Megadeth may not be spring chickens anymore, but check yourself with any predictions that the band will be stopping. In a recent interview, Dave Mustaine said he wasn’t going to be slowing down anytime soon.
When speaking to The SDR Show, Mustaine says that, despite being 62 and having been at it for a while, he plans for Megadeth to still write several more albums, one every couple of years. This would mean he would be in the studio until about 2031, when he turns 70.
“I was talking about that the other day. If it takes two years between an album—let’s just say it does, if I’m able to put them out fast—it’ll probably be three years, but let’s just say it’s two years. And I put an album out. We’ve still got about a year left on this one, at least. So that’ll take us into ’25. We’ve got all kinds of anniversary tours that we are planning right now. Rust In Peace is gonna be 25 years old, I think, or 30 years old next year, and all kinds of shit like that. And then if we get ready to go into the studio, let’s just say it takes a year to do that. That’s ’26. Another two years, that’s ’27, ’28. And then we go back into the studio. Again, we do two more records. I’ll be 70 by the time ’31 comes around now.”
Always a bit of a conspiracy theorist, Mustaine’s conspiracy dreams seem to be positive lately, as he points to “all the crazy new developments” in medicine as reasoning that he could not only live a lot longer, but stay healthy and make music for a lot of that time.
“Now, do I think I’ll be able to continue making music? Because of the advancement of modern medicine right now—stuff like medbeds, and all of the crazy new developments that they’ve made for people with different chronic illnesses, me with chronic pain and with cancer… It’s in remission. I don’t act like, ‘Oh, poor me.’ ‘Cause it’s not ‘poor me’, man. I won. I fucking won. I beat cancer, and I’m gonna keep fighting to keep it outside the door,” he says.
“Say I do three records, and that’s nine years. It’s gonna be a while from now. I’m realistically thinking, what kind of shape am I gonna be in my 70s? And I’ve gotta tell you, I feel really good right now. I’m still rolling and still training and still doing my cardio and eating well, hardly drinking at all and just taking really good care of myself. So I think, unless something really wrong happens, I see myself living till I’m in my 80s or maybe 90s, if I’m lucky.”
Whether or not he’s correct about these advancements, a positive mindset is half the battle for aging, so we’re willing to bet Megadeth will be making music for some time.