HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: So Far, So Good… So What! – Megadeth

For an outsider looking in, camp MEGADETH was all smiles and sunshine as they sent their third album into the world in January 1988. Following frontman Dave Mustaine’s infamous departure from thrash metal peers METALLICA in 1983, you’d be forgiven for thinking So Far, So Good… So What!

Whilst the title of their third album was their way of letting people know they weren’t letting success go to their heads, as Mustaine told Headbangers Ball in 1988, it was a cover up for a time in their lives that can only be described as going down the toilet.

Substance abuse was both the poison and the cure for MEGADETH. Guitarist Chris Poland and drummer Gar Samuelson had been fired for disruptive behaviour straight after Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? (1986) touring commitments, underpinned by Poland’s penchant for pawning their equipment to pay for drugs. A major spot on the Monsters of Rock European Tour was aborted after a single show thanks to bassist David Ellefson’s drug problems, and post-album Mustaine found himself arrested for driving under the influence and possession after crashing into an off-duty police officer’s parked vehicle. Better yet, new wave starlet Belinda Carlisle boycotted a spot on the album during recording when she rocked up to the studio and did a 180 after Mustaine “lit up a big fat joint, opened my mouth to say hello and this puff of marijuana came out” (as he recalled to Guitar World in 2004).

Although the album cycle was riddled with the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll hijinks only Hollywood could muster up, it ended with Mustaine going drug-free for the first time in 10 years. Whilst they went on to record 1990’s thrash masterpiece Rust In Peace, So Far, So Good… So What! is as underappreciated as it is underrated; it’s the missing puzzle piece in their discography that connects all the dots.

But to find their path to the future, MEGADETH had to travel back in time first. Set The World Afire, which samples The Ink Spots’ 1941 easy-listening staple I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire, was written from the ashes of Mustaine’s first post-METALLICA song. Written on his way home after being fired, the original lyrics were scribbled on the back of a cupcake wrapper.

Elsewhere, their calamitous cover of THE SEX PISTOLS’ Anarchy In The U.K. skips the original script for misheard lyrics, and features former PISTOL guitarist Steve Jones, who reportedly asked for “a hundred dollars and some suction” (as told in Mustaine’s 2010 autobiography A Heavy Metal Memoir).

But not everything on So Far, So Good…So What! predates the dinosaurs. In My Darkest Hour, arguably MEGADETH’s most vulnerable moment at that time, was written in the wake of METALLICA bassist Cliff Burton’s death, inspired as much by Mustaine’s ensuing loneliness and grief as it was his ex-girlfriend Diana Aragon. Whilst Burton’s death can be clearly heard in the song’s gothic tones and cries for help, it’s subject matter is yet more shots fired at Diana, a spectre haunting the history of MEGADETH, who Mustaine himself describes as “my inspiration and the topic of most of my songwriting for 30+ years”.

Diana wasn’t just waltzing her way through the song’s subjects, she played an integral part in the revolving door of band members that MEGADETH ran through during the writing, recording, and release of the album. Guitarist Jeff Young, who had only just replaced his guitar student and MALICE member Jay Reynolds, was fired when alarm bells were raised, he was hooking up with the damsel in distress. Of course, his departure would make way for fan-favourite Marty Friedman – despite the likes of Slash, Dimebag Darrell, Criss Oliva, and Jeff Loomis all being in the mix – to join ahead of the sessions for Rust In Peace.

At the time, So Far, So Good… So What! was described by Rolling Stone critic Jim Farber as offering “a disruptive noise that’s welcome indeed” to “today’s narcoleptic pop scene”. Yet, retrospectively, the record falls down the pecking order of MEGADETH moments, with AllMusic’s Steve Huey claiming the album lacks “the conceptual unity and musical bite”, with it wanting “to sound threatening but mostly comes off as forced and somewhat juvenile”.

A cause for concern for critics and fans alike, even now, is the album’s muddying mix. Whilst being sandwiched between arguably two of thrash metal’s most important albums – 1986’s Peace Sells But Who’s Buying? and 1990’s Rust In Peace – certainly doesn’t help, Mustaine’s fractious relationship with its producers poisons the well.

Capitol Records installed Paul Lani into their ranks to produce the record. Having mixed Peace Sells, you’d think nothing could go wrong, yet the producer’s pedigree came not from thrash, but everything else, having worked with Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, and The Temptations. The two were at loggerheads from the start, and it went catatonic when Mustaine, enjoying his morning coffee, found Lani outside in his underwear feeding an apple to a deer. That day, Mustaine ditched New York for Los Angeles and fired him.

His replacement was Michael Wagener, who had been the founding guitarist for ACCEPT and had mixed METALLICA’s seminal album Master Of Puppets (1986) alongside producing the likes of glam rock luminaries DOKKEN and SKID ROW. In the years since, it was Wagener’s mix, rather than Lani’s original work, that Mustaine has thrown under the bus for the album’s muddy feel, labelling Wagener’s efforts as “pedestrian” at best.

Despite its difficulties, So Far, So Good… So What! saw Mustaine grow more confident as a lyricist. If the albums to come – 1990’s Rust In Peace and 1992’s Countdown To Extinction – were the postgrad and doctoral theses, this was the undergrad dissertation he had to write to reach those heights. Set The World Afire navigates the nuances of nuclear holocausts in the wake of Cold War-era America, which arguably led Mustaine down the road to songs like Holy Wars… The Punishment Due and Hangar 18, whilst Hook In Mouth sends shots firing at Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center and the idea of censorship. If anything, this was Mustaine’s great awakening as the outspoken mouthpiece for heavy music he’s become known as.

So Far, So Good… So What! serves as a sharp reminder that not all of history’s important albums are cult classics. Somethings have to die to be reborn, and that’s exactly what happened for MEGADETH as they rose from the ashes of substance abuse and internal warring to write their place in thrash metal history with Rust In Peace, becoming an integral member of ‘The Big 4’.

So Far, So Good… So What! was originally released on January 19th, 1988 via Captiol Records.

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