Recently, acclaimed former Megadeth guitarist Jeff Young was kind enough to speak with us regarding, among many other things, his much-celebrated tenure with the Speed Metal pioneers and the forthcoming release of the brilliant The Unbecoming Of Me…

Todd: What can you tell us about your forthcoming album?

Jeff Young: “…The album started out as a collaboration with Badi Assad who I’ve been playing with for several years. We did an album for Polygram Records called Chameleon and this was going to be the follow up. …The concept behind it was to mix all of the different styles of music that we had encountered around the world while touring…just mix all of these different kinds of music… …We started to play with the commonality and the unison that…everyone in the world loves music and that it has a healing element… We tried to explore the connections and things all of the different cultures of music have together and use all of these different styles to come up with a sound that was modern without using technology and studio gimmicks…we wanted it to sound modern, but we wanted to do it ourselves. We also wanted it to have tradition because a lot of the music that we listen to and study…there’s a tradition that you have to respect…that in a nutshell was the seed for the album. It’s taken a lot of different twists and turns and journeys. …For us, the exercise was about trying not to control the outcome of the album…we basically wanted to do it exactly opposite of how you would do it if you were signed to a major label. On a major label, you’d have deadlines because you have to start marketing five months in advance…there’s a certain methodology and we wanted…for creativities sake and for the songs sake we wanted the music to schedule instead of outside concerns or outside conditions. …”Liquid Voices”…one of the songs from an EP that sort of like an advance of the album…it took…a year and a half for the entire song to appear. …There’s two ways to write music and this is kind of the Zen of where I’m coming from… …You can control the conditions and make the song happen or you can kind of let the song make you.”

Todd: You were looking for a one hundred percent organic experience?

Jeff: “When I started the album in 2000, my goal was to have it done by April of 2000 and I’m still working on it. …I got cancer in the middle of it…that took a year and a half. The process is the process and the album will be done when it’s done.”

Todd: That’s incredible! Have you made a full recovery?

Jeff: “It’s coming up on two years…it was a little dodgy there for a while.”

Todd: What prompted the decision to not release the album in it’s original form?

Jeff: “…The more I sat with the music through the cancer process…the more I listened to it and the more feedback I got about it… …Certain songs were right for her (Badi’s) voice and some weren’t. I kind of re-thought the whole project since I had kind of had that intuition all along. …Working with different musicians from different cultures…we had brought in Matt Chamberlain to play drums and percussion on five of the tracks…he plays with Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, David Bowie and Garbage… We had (legendary The Firm/Blue Murder bassist) Tony Franklin…we just brought them down to the studio I had made in my house in Sarasota. We’d spend a week and each day we’d play them a different song and just record stuff. It was like splashing paint on canvas (laughs). There was like a skeleton of a guitar part and maybe a skeleton of a melody, but like I said, some songs took a year and a half to two years to finish. Some songs still aren’t finished… …Some of the songs that we originally conceived as having vocals have become instrumentals and vice versa. Again, it’s all about just letting the song go and getting your ego out of it…letting the music drive the whole thing.”

Todd: What inspired you to work with a variety of different singers?

Jeff: “…When I first hears Santana’s album (Supernatural), I realized that he had the right idea because first of all, an album with the same singer kind of gets old after a while unless the singer is really multi-dimensional. I started thinking that I know a lot of great singers so I decided to just put the right song with the right singer. Whoever should be singing on a song by the time the album’s completed…they’ll be there.”

Todd: Did you find it difficult to decide what singer should be featured on each song?

Jeff: “No, because you let the song choose the singer. It takes you out of the decision making process and that’s true for everything…writing it, recording it, producing it…it’s just a different intent.”

Todd: How did you become involved with Megadeth?

Jeff: “…After I graduated from Musician’s Institute, I hooked up with this manager named Terry Levine. He was actually a photographer. …He had done all of this photography and he showed me this book after he had done album covers and photos for Aerosmith and Kiss….Motley Crue…he did all the artwork and photography for the Shout At The Devil album and the video for the song “Looks That Kill”. So I said ‘…okay, this guy can manage me…’ even though he had no teeth. He was a great guy and became almost like a second father to me. I was living in his house that he shared with an engineer, so there was a studio in the house. We has this band Broken Silence that had formed around me and some other people we knew from the studio. …We were recording day and night in this guys house and doing showcases…at all of the places you could play in the ‘80’s. At one point, another guitarist named Jay Reynolds moved into the house….he played with the band Malice. They were a Judas Priest knock-off…they did a couple of albums for Atlantic Records. I was Jay’s guitar teacher. In Malice, he was a rhythm player…so I was giving him some lessons. One time, Junior (David Ellefson), the bass player from Megadeth came over…they were friends. They were probably into doing heroin together…I would imagine. I was clueless to all of that at the time. Looking back, this guy Jay, my student, was their dealer…their heroin dealer unbeknownst to me. I didn’t know they were into that until after I started laying down my guitar parts for the album. At one point, Broken Silence were really close to getting a deal with Chrysalis Records and (producer) Mike Chapman was there. …He had said that Chris Poland wasn’t working out. At the time, I didn’t even want to think about it because I was so into the band. Some time later…the band had broken up and I had fallen out with Barry… …I had moved out and quit the band…the bass player had come with me. I had left the house, I hadn’t seen Jay and hadn’t heard anything about Megadeth. I knew they were looking for somebody, but I didn’t want to do it at the time. …Four months later, I had decided that…I wanted to bury the hatchet with Barry…even though what led me to leave the band was him kind of going psycho. …It was just weird and I had to get away from that scene for a little while. …I wanted to play Barry some of the stuff I had been working on. Keep in mind that I hadn’t talked to anyone in the house. I called Barry and said ‘…hey, I’d like to play you some stuff I’ve been demoing on a four track…’ I went to his house and I was playing him the demo… right in the middle of this reconnection, the phone rings. I can hear him talking and I can tell it’s Jay. The trip was that Jay was calling Barry to see if he had my number. Barry was like ‘…I haven’t seen Jeff for like four months, but he’s sitting here right now…’”

