Megadeth‘s mastermind Dave Mustaine has named his all-time favorite guitar players in a new interview, singling out Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, and Ritchie Blackmore as the defining benchmarks from the era that shaped him.
Speaking with Jon Chang of YSOLIFE, a leading music media platform based in Taiwan (transcribed by Blabbermouth), Mustaine began by addressing the landscape of modern guitar playing: “European guitar players, there are so many really fast-picking guys, but ever since Yngwie [Malmsteen] came out, everybody else is just a really fast-picking guy. Before Yngwie, when a really great guitar player came on the scene, you had [Michael] Schenker [UFO and Scorpions], or you had Angus [Young, AC/DC], or you had James [Hetfield, Metallica] or myself, and we were really distinguished guitar players. You had the guys from [Iron] Maiden, but then there was this explosion, and there are so many guitar players now that are really good, especially because of the software that they can learn how to play with.”
Dave explained how that differs from how his generation had to develop: “When we started off, we didn’t have all these apps. We had to learn by lifting up the stylus on the record and scooting it back a couple grooves and dropping it and hoping it went in the same f***ing spot so we could pick up our guitar and our pick at the right time and play along with the song again, until they started developing cassette decks where you could slow stuff down or back it up real easy. But that was the way we learned stuff.”
Mustaine then gave his definitive answer on favorites: “So, I would have to say probably one of my favorite guitar players has a lot to do with the era that they came in. And I would say for guitar layering and sounds, it would be Jimmy Page [Led Zeppelin]. For excellent note selection, it would be David Gilmour [Pink Floyd]. For being metal as f**k back when there were no metal guitar players, Ritchie Blackmore [Deep Purple and Rainbow]. I am not a fan of the keyboard, so I could have had them be a little bit lighter shade of purple and gotten rid of the keyboard player. But, yeah, he was great. And then, of course, like I said, AC/DC and Angus and UFO with Michael Schenker. That’s my ‘last supper’ kind of thing I’d want, have those guys with me.”
Back in 2018, Mustaine told Heavymetal.dk about his early guitar inspirations: “My inspirations were more along the guidelines of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and the British Invasion. There’s a lot of great bands that are out right now [that] fans look to, a lot of young bands that are really great. For me, I always wanted to know, ‘What were their influences?’ Like with Van Halen — everybody thinks that David Lee Roth was such a great frontman, but what was his influence? It was Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas. It’s like David Lee Roth is a clone of him, except for his voice of course — the black leather pants, real low hip-huggers, big, giant belt buckle, no shirt, tan, muscles… the same thing. For me, when I look at my influences, I try to go back in time. Jimmy Page was a huge influence guitar-wise. Angus was a big guitar influence; so was his brother, Malcolm. Believe it or not, I was probably more influenced by Malcolm than I was by Angus. I liked Angus’s solos a lot, but the rhythm of AC/DC was what did it for me, because there was a hook to it. A very simplistic hook. I think that’s what’s suffering with music nowadays — people are trying to be so f***ing cerebral with their music, and a guy that played music with us at one point came up to me and goes, Hey, ‘I’ve got a new riff,’ and I was listening to it, and it was awful. I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s Megadeth in Morse code.’ I was like [puts head in hands]…”
“How do I go back one more than Eddie Van Halen? What influenced Edward Van Halen? Classical,” Dave continued. “He was a classically trained guitar player growing up as a kid. I looked at some of the really great players — Vivaldi, Paganini, Chopin, Bach, Wagner, although not all of their movements or their pieces are stuff that I like. Vivaldi has ‘The Four Seasons’ — two of them, I like; the other two, they’re a bit long for me, and while I can totally appreciate the songs, I’ve grown up in a kind of pop-radio mentality, so a four-minute song [is] paydirt. Where’s the hook? When you have a song that’s a little bit longer than four minutes for me, I tend to kind of lose the plot.”
Megadeth’s latest and final studio album, the self-titled Megadeth, was released in January 2026 via Mustaine’s Tradecraft imprint on Frontiers Label Group’s BLKIIBLK label. The follow-up to 2022’s The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. album chart, earning 73,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release — 69,000 of which were pure album sales. The album also topped the charts in Australia and Austria, and reached the top five in Finland, Sweden, Belgium, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and New Zealand.
