MEGADETH frontman Dave Mustaine is promoting his new book, Rust in Peace: The Inside Story of the MEGADETH Masterpiece, and offered a rare one-on-one interview at Loudwire. The interview covered a lot of ground including his current thoughts on his former Rust In Peace-era bandmates, guitarist Marty Friedman and drummer Nick Menza, and just how coked up the band was while recording this thrash classic.

Mustaine admitted that the whole band was under the influence. “I’d be bullshitting you if I said cocaine did not influence “Rust in Peace” because we were all under the influence of the drug at the time.”

Mustaine said he himself was not that big of a fan of the drug saying “I didn’t really like coke that much. I liked the way that it tasted, but I didn’t like the way it made me feel. It never ended well, put it that way.”

He also did not hold back his feelings on Menza and Friedman. “The chemistry of Nick and Marty, don’t get me wrong — that was amazing. And my heart aches when I think about that. And, in fact, that’s why I wrote at the back of the book “In Loving Memory” and not “In Memory Of”.