Todd: Wow! (laughs).

Jeff: “So he put me on the phone with Jay and he was like ‘…Jeff, you’re not gonna believe I got this opportunity. I need your help. I can’t tell you anymore than that…’ He gave me an address that was something like Laurel Canyon or Cold Water Canyon…something up in there. So I went up there and he told me that he had gotten the gig in Megadeth replacing Chris. He wanted me to start giving him guitar lessons like I had been when we were living together in the house. He needed me to help him figure our Chris’s solos and all of his guitar parts. So he says ‘…I’ll pay ya fifty bucks an hour…’ and I was like ‘…cool…’ because I knew it was going to be a lot of hours. It was cool because Chris was influenced by (Alan) Holdsworth and Jeff Beck and I like Holdsworth and Beck…it was a really natural thing. So I started teaching Jay…they were recording down on Melrose avenue…The Music Grinder used to be down there. …He had a side room set up with a couple of amps…I had brought in a twelve watt Marshall. …I started writing the solos to “Hook In Mouth”…and I started to try and teach him that. He wasn’t a good lead player so I didn’t see how he was gonna do the gig because Chris is just amazing. …I had never heard Megadeth and I didn’t know anything about that genre of music. I was more into Led Zeppelin and Yes…I like all different styles of music…I was into Classical big time. I liked Miles Davis and was really starting to get into Spanish guitar at the time so I could really appreciated what Chris had been doing, especially since Gar’s drumming had been really Jazz-orientated. That’s how I really discovered Megadeth’s music. Peace Sells was the album I was listening to and I still think it’s their best.”

Todd: Even better than So Far, So Good…So What?

Jeff: “I think the songwriting is better and I think the playing…there was something about the production…everything just came together with that one, I think. …I think (So Far, So Good…So What?!) kicks ass, but it wasn’t produced right or mixed right. Even the remix I don’t like, but that’s another story. Everyday I would go down there makin’ fifty bucks an hour and Mustaine wasn’t even there. Junior would pass through, Chuck Beheler would pass through, Paul Lani…he was the producer…he wasn’t there…it was just really me and Jay. Dave started comin’ around late at night when I was there and he would hear me playin’ the stuff and Jay tryin’ to play the stuff… One day I left and went to a payphone and called my mom and said ‘…I can do this gig…’ because I was totally resonating with Chris’s playing and I was figuring out the vibe of the way they were playing…Dave’s approach to rhythm playing and chords. There’s more than Metal there…there’s a lot of different influences.”

Todd: I don’t think a lot of people realize what a multi-dimensional sound they truly have…

Jeff: “…Even though I wasn’t necessarily into the vocals, I could appreciate the Fusion aspect of it. There’s even a little Big Band…there’s all sorts of different rhythms that Dave’s incorporated into that and that’s the cool part about Megadeth. That’s how I was really being drawn into it. …When I called my mom and told here that I thought I could do the gig, I could hear my dad in the background goin’ ‘…now, Jeff…’ (laughs). (He was like) ‘…don’t go in and try to take it from the guy. do what you’re doing, keep teachin’ him and let them see. If they’re walkin’ into the room and you can see that their ears perkin’ up, just let that keep happening…’ (He didn’t want me to) insinuate myself into the situation.”

Todd: He wanted you to let it happen naturally?

Jeff: “Yeah…don’t try to control it. It’s kind of the same thing I’m talkin’ about with the album….don’t go after it. So that’s what I did. At the time, Junior and Mustaine had this apartment. It was a two bedroom place down in Silver Lake. I remember the night that things really started heating up…I went over there and they were playing “Wake Up Dead” and I figured our Chris’s solo to that. …It took me like twenty minuets and that when Dave came into the room and just took off….Junior…came in and took off. …I was frustrated…I had been in L.A. for about four years and I was probably about a month to four months away from just chuckin’ it. …L.A.’s just silly. I remember I had just come back from a rodeo and there was a message on my machine. …On the ride back from the rodeo, I just kept thinking’ ‘Should I stay in L.A.?’ Should I just say ‘…fuck this…’ because I just wasn’t connecting with other musicians. Everyone was about being a Rock star…and they weren’t into the music. So it was hard in the late ’80’s to find people that could really sing and not just scream… Just finding people who…weren’t opportunistic…people in L.A. can be so opportunistic….they’re just out to piggy back from thing to thing. …I would always put all of my money and everything, but it was hard to find other musicians in L.A. that would do the same.”

