Chris Poland on almost rejoining Megadeth in 89, the end of his friendship w. Mustaine & Fatal Opera

i couldn't get a hold of dave i called his manager like 10 times and i finally on the 11th time i left a message i said if you don't call me back you're gonna be hearing from owen sloan who's my attorney and so he calls me back and then he insults me and tells me um well chris all you did was a couple solos and and dave and us thought that you would just do it for the fans and i'm like hey well i did it for the fans but everybody else is getting paid i'd like to get paid for it you know welcome to rock talks today we're talking to chris poland the former guitar player of megadeth and current om we discuss his crazy stories from the killing is my business and peace cells era how he almost rejoined mega death in 1989 and his experience recording the demos for rest in peace how his friendship with dave mustain ended and more if you like this interview please give me a thumbs up leave a comment and share the video with all your friends also very important please don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell by the way if you see a little bit advertisement at the beginning in the middle or at the end of the video please do not skip it by doing that you're helping me a lot come on guys it's just a few seconds of your life and it will really make a difference for me i'm counting on all of you enjoy the interview hello chris how are you man thank you so much for your time welcome to rocktalks thanks for having me you guys all right so let's start with the interview already so let's talk about your latest project let's let's say you are part of this new album of fatal opera fatal opera 3 you recorded some solos for the song the raven is that correct yes yes um these were tracks that um uh stu samuelsongar's brother and andy um friedman the the singer i believe uh they found some tracks that they um that gar had played on and some previous tracks and um they asked me to do a couple solos on them i was more than happy to do that so how this project came together you got a phone call from david ellison or something like that actually i got a call from um my personal manager steve bauer he's he's been working with me for man over 20 years um yeah he gave me a call and said that andy and stu wanted me to do a couple solos and that dave allison was going to play bass on one track and i said of course i'll do it and did you meet a david ellison in the studio while recording this no no um i recorded my my uh tracks in my studio i had uh carlos cruz uh help me record him he did he engineered it and uh david probably did his in in his personal studio too all right so jose carlos tell me what do you think about the song the raven oh you know those songs are great man and um the the the uh the it's a very progressive song man it takes you like to another place man yeah yeah hey jose carlos i was i was talking to you i was asking you what do you think about the son the raven you had some comments before the interview i love the song i i love this rock structures and um when i hear the song i i remember some [Music] metal albums like for example control denied that i've been released by shaq schuldiner um these proc elements uh maybe power metal elements and it's it's a great song yeah i think so too yeah all right so do you guys plan to maybe play this this song's life at some point oh i mean if if um if fatal opera ever comes out on the road and i'm anywhere near them i would i would hop on stage and sit in all right and what about your current projects what what are you doing right now as chris poland right now we um i i'm not sure i guess i can say this i mean they they we signed a deal with m theory audio which is i think a subsidiary of uh century media and um we did two uh songs that we that we you know presented to the label a long time ago but carlos our drummer carlos cruz is the drummer for warbringer and um refreshment yeah he he um he really injured his shoulder his right shoulder and arm and so we've been on a hiatus waiting for him to heal because uh he didn't want to get a surgery and the doctor said he shouldn't so he's on the mend but we had started recording this record and um so carlos mixed the two songs that we had um you know already recorded this two songs that we actually got our record deal for and um they're gonna release those two songs in in the next month and um it'll be up for digital download and um there's just going to be a you know you know it's there's going to i guess going to be a big push saying that we signed with m3 audio and here's the two songs and one song is called exit stage left which is dedicated to nick menza and then the other song is called the ninth one that actually we were working with nick when we wrote that song and that's the title he gave it so because he always said let's do the ninth one because it was like the ninth song so this will be released as chris poland solo project yeah this is a band called home oh yeah correct yep okay i have some questions about uh your gear scene megadeth and first of all i want to ask you um who was the last communication you had with gary samuelson what do you remember about the last contact you had with him oh i saw gar just before he passed on bastille day i was there like not even a week