Name: Dave Mustaine
Instrument: Lead Guitar
Born: September 13, 1961
From: La Mesa, CA

Vitals: Weighs 175 lbs, hazel eyes, strawberry blonde/Red hair
Favorite Band/Album: AC/DC-Let There Be Rock, Led Zeppelin-Presence
Favorite Movie: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Eats: Mexican, English Breakfast, Italian, and Sushi
Reads: The Art of War-Sun Tzu, The Prince-Machiavelli
Favorite Politician: J.F.K., Bill Clinton
Favorite Historical Figure: George Washington
Favorite song on TWNAH: When
Favorite Mega solo: Disconnect & 1000 Times Goodbye
Favorite Venue: My Home Theatre
TV shows: CNN Headline News, ESPN, NHL Tonight, Three Stooges
Hobbies: Teaching Megadeth songs to new Guitarists
Favorite cliche: What goes around comes around
Most memorable concert: AC/DC at Gothenburg Sweden
Most important life lesson: You get what you give
What do you like to do to relax while touring: Sleep, learn Spanish
Occupation if not a musician: Drummer

Taken From Everything2.Com

David Scott Mustaine was born on September 13, 1961, in La Mesa, California, to an abusive, alcoholic father and a victim mentality mother. Due to his father's eccentricities, the family moved around quite a bit during the 1960s and 1970s, though by the time Dave was 16, he was living on his own in Los Angeles. He was already versitile, though self-taught, with the guitar, having been influenced heavily by the works of Cat Stevens.

While he was living on his own, he dealt drugs for while to support himself. One of his clients was often short of cash and offered Dave record albums in trade for drugs, which is how he got his interest in heavy metal, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, in particular.

1981 found Dave looking to join or start a band, and he answered a newspaper ad placed by one Lars Ulrich, a drummer, and his singer/guitarist friend James Hetfield. Upon receiving directions to the house where Lars and James were living, Dave brought all his guitar equipment over, plugged in, and started warming up. Lars and James just watched for a while. Nervous, Dave asked "so are we jamming, or what?" Lars and James were so impressed just by Dave's warmup, they merely nodded and said "you've got the job," and thus (with the later addition of bassist Ron McGovney) Metallica, in its first incarnation, was born.

Metallica played the club circuit around Los Angeles for several months in 1981 and 1982, gaining a cult following, mostly based on the strength of their demo tape, No Life 'Til Leather.

On an off-night in 1982, the band attended a Trauma concert and became enamoured with the bass-playing skills of their bassist, Cliff Burton. Eventually McGovney was kicked out of the band, or quit (depending on who you ask), and Cliff was asked to join, which he did upon the condition that the band relocate to his hometown, San Francisco.

The band moved to San Francisco and built up the same cult following they'd had in Los Angeles, only this time they attracted the attention of a record label, Megaforce Records. Megaforce was in New York City, so the band relocated again.

After a tumultuous cross-country drive in a U-Haul van, the band fired Dave upon arrival in New York City in the winter of 1983, due to his almost constant drunkenness, and the belligerence and recklessness that came with it. The band packed up Dave's gear, drove him to a Greyhound bus station, and put him on a bus back to Los Angeles.

Shortly after his return to Los Angeles, Dave met and befriended bassist David Ellefson. The two considered forming a new band and began looking for members, finding them, and cycling through them due to personality conflicts, defections, and arrests. The original Megadeth (as the new band had been named) consisted of the two Daves, former Slayer guitarist Kerry King, and drummer Lee Rash. King and Rash exited abruptly, and were just as quickly replaced, just in time for Megadeth's debut album, Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good, which was released on Capitol Records in 1985. Megadeth continued touring, recording, adding new members and firing old ones, and releasing consistently better and better albums.

During all this, Dave was a heroin addict, among other things. Apparently there was nothing he would not try, and few things he didn't. He had several near-death experiences due to heroin overdose, came clean a few times, but always ended up back on the scag eventually, even while covering the Democratic National Convention for MTV in 1992. He would often be too fucked up to shoot a video, or sing and play guitar at the same time, as evidenced in the appalling video for Megadeth's cover of Alice Cooper's "No More Mr. Nice Guy." Finally, in 1995, he came clean for good, and the Megadeth metal machine was back in full force, releasing three albums and appearing on a handful of movie soundtracks between 1995 and 2001. During this time, Dave also tried his hand at acting, appearing semi-regularly on the Sci-Fi Channel's The Black Scorpion as the villian "Torchy Thompson."

In early 2002, nerve damage (most likely caused by thousands of heroin injections along with Dave's extremely fast guitar-playing) was discovered in Dave's left arm, which was so severe that he could not continue playing guitar, effectively ending his life as a rock star, at least a guitar-playing rock star. The nerve damage turned out to be radial neuropathy, leaving the band with little choice but to disband, which they finally did on April 3, 2002. It remains to be seen whether Megadeth will continue with a new guitarist in Dave's place while Dave just sticks to vocals.

Dave married Pam Casselberry in 1991, and they have two children, son Justis David and daughter Electra Nicole.