Dave Mustaine Supports Rick Santorum

Forostar

Ancient Mariner
I always thought Mustaine was a nut. So this indeed does not come as a surprise:
Megadeth Frontman Dave Mustaine Supports Rick Santorum

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...man-dave-mustaine-endorses-rick-santorum.html
That the founder of a popular metal band would embrace the GOP’s most passionate religious ideologue might seem shocking. But looking over Mustaine’s conspiratorial obsession with politics and his personal religious journey, it’s no surprise...

...In a 1988 interview in the British music newspaper Sounds, Mustaine said, “It says in the Bible that men should not lay with men like they lay with women. I mean I don’t wanna f--k up and not go to heaven.” In the same interview, he added some thoughts on immigration that seem ripped from a 2012 GOP debate transcript. "If I were president of the United States, I'd build a great wall along the Mexican border and not let anybody in.” He also dished to conspiracy theorist and radio personality Alex Jones about the “new world order,” a pervasive scare trope of '90s evangelical entertainment, including the Left Behind series....

...Today, Mustaine has swung even further into line with the religious right and its latest iteration, the Tea Party. Obama is “the most divisive president we’ve ever had.” ...

...He’s even down with Rick Perry’s notion that President Obama is waging a “war on religion,” a notion that has now been adopted and even intensified by the remaining candidates. “It's pretty clear that they're taking prayer out of school. It's been happening for a very long time. The very first schoolbook that was written had God all over it. I collect books and I have some really, really old schoolbooks, and God is mentioned on every single page. They're taking God out of the schools to dumb us down.”....
 
My local news announced about his support of Santorum yesterday. I got a good laugh out of it, but like foro this really doesn't surprise me.
 
That's old news (you can see it was posted on the 15th of February) and is wrong. He only talked about the way he took a break from his campaign to be with his child, he never endorsed him.
 
Dave Mustaine is really going far here:
"Back in my country, my president [makes puking sign with his finger in his mouth], he's trying to pass a gun ban, so he's staging all of these murders, like the 'Fast And Furious' thing down at the border; [the massacre in] Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there; and now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple [near Milwaukee, Wisconsin]."

"It's turning into nazi America".


Enjoy the music guys and gals! :puke:
 
Well I still like his music, and I'd go to his concert... But Mustaine and Jon Schaffer should be banned for life from doing interviews :p
 
I hope he doesn't say any nonsense like that next time he tours the UK. Mind you, nobody would take him seriously if he started spouting garbage like that over here (not that we take him seriously anyway).
 
Given the content of the rest of that recording (which I found to be quite funny and TBH pretty good crowd interaction) I am taking that sentence as a bit tongue in cheek.
 
I don't think so. He's said lots of similar stuff in non-concert venues.

I've decided that Megadeth and Iced Earth get no more of my money due to their leaders' political views. I wouldn't care if they were conservative - I care that they both spout crazy conspiracy theories.
 
I haven't bought any IE product since Schaffer went bananas and I wouldn't pay a dime for anything Mustaine worked on (his shitty voice helps a lot).

The thing is, I still don't find it that easy to draw a clear line. I find IE's music so cool (especially the nineties material) that I'd love to see this stuff in concert again. Since there's a chance that they'll do Dante's Inferno it looks like I will go to their last gig in December (Last December!)
 
I dunno, I buy Iced Earth's music because it's music that I really like. If Jon wants to use that money to go on about his conspiracy theory bullshit or make an album like Sons of Liberty, then I suppose he can. I still like the music, and the show earlier this year kicked ass, I can just ignore the stupid stuff.
 
I dunno, I buy Iced Earth's music because it's music that I really like. If Jon wants to use that money to go on about his conspiracy theory bullshit or make an album like Sons of Liberty, then I suppose he can. I still like the music, and the show earlier this year kicked ass, I can just ignore the stupid stuff.

This. I loved Megadeth for the music, not because I agreed with Dave's political leanings, and it still applies today. I don't care what Dave does or thinks as long as he's still making the music I love, which he is.
 
You don't care at all about what he does? Totally no limits?
It rather sounds like you guys rather not want to know about all this (trying to be in denial of someone's stupidity).
 
I remember this discussion happening before. The subject then was Therion.

I try not to let the personalities of musicians affect how I perceive their music. I think I can have my morals and still enjoy bands like Therion and Iced Earth. When their nonsense starts finding its way into the music, then I can see your point. (this is why I avoid Sons of Liberty) But still, I personally don't keep lyrics high in importance when it comes to music. And I know you and I are different in that regard.

It rather sounds like you guys rather not want to know about all this (trying to be in denial of someone's stupidity).
Not really. Jon Schaffer is an idiot, when I think of him I think of how crazy the guy is. However, when I listen to Iced Earth I'm thinking about what's going on in the music, because that is the point of it in the first place. Why would I let something that has nothing to do with the music get in the way of my enjoyment of it? That is foolish.
 
