FH: New guitarist, Al Pitrelli, even co-wrote the ballad "Promises" with you.

DAVE MUSTAINE: Yes, but it's not actually as much of a co-writing credit as it appears. Al has had a lot of participation and very much when it comes to the parts that make things come together. When it comes to 'Promises", I had a little problem with a part between the bridge and the chorus, and Al came up with that part. When that happened I thought of Marty Friedman, and no disrespect to Marty, but all I could think was "Marty-who?" One of the things Marty was great at was telling me the legality of the notes based on music theory, pretty much like a navigator. Al does the exact same thing, that's why I feel I haven't lost anything. I just feel stronger about Al, than about any of the previous guitar players because he's gone all-out to pick up the stuff the other guys played instead of going, "hey, I don't wanna play the former guitar-player's stuff". He just went "I'm going in!" and he took it from there, and he's got all their stuff down.

FH: The new album title, "The World Needs a Hero" makes me curious. You also mentioned that "there are no more rock stars, Axl (Rose) killed that".

DAVE MUSTAINE: Well, all the delays of their concerts, 2-3 hours, made people lose their tolerance for rock stars. People want heroes. Most bands look like average Joes, wearing gas-station shirts, have funky hair-dos and I think people wanna be able to go "they may not be popular, but they're MY band". You really can't do that if the bands all look and sound the same. The only difference might be the lines and the chorus. Right now the rock business needs a hero. We need people like myself, like Axl, James (Hetfield of Metallica), the guy from Buck Cherry and like Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant. Axl Rose even told me that I was his hero once. Don't get me wrong - Axl is an incredible talent, he just needs to straighten up.

FH: The rock-industry needs more character then, you think?

DAVE MUSTAINE: Yeah, you don't need a bunch of faceless, nameless people up there, just putting their head down, growling in the microphone. It's just not good for the music. Don't get me wrong - many songs out there are great and a lot of bands sound really good, but there's a majority out there that sound exactly like the next band. The music industry is really suffering from this right now and that's what I'm talking about.

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