Todd: I can only imagine.

Jeff: “…When I got home, I played the answering machine message and it was Mustaine. He was just left a message. He said ‘…hey, let’s get together around three thirty on Melrose. there’s something I wanna talk to you about…’ So I went the next day and he gave me a tape of “In My Darkest Hour”. He was like ‘…we think you can do this gig. Jeff’s not gonna cut it…we all know it…’ …They weren’t really telling Jay he wasn’t going to cut it. …They had constructed this story where I was going to lay down the solos for the album and teach them to him later. That was their first plan to transition him out.”

Todd: That’s an unusual way to fire someone.

Jeff: “…“In My Darkest Hour” was the first solo that I did…the first solo that I layed down. I had one night. He said ‘…come back tomorrow…’ I didn’t even get to hear the whole song, but I think it’s a great solo and I love the part. I sent home that night and just ripped over it and went in the next day and just cut it.”

Todd: Personally, I’ve always enjoyed the cover of “Anarchy In The U.K.” from that album…

Jeff: “It was cool because they had (Sex Pistols guitarist) Steve Jones come in and play. His arm was broken so he was playing the rhythm part with a cast. He rode his Harley right into the studio that day and just cut it. I remember he didn’t have any money, so we offered to give him some cash and he was like ‘…oh, no mate. just give me some suction…’ I don’t think we ever actually got him any suction. I guess he wanted us to take care of his sex pistol (laughs).” …After I talked to Mustaine and layed down the solos for “In My Darkest Hour”…Paul Lani was actually there that night…and he was diggin’ it. After that, every day they’d give me a new tape. I had already been messin’ around with “Hook In Mouth” so I had that. I was literally listening to something in the morning, playing over the changes and then goin’ in…in the afternoon…and just doin’ it. I just kept doin’ that with song after song until I had done every part that they had needed.”

Todd: Overall, how would you describe your tenure with Megadeth?

Jeff: “During the time I was in the band, they didn’t really function like a band. …Even before we went out on tour, I don’t think we rehearsed more than twenty times. I’m the kind of person that likes to rent a place, set up and rehearse…just really get it tight. That’s not where they were at the time…they were distracted, so I just practiced my parts. Even though I had finished and had done all of the solos, it wasn’t like I was in. There was a kind of audition tour for Chuck and I. I think there was like six or nine gigs up the west coast. But I think by like the second show, we pretty much nailed the gig. I went from playin’ for four walls…to playin for…our first L.A. tour was for audiences of like ten to fifteen thousand. The album came out and within the first two weeks, it was in the top twenty of the Pop charts. It was a hit and we hit. …It was cool…we did the Dio tour and then Guns ‘n’ Roses got fired off the Iron Maiden tour and we took their place on the Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son tour when they had the big light stage, which was cool to finally play on lighted stage instead of on that was just black. We toured pretty much everywhere, concluding with the Monsters Of Rock show at Castle Donington, that was my last show with the band. The last show was Iron Maiden, Kiss, David Lee Roth, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Megadeth. Guns opened for us because they were just breaking. I remember that day six people got crushed during the Guns ‘n’ Roses set…right before we had to play. That was kind of a drag, plus it was real rainy. It was a trip because you pull up and there’s like a hundred and twenty five or a hundred and fifty thousand people and I had been used to playin’ for like thirty or fifty thousand or even sixty at some of the bigger festivals. It was like double anything I had ever played. ..It was heavy because people had died right before we had to play…it was a drag. The weird thing was that the sun came out right before we went onstage and the show was great.”

Todd: At what point did you realize your time with Megadeth had come to an end?

Jeff: “It’s funny that you mentioned “Anarchy In The U.K.” because it was the last song that I played with the band…it was the song we ended with because we were in England…it was the perfect way to end the show. I would always end the show with a running slide on my knees. I went to do this and hadn’t really paid attention during the whole show that whole stage was coated with this rubber texture. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried sliding on rubber, but I went to run and slide and I just stopped (laughs). There was no slide, man. The booking agent was standing on the side of the stage and he just lost it laughing. I guess that was my clue to exit stage left. We were supposed to play…and this is a true story…four or five more shows on that Monsters Of Rock tour. Castle Donington was the just the first and the biggest. All of the others still would have been like fifty and eighty thousand in other countries. Dave was so fucked up on heroin that he had to go back (to the US) to go to rehab so they made up this story that Dave Ellefson had fractured his wrist, couldn’t play bass and couldn’t finish the shows. That’s when Dave went back to L.A. and went into rehab. …Everyone was just like ‘…oh, fuck…’ and Testament came and took our place. We went back and he was in rehab and that was a whole heavy time because he was trying to get us to smuggle dope into rehab. That was like the beginning of the end, there. I could tell a lot of other stories about what went down to the lead up, but it’s all water under the bridge now.”