Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine Slams Metal Blade Founder Brian Slagel

By Scott Munro

October 24, 2017

Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine has hit out at Metal Blade Records founder Brian Slagel over claims made in the CEO’s new book.

Slagel’s publication titled For The Sake Of Heaviness: The History Of Metal Blade Records was released back in August, with the author claiming that he tried to sign Megadeth in the early 80s for $7000.

But Mustaine has taken issue with this on Twitter, saying: “If the fallacy of offering us a deal for $7000 is any indication of the rest of this book, I hope it’s marked fiction. I’d never sign w/you.”

It reads: “The only band that I didn’t get that I wished I had was Megadeth. It was between us and a brand new label called Combat, which was part of the Important distribution firm that we’d started working out with.

“Late in 1984 they’d decided that the whole metal thing was starting to happen and they wanted to get on it by creating their own label.

“The first band that came on to their radar – and ours at the same time – was Megadeth. In the end, it came down to just a thousand dollars. We had offered them seven thousand dollars, but Combat offered eight, so they went with Combat.

“With hindsight, especially given what Megadeth became, I’ve often thought, ‘Well, maybe I could have gotten a little more money together.’ But really, at that time, seven thousand dollars was absolutely the most we had ever offered anybody. Most of the stuff we were doing involved spending $1600 to maybe $3500, at the high end, to make a full record.

“Seven grand was a lot of money. I remember Dave Mustaine writing me a really long, heartfelt letter saying how he really wanted to be on Metal Blade, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”