Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [163]
Both Ellefson and Mustaine had been junkies for over four years by then, during which time their ‘disease’, as Mustaine called it, had cost them a manager, girlfriends and several potentially great line-ups of Megadeth, whose career was, astonishingly, still then in its ascendency. ‘I started off using,’ Mustaine would tell me matter-of-factly, ‘then it turned into abuse and then into full-blown addiction. It got like I couldn’t see what was going on. I was powerless…When Dave [Ellefson] and I first hooked up together, the extent of our getting high was just beer and pot. But we were hanging out with these jazz players, and jazz is synonymous with drugs. And they’d be saying, “Dude, all the greats do heroin! Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, blah blah blah”. I was kind of fascinated by the thing of being a junkie too.’
At the time of the Donington ’88 show, Mustaine told me, ‘I was spending $500 a day…on that stuff.’ Having only just flown in for the show the day before, however, none of the band – with the possible exception of Mustaine – had been able to score. As a result, says Ellefson, they were all ‘really, really strung out’. He just about managed to ‘get through the show’. What made it worse, he says, is that they had reached that desperate stage as junkies where they were now lying to each other about who had smack and who didn’t. For all Ellefson knew, Mustaine had some but wasn’t telling him. Or maybe the whole band had somehow been able to get hold of something – and not told him, wanting to keep what little they had for themselves. Paranoia was rampant. ‘Yeah, absolutely, because at that point the heroin thing is very dark, is very deceptive, it’s very deep. It’s just evil. All the dishonesty…everything is complete dysfunction, everything is bad.’
Seemingly oblivious to all this, Lars felt welcomed inside the Megadeth dressing room and settled down to ‘chew the shit’ with his old buddy Dave. Mustaine, in a surprisingly good mood for a junkie allegedly out of gear, even invited Lars up onstage to join them on the encore, which he duly did, singing along on backing vocals to ‘Anarchy in the UK’. The crowd, grasping the significance of what was happening, dutifully cheered and played its part. Then the band and Lars staggered off back to the dressing room area, the Metallica drummer who had plotted his downfall with his arm around Dave Mustaine’s neck. I was also there that day and recall registering only mild surprise at this unexpected turn of events. Lars liked to hang out, everyone knew that. And maybe big bad Dave had finally forgiven him. Maybe…
I was more perturbed when, wandering around the backstage area an hour or so later, I spotted what I imagined to be some drunken reveller face down in the dirt, barely moving. Concerned at his lifeless state, I went over to see if perhaps he was in need of some help, only to find, when I managed to turn him over, that it was Lars. He got to his feet very unsteadily, grinning, though, as only the seriously stoned do when they’re feeling pleased with themselves. ‘Hey, Mick,’ he slurred, flinging his arms around my neck, ‘how ya doing?’ He started giggling. Wow, I thought, he must be really drunk. Then he pulled back and I noticed his eyes. They were utterly pinpricked, his face a mask of sweat.