you know before he died i went to visit and um he he he knew you know who i was but but he was he was pretty sick he couldn't speak but he could gesture and you know if you if he was laughing you could tell and and then when i came home yeah he passed um you know a couple days after that but um i used to visit him down at his uh first house in florida which was kind of a small almost like a ranch house that uh it had a tin roof so when it rained it was the most awesome sound you ever heard and um he had turkeys he was raising turkeys and in the back was his personal studio that was really cool um do you know uh the album cover for the first king crimson record that that screening face yeah painted that by hand on on one whole wall of his studio and it looked just like the album cover well yeah nogar had a really cool little place down there and then then he bought a house he moved out of that place and bought a house and that's where um his wife gail lives now okay um now i want to talk about about megadeth about killing my business about pizzas great albums and but i have always been impressed with megadeth's life of success in those years in the years of killing is my business and b cells um but um we always know the the point of view of the mustang i i read uh many years ago this book called mustang a heavy metal memoir yeah me too i want to know your point of view of those years for example what was the strangest or craziest experience you had during those years in the event maybe during the recording of the albums or on the tours um i mean the albums they're you know we just we're making records i mean we're working 12-hour days even longer sometimes and you know there wasn't a huge budget back then on either of those records but those those you know those days went by fast and you know we did the best we could with the budgets we had but we made two great records but i have a story um we um we were at the ritz in new york and it was slayer headlined and the bad brains opened nice and we were in the middle slot nice deal and um they didn't give us any food they gave us this like old nasty like um you know lunch meat plate that was kind of all like just dried out and not looking edible and dave got really upset man so he started drinking and by the time we got on stage he was uh he was pretty lit man and um after about i don't even know maybe like the fourth fifth song they started putting down the screen because they have a huge screen that they you they used to use i don't even know i think the ritz is gone but they put the screen down and dave was so mad that he uh he was gonna smash his guitar and scott menzies are our basically road manager best friend on the road guy grabbed the guitar so he wouldn't do it but scott said he felt the neck he felt it like like click and i'm sure it was just the truss rod moved a little bit so scott let it go and the guitar went around in a circle and broke the screen and the only other person that ever broke the screen at the ritz was sid vicious so they got so pissed off that they took a bogville hook like from because the the ritz was a an old theater it's over 100 years old when i when i was there and they took that bodville hook that they would take like people that performed that they wanted to get off stage and they hooked dave with it and took him off stage with a bodville hook man it was the craziest thing you ever saw it was it was really amazing i mean i'm sure everybody was at that show remembers every minute of it man because dave was like just going crazy man yelling at at um at combat records and relativity records from the stage just telling them off because they wouldn't give us any tour support and they were not doing the right thing and he was just pissed and because he didn't eat and he started drinking he just went red man this was killing is my business tour no this is the peace cells tour all right we've we toured on p cells like i at least four times that i remember and we played all those songs live before we even recorded the record so um yeah yeah and we were making that record for relativity too and uh uh capitol records bought it they bought combat out they just bought the record from combat and then had a different producer mix it yeah so going back to the recording experience of the of kill of p-sales pistols but who's buying and talking about uh the budget you said it was a very small budget do you do you think peace be sales but who's buying could be better a better record with a with a big no no i don't think so i mean i mean our first budget for the killing is my business record was like six thousand dollars the p sales budget was three times that and we we had a month we had i mean we had a producer randy burns producing he had all our time like i said we were working 12 14 hour days and you know he made use of every minute we were in the studio so we had enough time it's just you know that's a that's a a month to make a record and mix and finish everything is pretty fast but i mean people do it to this day still i mean it was okay i mean we were working hard we didn't we weren't messing around that's for sure oh yeah one can tell masterpieces both congratulations i have another question about pixels um considering songs like the conjuring uh did they busting's knowledge of witchcraft and occultism in