Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine went through a lot before he became the iconic musician he is today, and during a lengthy interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Mustaine reflected on his youth, which included a period in which his family was involved with the Jehovah’s Witness denomination and his eventual rebellion against that, turning to black magic. In fact, Mustaine shared with Rogan two hexes that he put on people in his early years.
Prior to recounting these tales, Mustaine touched on his own belief system and said,”Real simple — I believe in Jesus, I believe that God is God, Jesus is Jesus and the Holy Spirit is the Holy spirit and that’s it. And if you want to go to church, go to church. And if you want to read the Bible, read the Bible. And if you don’t want to hear about it, don’t listen. And if you don’t want people to tell you about it then tell them to shut up. For me, I try and set a good example with my behavior. I don’t try ever try to proselytize. Even the same thing with drinking. They say there’s nothing worse than a newly sober drunk, so I try not to tell people how to live their life.”
Speaking with Rogan, the Megadeth leader recalled, “You get out of one thing that sucks and so you do something else to extremes. When I bailed on the JW (Jehovah Witness) thing with my mom, I ran away from home up to Idaho where my sister lived and she was practicing black magic, so I got into black magic. She did not practice black, she was practicing white, but I did some black magic. I practiced black magic on two people.”
Explaining to Rogan what a hex entailed, Mustaine offered, “You have somebody that you don’t like and through the power of suggestion in your mind you could say or do something and then hope and pray that something will take place to even the score so to speak.”
The first of two hexes that Mustaine shared involved a bully at school who had taken to tormenting the musician upon his arrival at a new school. “I did one on one guy that was at school and my nephew told him that I was practicing kung fu san soo at the time. So he was the school tough guy and it was my first day at school and he walked by me and sucker punched me in the stomach and I buckled over,” said Mustaine. “And I thought, ‘Here we go. This is going to suck, this school.’ So I was going home and it was a two-bus ride, big bus to a small drop off and then a bus out to where we lived out in a rural area.”
He added, “We get off the first bus and everybody circles around and he’s going to beat me up. And nothing happens, so I get in the bus, he gets in the bus and he walks back and elbows me in the back of the head when he’s getting out and I had some chewing tobacco in my mouth so I swallowed it. I got so sick.”
“I knew I had to do something or it was going to keep happening. So I put a hex on him that he would get physically injured and he did,” said the singer, and when asked by Rogan if he thinks the guy got hurt because of the hex or more because of the things he was doing, Mustaine said, “I think he got hurt because I put a hex on him and because he was an asshole.”
While cautioning that he didn’t want to go into specifics on how to do a hex, he offered a brief overview, revealing, “It involved using some food sources and making an effigy of sorts and you do certain things to identify the doll and then you break off the arm or the leg of the doll, and that’s basically what I did, I broke the leg off and the guy got in a car crash and his leg got mauled.”
Mustaine then shared a second hex with Rogan that he felt was “much more fun,” revealing he did a “sex hex” on the object of his affection. “I was a skinny redheaded kid going to night school after surfing and she would be there and everyone loved her, and I was just some sweaty kid,” said the musician.
He continued, “She came by the house one night to buy some hash because I had a roommate who was selling pot and hash and stuff. And I had already done this incantation on this girl … So I wrote my name and her name and drew some pictures and I burnt it and said a prayer and the next night she came over to my apartment to buy this hash. And I don’t know anything about anything, and she comes in and says, ‘Hey, what’s your sign?’ And I said, ‘Oh I’m a Virgo,’ and she says, ‘Oh, my horoscope says I’m supposed to make love to a Virgo in a tropical surrounding.’ So I went and screwed in a black lightbulb in the bathroom and plugged the tub and said, ‘Here’s a waterfall, let’s go.'”
Hear more of Mustaine’s chat with The Joe Rogan Experience in the player below. The singer-guitarist is currently touring with Megadeth on a tour that includes Five Finger Death Punch, The Hu and Fire From the Gods. Get tickets here. Megadeth’s new album, The Sick, The Dying and the Dead! is due on Sept. 2 and pre-orders are currently being taken here.
