In 1983 an up and coming guitarist was kicked out of his band for his drug abuse, overly aggressive and alcoholic behaviour in the worst possible way.
The band had just signed a recording deal and was about to record their first album. But days before recording could start, the band showed the guitarist the door, without any warning, without any discussion, and even without a dramatic blowout; They woke him up one day and handed him a bus ticket home.
While travelling from New York to Los Angeles, the guitarist kept asking himself, How did this happen? What did I do wrong? What should I do now? the three main questions one should ask himself after a failure. Record deals don't actually fall from the sky, especially for rough, up-and-coming metal bands/artists.
Had his only chance been missed?
Once he arrived in Los Angeles, he overcame his self-pity and promised to start a new band. He decided that his new band would be so successful that his old band would forever regret their decision of kicking him out.
The guitarist worked and practised as if he was possessed by a musical demon. He spent months recruiting the best musicians he could find, far better musicians than his previous bandmates. He wrote a couple of dozen songs and practised vigorously. His seething anger fed his ambition; Revenge became his muse. Within a few years, his new band had signed their own record deal, and a year later their first record would go gold.
The band he started would become so famous that for decades the band he got kicked out would see him on TV, hear on the radio, see posters of him on the street, and see him on the covers of magazines. He would rock out in front of people, live on TV and everywhere he went he had a crazy fandom. He bathed in the tears of his betrayers, each tear he shed was wiped with a clean hundred dollar bill.
The guitarist's name was Dave Mustaine, and the band he started was the legendary heavy metal band Megadeth. Megadeth sold more than 25 million albums and toured the world. Today Mustaine is considered one of the greatest and most influential musicians/guitarists in the history of heavy and thrash metal music.
Unfortunately, the band he was kicked out of was Metallica, which sold more than 150 million albums worldwide and some of their concerts go down in history to the greatest of all time, and the 1991 Monsters of Rock Festival in Moscow was no exception, known as one of the greatest concerts of all time and the most significant performance for a heavy metal band with a whopping 1.6 million live audience.
Metallica is considered by many to be one of the best heavy metal bands of all time. The year was 2003 in a rare intimate interview, Mustaine tearfully admitted that he couldn't help it. Nevertheless, he considers himself a failure. Despite his achievements, in his mind, he was always the guy who got kicked out of Metallica.
He also went on to say that "We are monkeys. We think we are all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer shoes, but we are just a group. of finely decorated monkeys. And being apes, we instinctively compare ourselves and compete for status."
The question is not whether or not we value ourselves against others; Rather, the question here is, by what standard do we measure ourselves? By now you should've realised that Dave Mustaine clearly decided to value his life by whether or not he was more successful and popular than Metallica. Painful for him that he took "Metallica relative success" as a measure of himself and his musical career.
He took a terrible event in his life and made something positive out of it, as Mustaine did with Megadeth, his decision to stick to Metallica's success pained him while his life-defining metric continued to hurt him for decades. For all the money, fans, and awards, he has and he still considered himself a failure.
Now we can look at Dave Mustaine's situation and laugh. Here is this guy with hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of adored fans, a career with what he loves most in and he's still crying because his friends from twenty years ago are so much more famous than him. That's because we have different values ​​than Mustaine has and we measure our success with a different metric.
Our metrics are more likely to be “I don't want to work for a boss I hate†or “I would like to make enough money to pay off my house†or “I would love not to wake up in a ditch. " comparing these metrics with Mustaine's metrics, Mustaine has had incredible and unimaginable success, but according to his metric "Be more successful than Metallica" he is a failure.
Our values ​​determine the metrics by which we measure ourselves. The value of Onoda's loyalty to the Japanese Empire was what sustained him in Lubang for nearly thirty years, but that value also made him unhappy on his return to Japan. Mustaine's metric of being better than Metallica likely helped him produce an incredible piece of art. But the same metric later tormented him, but if you want to change the way you view your problems, you need to change what you value and/or how you measure success.
As an example, let's look at another musician who was kicked out of another band. His story is hauntingly reminiscent of Dave Mustaine, even though it happened two decades prior to that of Dave's. It was 1962 and there was a stir about an up and coming band from Liverpool, England, you might have guessed who they might be.
This band had funny hairstyles and even funnier names, but their music was undeniably good and the record industry was finally taking off. There was John Lennon, the singer-songwriter; Paul McCartney, the singer-songwriter who occasionally plays bass and is also considered to be one the greatest bassists of time; George Harrison, the rebellious guitarist. And then there was their drummer Pete Best.
He was considered the most beautiful member of the group, and he along had a crazy fandom, and his face was the first to appear in the magazines. He was also the only professional member of the band. He had a steady life. There were many companies working behind the band forcing Pete to be the face of the band, not John or Paul. Then all of a sudden one day the manager of the band told Pete without any further ado that he should quit and find another band. He gave no reason, explanation or condolences, he just told him that the others wanted him out of the group, so good luck.
As a replacement, the band brought in a guy with a weird name Ringo Starr, who was older and had a funny big nose. Ringo agreed to get the same funny haircut as John, Paul and George and insisted on writing songs about octopuses and submarines. The other guys said: Sure, why not? and out of nowhere those songs were classical hits of their time.
Within six months of Best's release, Beatlemania had exploded, making John, Paul, George, and Ringo extremely famous, possibly four of the most famous faces in the world. Meanwhile, Best understandably fell into depression and spent most of his time doing what any Englishman would do if given a reason to drink. The rest of the 1960s was not friendly to Pete. By 1965 he had sued two of The Beatles for defamation, and all of his other musical projects had failed, he had no royalties coming in for his time in The Beatles. By the end of 1968, he even tried to commit suicide but his mother convinced him not to. His life was a complete disaster.
Best didn't have the same redeeming story as Mustaine did. He never became famous or made millions of dollars. In many ways, however, Best did better than Mustaine. In a 1994 interview, Best said, "I'm happier now than I would have if I've been with The Beatles"
What the hell, dude?
Best explained that the circumstances of him getting kicked out of The Beatles ultimately led him to meet his wife. And then having children. he changed his values. He even began to measure his life differently. Fame and glory would have been nice, but he decided that what he already had was much more important: a big and loving family, a stable marriage, a simple life which the fab four lacked and gave everything they had to get there. So what was really lost? Just a lot of attention and a busload of money, whereas what was gained meant so much more to him.
These stories suggest that some values and metrics are better than others. Some lead to good problems that can easily be solved. Others lead to bad problems that are not easily solved
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