general create any particular atmosphere in the recording process of killing is my business on pistols um possibly for himself but not for me you were not into that uh stuff back then no no um you know i i you know been asked this question before and i just you know i just it that's his business you know whatever he was into that's his thing you know and what about the rest of the band nagar and dave no no he was only mistaken yeah and only only mustaine was a witch all right um i want to talk about the song holy wars because before marty friedman you played a demo one of the of this song um what year did you record that song in hollywood uh what do you remember uh holy wars yeah did you say what year yes when it was you know probably six months before they made the main record oh wow yeah no i went in to record um that was the first time i met nick menza he was the first person i met during that session he walked up and he said hey i'm nick you're chris right and i said yeah and he said said nice to meet you and um i was thinking about joining the band and the reason i didn't because my manager at the time her name was janie hoffman at the time her company was called speed of sound and um she told me a couple different times that if i joined the band i would probably you know die from you know an overdose or something and i didn't i kind of like shrugged it off and then the day we're driving for that meeting she told me in in the car while we were going we met at the ivy and dave was there and ron lafitte was there and i think andy somers might have even been there but i had made the decision when we got out of the car i said yeah i'm not going to join and then i told them they were really upset but i i was just i only had just gotten sober i was only like maybe god not even a year sober and and we were kind of we didn't know for sure but if they were using drugs i would have wound up using drugs again so so you were worried about your health well that and and you know in in in megadeth there's not a lot of uh at that time there wasn't a lot of free exchange of ideas you know it was like it was dave's thing and you know he wrote the music and if you brought something to the table it wasn't going to be like a whole song or anything you might write a harmony here or there but and i was like you know i was just about to make the return to metapolis record and i was like you know i i just thought you know or i may have already made it i can't remember that far back right now but i just i just knew it didn't feel right and i was like nah i can't do it and then you know they got all upset with me and but you know not everything's about money man yeah yeah so holy wars was was the only song from the rest in peace album that you got the chance to work back then in 89 no prisoners too i think techno prisoners yeah no actually i have my my manager uh steve bauer just sent me these two cds let me see if i can find them um that holy wars demon exactly which are the reefs or solos did you get no actually um i played on rest in peace i played on lucretia i played on five magics i played on tornado souls i played on take no prisoners holy wars and poison or cure pretty much the whole album i i don't know because i haven't listened to this but my manager told me yeah i got these songs right here and you played on them and he got these from gar's wife gail gail sent him all these tracks and stuff so i found all this stuff i i have this one uh we didn't have a name for the band but it was gar on drums his brother stu on guitar a bass player named doug burleson playing bass and singing and at that time i was playing uh a rolling guitar synth and we were doing like a uk kind of vibe thing and nobody ever got to hear it because it just fell apart but they're really good songs man that's the first thing i put into here was because i hadn't heard it in so long it could have been pretty cool but we were all just you know that was before megadeth yeah so your solos and your ideas in all those demos from russian peace didn't end up on the official release in 1990 right no no they didn't and i'm not even sure i mean maybe steve ballard thinks that's me and it might not be me i don't know i haven't listened to it yet and what do you think about marty friedman in megadeth replacing you actually because you were about to rejoin the band back then oh yeah i even told him i said how can you go wrong with marty friedman yeah because they were you know they're kind of mad that i wasn't going to join and um look what happened you know obviously it was the right choice wouldn't you say yeah some things are meant to be yeah exactly i want to talk again about peace cells and because uh david strange always says that he wrote the famous famous bass intro to the song pizzelles and what memories do you have of it is what mustang say is totally true or did david ellison contribute in some way or another to the composition of that vast intro um i don't know for sure but i do know that dave wrote the riff that's the riff in the whole song i mean i mean dave ellison might have said you know what we should start this song with me just doing the bass ring that i that probably happened but i don't recall it wasn't ever a subject that ever came up that i remember all right so chris uh something that maybe you didn't got