Shawn Drover Implies Dave Mustaine Didn’t Mean His Controversial Political Comments; Dave Mustaine Makes More Controversial Political Comments; Shawn Drover Distances Band from Dave Mustaine

This is funny, embarrassing, and confusing all at once.

This summer, you may recall, during a concert in Singapore, Dave Mustaine accused President Obama of “staging” the tragic shootings in Aurora and Wisconsin in order to turn the U.S. into “Nazi America.” And during a recent interview with Atlantic City Insiders, when Megadeth drummer Shawn Drover was asked about these comments, he did what any good employee would do in that situation — he tried to play it off like it was all some big misunderstanding. According to Blabbermouth, which I think we can all agree is a reliable source, Drover said this:

“I just think that was something that was [said on the] spur of the moment. The song ‘Holy Wars’ is about, obviously, holy wars and stuff. Dave just kind of wings it sometimes [while speaking to the crowd at shows], and that came out, for whatever reason… Things have been said by many bands and all that kind of stuff, and it just so happens that somebody was videotaping it and some web site got hold of it and it just blew up into this big, huge thing. I really didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it’s turned into this thing in the media and the press.”

That story was published on November 12. Two days later, Mustaine gave an interview to another press outlet in the same town, the Atlantic City Weekly, and he asserted that “What’s happening now is that everything America has been built on will be destroyed.
” Which is alarmist and nutty, sure, but by Mustaine standards, is actually pretty mild. I mean, at least he didn’t insult any minorities this time.

But now here’s where things get wonky: the Atlantic City Insiders interview with Drover was updated on November 15, and now the drummer’s above comments no longer appear in the article. Instead, it says simply this:

“Whatever opinions Mustaine expresses, according to Drover, are strictly his own.

“‘He doesn’t speak for the band,’ Drover says.”

So what the hell happened here? I have to assume that someone on Team Mustaine contacted Atlantic City Insiders and request that changes be made to the story, and that, for whatever reason, ACI acquiesced. But even that doesn’t quite make sense to me; in the first quote, Drover is clearly defending Mustaine, while in the second, he appears to be distancing both himself and the rest of the band from Mustaine. Is it possible that Mustaine wanted the world to know that he meant what he said, while granting Drover permission to openly disagree? That seems too, well, rational for Mustaine, doesn’t it?

Posit your theories in the comments section below.