In which Dave Mustaine entertains an enemies-to-lovers relationship with a talented guitarist, one of his former band's member sister.
↳ TW: mention of S.A. and substance abuse
↳ favoring chapters helps me a lot!
Started: 10/01/2023
Finished: 05/05...
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⛧
ー California, 1982.
At the time, I was 19 years old, freshly graduated from high school. All I did was hang out with people my mom always told me to stay away from in the underground music scene. Except when she was young, those people used to be hippies, but a new genre had taken over: metal.
Me and Kirk still lived together in our mom's house. She loved us dearly, yet part of her desperately wanted one of us to go to college. We both knew that we couldn't pay for five more years of education. Besides, we didn't know what we wanted to do with our lives.
One night, while I was watching TV alone in the dark living room, Kirk stepped in and held a flyer up to my face. I knew by the cheap yellow paper and unintentionally smudged black lettering that it was a new metal gig.
"Donna, look at this." He said moving the paper in front of my eyes making it even harder to read.
"What? Kirk, I literally can't read if you keep holding it like that." I replied laughing and snatching it from his hands to have a better look at it.
METALLICA (metalus maximus)
The young metal attack
Radio City ー March 14 Woodstock ー March 26
I examined the flyer and looked back at Kirk with a smile. It was common for my brother to bring me new gigs dates for us to go check out together, even if we didn't know anything about the band in question.
"Do you know these guys?" I asked, holding the flyer up between my two fingers.
"Nah, never heard of them. That's why I'm curious. We hang out with musicians a lot, I thought we knew everyone in the California underground scene." He answered sitting down next to me and taking the piece of paper away from my hand.
"How much?" I asked simply leaning back on the couch.
"$15 per person. It's their first concert as far as I know." He said, slowly drifting his attention to the only light in the room, which came from the black-and-white horror movie playing on the TV.
Anaheim was a residential city in the south of California, close to Los Angeles. The venue was even smaller than we expected. The security was almost nonexistent. If we weren't honest enough to pay, we could've gotten away with getting in for free. The people who came seemed to be mostly friends of the band; there weren't more than 80 people in the room.
On the stage, the singer, an awkward teenage boy with long blonde hair, introduced the band one by one to the crowd. They all seemed nervous to some extent, but nothing I wouldn't expect for a first time. I was in the first row, cheering in hopes of making them feel more comfortable. It was pleasing to support beginning artists, no matter how big they were.