to get to to answer all the time it's about this contribution you did for a lamb of god uh like 15 years ago or 18 years ago and on the album's ashes of the way and as the palaces burn so how did that happen back then again my uh my manager uh my personal manager steve bauer somehow got a hold they got a hold of steve somehow and then chris adler said yeah i want chris to play on this and and um i was blown away because when uh me and peter sartilitch peter seirlich had recorded a lot of music with me in that time period and he was a great engineer and um he put it on we listened to it we looked at each other like man we're going to need some coffee because it was it was like megadeth on a methodology man it was so fast we were like i can't believe this and it really did kind of remind me of mega death in a way and then adler told me that yeah i'm a huge megadeth fan and that's funny because he wound up in the band yeah yeah some some years later so that was uh back in the as the palaces burn right or you you meant ashes of the wake oh both i mean this the second time we we uh chris adler asked asked me to come on there alex skolnick was on the same track with me which i thought was awesome yeah yeah yeah yeah i asked this because uh before as the palaces burn which is the second lamb of god album and that band wasn't really that well known in the states or europe was pretty much like a like a baby band back then so you were impressed by their music even at those early stages for them oh yeah i think those are their best records anyway yeah yeah for me my personally i think i'm the same way most mega death fans are they always feel like the first two or three records were the best ones and i feel that way about the lamb gone records maybe it's just because you know i was involved but i don't think so man the drumming on those first two records is pretty insane man and all of it the songwriting guitar playing tone and what about the singing because that kind of singing was maybe for you very different compared to the classic metal oh yeah you know what i i you know that's that's a matter of taste i i i i didn't think anything of it either way i just enjoyed the music and and the energy and the intensity of it it just made me feel like my you know at that time i was really like you know until we met nick menza me and and me and pag me and my bass player ohm was more of a like a fusiony kind of not very it was kind of heavy but when nick joined the band he he brought this heavy heavy edge and and we've been keeping that and and that's what i noticed when i when lamb of god sent the very first track that i played on i look i heard it and i was like jesus man my whole life is in slow motion right now and and you know and i didn't change my ways you know but but when nick joined the band me and me and pag said man we gotta we gotta we gotta put the pedal to the metal man we really gotta like get a little bit heavier actually a lot heavier so that's why i'm really glad you know carlos cruz is a huge nick menza fan and a gar samuelson fan so he was you know he was actually he after nick passed man me and me and pag were down we were down like we didn't do anything for six over six months we just we didn't play our instruments and um [Music] one day carlos uh talked to um we were doing this uh this kind of weird hbo thing that never came to fruition but um it was james and um and madison were involved in that madison called carlos and said hey man do you think you could go down and maybe jam with those guys and so carlos said yes so we met him and he came in and he he knew ten of our songs the day we met him and we couldn't even play him anymore we were took us a week to catch up with him and then we just loved his playing because i mean there's no there's no you can't replace nick menza but but carlos just you know he understood that we wanted to keep it you know heavier and he's he was just you know he really like stepped in and got us out of our funk man all right i have uh one more question and i want to talk about the several versions of killing is my business and pieces because in the case of killing is my business we have the original mix we have the 2002 version the final kill is the last version of killing is my business the original mix of pixels the mixed information version of 2004 [Applause] the dvd audio it's great this version from all these versions do you prefer any particular from each album have you have you heard all these versions of i i've heard people i've heard the ones that um i've heard the first version of course and then i heard the second version that dave did while i was doing um um the system has failed yeah and i like them both they're totally different they're way totally different and the first ones are just they're more you know once you hear something like that it's in your it's tattooed on your brain you know and then when you hear a newer version and it's all souped up and like you know it's got you know technology all over it and whatever it sounds great it's just a different animal you know and i like them both really great i i didn't you know when i was in the band and i heard master of puppets i was really bummed out man because um i just felt like you know you know and i and back then you know i my mind wasn't like in the right place for guitar