Well, I judge people by their actions. Music is an action. Stupid behavior is an action.
Music is more important than the person itself but the person is still part of it. I find that hard to separate. Especially when both actions are on the same stage, basically at the same time (during a concert).

Wouldn't you guys mind Bruce doing this in the midst of a set? I prefer him playing football.
 
Dave Mustaine is a total idiot. I've been a Megadeth fan almost as long as I've been a Maiden fan, and Dave has always been a bit of a asshole. Though even for him, his outbursts in recent years have been outlandish and just unbelievable. His conversion to Christianity seems to have made an even bigger asshole than he was before that happened. I am still a fan of Megadeth's music, but I don't really respect Dave as a person. As a musician yes, but not as a person.

On the subject of being able to like bands/artists who have a very different mindset and personality from ourselves, I'd be lying if I said it makes no difference to me at all, but it does. But the music is definitely the main thing. There have been some pro-Christian lyrics on later Megadeth albums which I have baulked at, and have effected my enjoyment of certain songs. But not enough to make me dislike them. "Washington Is Next!" is a classic example of that. The music is awesome, but the lyrics definitely detract from my enjoyment of the song. The only way I can enjoy the song to it's fullest is to zone the lyrics out of my psyche whilst listening to it.

Could anyone here profess to be a fan of a Neo-Nazi band if they loved the music they played? I'm not sure I could. Luckily, every Nazi/Homophobic band I've listened to has played music that is garbage so I've never had to face that dilemma, but it is a an interesting question. When it comes to questionable beliefs/attitudes of bands/artists, is there a "too far"? Where no matter how good the music was, the artist's ideology would stop you from liking them (and buying their music)? And if so, how far is "too far"?

I'm sure there's lots of bands I listen to which have members who have views I don't agree with. But to me, the music is the most important thing.
 
Dave Mustaine is a known fan of American radio host and conspiracist Alex Jones, and has in fact done multiple interviews with Jones in the past. Jones' documentary "Endgame" was the inspiration for the Megadeth song of the same name.

Personally, I'm not big on the New World Order conspiracies and the like, but at the same time, occasionally Alex Jones has said something that I didn't see as entirely off base (and so has Mustaine), but I won't mention particulars unless people really want me to because I don't want to turn this too political.

How I feel about the conspiracy lyrics is to not think of them as something that will necessarily happen (though there's lines that do educate on real issues, such as Endgame's "The PATRIOT Act stripped away our constitutional rights"), but as fiction? I don't know if that works for other people, but it does for me in the instances where the lyrics include something off base.

Personally, I think Megadeth is a great band, and Mustaine's conspiracist or (occasionally) Christian lyrics do not significantly decrease my enjoyment of their music. However, I do understand some people not appreciating such lyrics.

Also, as for why he feels the need to talk about it in concert, I'll just quickly say why he does it: He believes that he has knowledge that is being kept secret from the general population of the world that is detrimental to their future safety and liberty. Obviously he almost surely doesn't, but if you actually obtained such knowledge and had a stage on which to spread the information, you would probably do it, right? I'm not excusing his behavior, just trying to provide an understanding of it.
 
Artists personalities affect some things for me but it usually depends what I discovered first, the artist or their music.

I adore GnR, Megadeth and WASP (3 of my favourite bands in fact) ... yet Axl is well known for being an idiot, as is Mustaine. Blackie Lawless has calmed and is closer to my own persona a lot in recent years, whereas the start out of WASP he was far from it... I don't like those albums because of the lyrical content and so don't listen to them, and had I gone to see them back then I likely would have been turned off them due to the stage show. All 3 of these bands however I got into the music long before I knew anything of the band who created it outside of the name - so I had already decided I enjoyed it and it didn't stop me doing so.

Counter to this, bands like My Chemical Romance or Greenday... long before I actually heard a single song by them I had seen them plastered across Kerrang and the likes, and had to suffer through every music discussion on particular sites/with particular friends turning into "That bands okay... but you should listen to Greenday! They're the best, they're XYZ" (I mean literally, someone would say "I like RHCP and this is why" and a guy would respond "RHCP are cool. What about Greenday?" .. it was like the only thing he ever wrote!). By the time I got around to actually hearing a song by them I was already so fed up of the band that it made it hard to separate it from the music.

Bad that I let such things get in the way I will admit, but it's just the way it happened.
 
I have very strong political views, and I exercise my democratic right to buy the things I want to buy, and yes, I tend to stay away from stores and artists and whatever that spend their profits in ways I don't like. For me, music is nice, but you have to look at the entity behind the music. I don't subsidize the sorts of feelings that Mustaine and Schaffer espouse financially. Period.

I don't generally buy music for political ends. And again, I don't turn off my (very small) money tap to a company that is principled. I watch for the insane and the bigoted. Luckily, I live in Canada, and those things happen rarely. In my town, though, I avoid certain restaurants and businesses because they are supporters of the local Catholic Church, which is something I can never support. Money is power, and I use what little power I have.
 
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