Dave Mustaine A Heavy Metal Memoir

"Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir" was co-written by New York Times journalist Joe Layde.

In a recent interview with Exclaim!, Mustaine stated about the process of writing his autobiography, "It was really cathartic. When you're putting your life down into a book, you wonder what you're gonna leave behind you. I want to leave a legacy of achievement but one that says you can overcome anything. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to work my ass off to get what I have and I love what I have. I'm very grateful for it and I don't take it lightly."

He added, "Telling the truth is hard for anybody. The only uncomfortable thing about this was putting the stuff in there that made me look bad, but I had to in order for it to be the truth. I could have written a book that was all about, 'Oh, I love me. I'm so beautiful and wonderful,' but that wouldn't be true. I don't think I'm that great and the beauty of the book is that I am fallible. "

Regarding the legal aspects of telling his life story in book form, Mustaine said, "There were a lot of other things legally we had to look at because there were a lot of people in my life that, if I tell the story, they're going to jail. It's not about getting pissed off. They're going to jail. Nowadays when you tell a story... say there was a dude I had an encounter with [but] we don't know each other anymore. I [relate] the story and all of a sudden someone goes sniffing into that person's life. It's an invasion of privacy so there's that and there's the fact that there are ambulance chasers everywhere. We had to word it in a way that the information got out but still told the same story. Legally, the same thing being said one way is totally malicious another way. That's something I had to learn.