i i was like i wish you know that i had my my [ __ ] together more because when i heard the guitar tones and just the production of master puppets i was just blown away man and i can't believe they never used that same producer ever again yeah that was some of the best production i've ever heard man fleming resonating right yeah yeah that guy is just i mean you know in those guys too i mean just the tones the song ideas it was just that's one of my favorite records ever made man so i i want to ask you since we're talking about uh system has failed error how how was the vibe when they called you on the phone and asked you to be part of this this album oh no it was cool everything was really good man we've got along great um i know there was like some flack after you know when he released the the demo solos or whatever and um i couldn't get a hold of dave i called his manager like 10 times and i finally on the 11th time i left a message i said if you don't call me back you're going to be hearing from owen sloan who's my attorney and so he calls me back and then he insults me and tells me um well chris all you did was a couple solos and and dave and us thought that you would just do it for the fans and i'm like hey i did it for the fans but everybody else is getting paid i'd like to get paid for it you know obviously you know and so then all this you know just totally blown out of proportion be lit i got belittled by everybody and it's like come on really i you know you're actually recording like it's getting up eight bucks out of ten right like pretty much the whole album you know i it's it's just it just got so like i guess people love drama i guess i don't know well it's an amazing album i remember when that album came out i was really blown away it was it was like the best megadeth album in like many years of course i like cryptic writings and even risk i know people's gonna throw me trash for saying this but the system has failed came out i was like yes this is the mega that i wanted to listen for so long so thank you for that and chris well it wasn't just me man vinnie caliyutta played drums on that record yeah and dave you know dave's writing you know was pretty pretty really solid on that record man yeah too bad that that lineup didn't end up together for many years later it's a shame yeah yeah like you said before you know what what's meant for b is meant to be man right jose carlos another question are you in touch with dave busting or no did you say with dave ellison mustaine he's kids oh no no i haven't spoken with dave since uh i can't remember one i guess back when i made the system wow 18 years no he got all you know he's like you know he's not that's it he ruined our friendship and i'm like come on really but you know whatever so if you cross path in a festival or something do you say hi to him or i've never seen him i haven't seen him since oh right all right so last last question chris i i know that you also got the chance to to record some solos for this generation kill band with rob dukes former exodus uh singer so how was oh yeah that's a really cool track did you guys like that yeah yeah awesome so how about that that was really nice man carlos did that with me too carlos cruz engineered that so yeah i really like that song i like the and i like that they let me do whatever i wanted you know they kept that little melody intro and then they kept it as a theme on the out of the song and it was cool so do you get the chance to work with rob dukes on studio this time no no ma'am it's all it always happens here at my studio um in l.a all right i run a bunch of studios i mean my day my day gig is i run a couple hundred recording and rehearsal studios and that's how i get my own control room tracking room situation so i have like you know i have like a a really cool studio i have a small ssl board and a bunch of api and knee preamps and this is where i do my thing and that's why i do it right right so we got two more minutes for this interview is there something you want to add about your your current band some touring plans for this year maybe well watch for the for the m theory audio release of um exit stage left and the ninth one and um as soon as carlos is um ready we're going to start finishing that record and i just want to say thank you to to all all my fans and especially all all the megadeth fans throughout the years really the the most loyal fans that i've ever i mean really always i mean even fans that are my age still love megadeth you know so yeah it seems like it just never ends you know it will never end for sure that's timeless and ageless music yeah man all right thank you so much for your time chris this was great and all right really looking forward your your next room i'll have shawna let you know when when they're available and i make sure that you get a digital download great thank you so much all right you guys have a good night bye bye if you like this interview please give me a thumbs up leave a comment and share the video with all your friends also very important please don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell [Music] [Applause]

Channel: ROCK TALKS

Views: 25,568

Keywords: Megadeth, Dave Mustaine, Chris Poland

Id: j7TN_3S2RcU

Length: 35min 13sec (2113 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 05 2022