Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine talked about bringing back “The Conjuring” to the band’s setlist for the first time in 17 years. He said:
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Was it something that you struggled with for a long time or did you just sort of say, ‘A song is a song is a song – can we play songs?’
“Well, this isn’t ‘a song is a song is a song.’ There are lyrics in there that were part of a hex, so it had meaning to me. And I know looking back at my life growing up… This all started when I was really young, my sister had a ouija board – and I’m not blaming the ouija board or the manufacturers of ouija board, but my curiosity. I had to know more.
“I got into some bad stuff. And people look back and say, ‘Dave’s had a really rough life. He’s had it really hard.’ And yeah, there have been some difficult periods, and a lot of it’s been by my own doing.
“The only thing I can say that has not been by my own doing that’s been really bad has been whatever’s happened to me because of doing the black magic. And I don’t look at that like something that happened to me. I willingly did what happened.
“I was up in Idaho and some kid that was twice my size walked past me and just punched me in the stomach – just sucker-punched me. My nephew thought it was a good idea to tell everybody at this new school I went to that I was doing kung-fu and that I was gonna beat everybody up in the school or some dumbass move like that.
“So this guy – I was his target. And after he slugged me I just figured out, ‘Hey, you gonna do something cowardly and do it behind my back, I’m gonna get you.’
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“And I don’t know if it worked or not, I do know that after I did whatever I did, there was a period of darkness that kind of came over me. Things I thought about, things I talked about, things I wrote about, my behavior. It could be just a whole bucket of hogwash for all I know and not true or real at all… but it made a great song.”