From Ice-T to the Intercourse Pistols’ Steve Jones, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine isn’t averse to inviting outdoors musicians to look on his band’s albums.
However there was one unlikely high-profile collaborator whose look on a traditional Megadeth tune fell aside on the final minute.
In 1994, Megadeth have been driving excessive on the success of albums akin to Rust In Peace and Countdown To Extinction, the latter getting into the Billboard charts at Quantity 2 – their highest ever chart place.
The band’s sixth album, Youthanasia, was their most commercial-sounding document but, to the purpose the place Dave Mustaine later complained that producer Max Norman pushed the band to decelerate their songs to make them extra palatable for radio.
“While you hearken to these songs, they’re all actually gradual,” mentioned Mustaine in 2024. “We’re a steel band, you’ll be able to’t have every thing at 120 BPM. It is apparent that that is a radio tempo.”
Regardless of his reservations, Youthanasia featured a number of traditional tracks, together with one that might be broadly recognised as one among Megadeth’s biggest songs: A Tout Le Monde.
The model of A Tout Le Monde that seems on Youthanasia was sung by Mustaine alone, however the band would revisit it 13 years later with the intention of re-recording it as a duet.
The up to date model of the tune, retitled A Tout Le Monde (Set Me Free), appeared on 2007’s United Abominations album and featured Mustaine buying and selling strains with Cristina Scabbia, singer with Italian goth steel band Lacuna Coil.
“That tune was by no means revered by the document firm [Capitol], or by anybody besides myself and the followers,” Mustaine informed Metallic Hammer in 2007. “Being one among my most stunning songs, I believed it deserved a greater likelihood earlier than I went into retirement.”
However Scabbia wasn’t the primary individual that Mustaine approached to look on the brand new model of the tune. The Megadeth man had thought of two unnamed singers who didn’t work out, earlier than reaching out to a 3rd: Lisa Marie Presley.
Presley, who died in 2023, was the daughter of rock’n’roll legend Elvis Presley and a singer in her personal proper. However sadly, the mooted team-up with Megadeth fell via on the eleventh hour.
“She was actually getting onto the airplane,” Mustaine informed Metallic Hammer, including cryptically: “I felt awkward about it, however I’ve bought a foul sufficient repute and so has she.”
In one other interview with Straight.com, the Megadeth frontman defined: “We needed to name and say, ‘Sorry, we modified our minds. I might have cherished to have heard what Lisa Marie Presley would have executed,.”
The precise cause for Presley’s non-appearance on A Tout Le Monde (Set Me Free) has by no means been revealed. As a substitute, Mustaine enlisted Cristina Scabbia as his duet accomplice on the tune.
“Cristina is one of the best of all the feminine singers round in the meanwhile and I hope it helps her band’s profession,” Mustaine informed Metallic Hammer.
Fittingly, given the Megadeth singer’s points with Youthanasia’s radio-friendly method, the brand new model of the tune was quicker than the unique. As for what it might have seemed like with Lisa Marie Presley? We are able to solely think about.
