Megadeth Albums
1 Harmonica by Jimmy Wood
For the recording of this album, Megadeth packed up and moved to Arizona, the place where Dave was rehabilitated after his valium overdose earlier that year. Megadeth and Max Norman built a unique recording studio in a warehouse on the outskirts of Phoenix for the recording of the album. When they were finished recording, the studio was split in two pieces and trucked back to Los Angeles. "Youthanasia was written totally and 100 percent exclusively in the studio. We weren't playing any old, cataloged material. None of the past really influenced the new record. So that's what you get. If we went into another room and didn't play any of the live material from the past and just started writing again, chances are it would be another record in the Youthanasia vain." (Mustaine, 1995) The album and Megadeth's subsequent world tour, which took the band to remote locations and distant countries that few American bands have gone, definitely earned Megadeth a broader, if not larger, fanbase. The band defended itself against accusations that its music is getting dangerously pop-like, claiming that Youthanasia was heavier than Countdown to Extinction: "When you hear music, you want to hear a song - you don't want to hear some guy riffing out and wanking away, cause then you're bored and it's not memorable. This album, to me, is heavier than our last album." (Menza) "Youthanasia has been banned in Malaysia and Singapore, as officials there have deemed the cover artwork 'defamatory.' the controversial visual - a computer generated digital image in a surreal neo realistic style - depicts an elderly washerwoman hanging cherubic infants on a clothesline. Problems have also occurred in Canada and Germany with major retailers not wanting to stock the record, citing the cover as 'offensive' and 'not in good taste.' Megadeth's Dave Mustaine has refused to change the cover art. He says: 'Keeping our records off the shelves does not make the problem of our children being hung out to dry disappear.'" (1994) "Kids have been hung out to dry in this society. It's a fact. As soon as kids show autonomy, some parents are right there to clip it off." (Mustaine) "On the new album Youthanasia, Megadeth features songs about death, war, and incest. Mustaine also takes listeners on a journey through his own personal demons, which have included heroin addiction. But rather than lapsing into cloying self-pity, his lyrics preach accountability." (1994) "The music's got the same kind of aggression that it had before, it's just - we're playing different notes. If you write about feelings, it's timeless. If you write about events, it's dated. So we try to really focus on writing about stuff that's timeless." (Mustaine, 1995) "Anything that any of our fans have gone through, I can say I've experienced. I'm not a victim of incest, but I know people who are, and there was child abuse in other forms in my family - shillings with implements and stuff like that. I've been exposed to, or witnessed, everything you can imagine. And it's just as abusive to witness something as to have to have it done to you, because then you have to carry around that secret for the rest of your life. Our fans know they can count on me because I've been there. I'm not only their brother, I'm their lover, I'm their mother, their father, their cousin. I'm all those things to them. You have to take into consideration the effect that you have on these people and the fact that I may be the only one to have a turn to. I could say the same thing to them that their parents have said to that didn't mean shit to them, but because I say it, it means something." (Mustaine, 1995) "I was there, I did the witchcraft, read the Satanic Bible. I sang about the pagan stuff everybody now thinks is so cool. Now I'd rather say 'See, I've been there. I got sold hook, line and sinker into my addiction. And now I know there is a solution, a better way of life'." (Mustaine, 1994)
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