Band, Bree McKenna from Tacocat and Dave Mustaine talk about lesbian cruises and dry shampoo.

I’ve known that Dave Mustaine was my biological father ever since last year when I found my mother’s trunk full of Metallica/Megadeth paraphernalia hidden deep within a closet. It took one look at that ridiculous mane of poofy ginger-blonde hair and smirking face to realize that this smug hesher posing with a flying V guitar, this male doppelganger, was undoubtedly my father. I was born in LA in 1983, the year that he was kicked out of the #1 metal band in the world, Metallica, and before he started the #2 metal band, Megadeth. My independent single mother sighed when I confronted her with the truth; she was ashamed of the groupie cling-on status of her past, particularly with this famed hesher fuckup. She confessed the truth and conceded to set up a meeting just a few weeks ago before Megadeth left for their next tour.

I met him at a Starbucks in Sodo, the silhouette of his poofy hair standing out against the neutral browns of the franchise wall. He awkwardly handed me a plush, mint green stuffed bear (I suspect a last-minute Walgreen's purchase, probably some remaindered Easter animal). Despite nervousness, we attempted to catch up on our lives…and began to hit it off due to the fact that we are both musicians! We have enough ammo to bat around generic conversation about touring, dry-shampoo and how everyone packing gear into the back of the van references the game “Tetris.” I was beginning to think that it wasn't so weird having Dave Mustaine as your dad!!!!

Unfortunately, things started to go downhill. He didn’t seem too impressed with my description of my band TacocaT, and was disappointed in my choice of bass as an instrument.

“The bass isn’t a difficult instrument to play,” Dave explained. “It’s one step up from the kazoo.”

“Technical skill isnt our #1 priority…and we actually have prominently featured several kazoo solos in our songs,” I said, attempting to explain the band to him. “See, it’s a  DIY rock band, you know…we play a lot of feminist queer shows and stuff—”

“Feminist…ugh,” he said with disdain. “You know, that’s fine and all. Let’s talk about something else…what about the rest of your life…do you have a nice boyfriend?”

“Actually, I have a really nice girlfriend…Hey, it’s not true that you endorsed Rick Santorum, is it? Because, you know he’s really unpopular for saying that being gay was comparable to bestiality… and you know what his name means right? I heard a rumor you thought gay marriage was—”

“Look,” he cut me off. “I'm a Christian, I'm a heterosexual man. I don’t wanna talk about that stuff, it's like me worrying about cat owners. I don't like cats. I don't have anything against them, but I don't want one… but I'm a born-again Christian, but I don't push that on anybody. I'm a Christian. Stop asking me these questions, dude. Gay stuff is not part of my life.”

This wasn’t going well.

Things were tense as I walked him to his rental car, a beige Corolla with a non-smoking sticker on the passenger window. I wished him goodbye, and we shared an un-enthusiastic exchange, promising to keep “in-touch,” both knowing that we were positively lying. To my surprise, the following week I received a check in the mail from the Mustaine Estate. It was a few thousand dollars, a token gift in lieu of eighteen years of unpaid child-support! Totally unexpected and absolutely incredible! I didn’t know what to do with the money, so I decided to take my girlfriend on the Olivia Cruise for Lesbians. All of this has left me feeling conflicted, like the scene in Some Kind of Monster where he gets teary during the confrontation about being kicked out of Metallica. That's my old man, the Darth Vader to my Luke Skywalker. I knew there had to be some good left in him.

Previously: Your Favorite Band - Alex Chilton and Ray Davies