“Hey, you wanna see my scar?” It’s a hot autumn day in San Marcos, California, and has just been welcomed into Megadeth’s rarely seen inner sanctum, Vic’s Garage. Set in a necessarily anonymous industrial unit complex, this is where the band rehearse, record, store their gear, edit both music and video content and, perhaps most importantly, hang out together. The walls are decorated with a seemingly endless supply of silver, gold and platinum discs commemorating the huge sales that Megadeth have notched up over nearly 30 years.
Elsewhere, all of the band’s 12 studio albums to date are celebrated with vast canvas reproductions of their artwork, while huge portraits of the current lineup – Dave Mustaine, bassist , guitarist Chris Broderick and drummer Shawn Drover – peer benevolently down from the walls onto a spacious rehearsal area and storage warehouse floor. In another room, a tasteful tribute to Dave’s early days with Metallica hangs on the wall, replete with gold discs for and (both of which featured many Mustaine-penned riffs, of course); in another, several of his guitars sit on stands, exuding as much charisma as inanimate objects can muster. As Dave leans forward from his seat and pulls down the neck of his t-shirt, revealing a very small and neat scar on his chest – evidence of the neck surgery that he underwent less than a month ago – a vast HD TV showing Fox News burbles brightly and tetchily away, as the faint sound of Dave’s son Justis che.
