Touring is expensive as hell these days, and that includes days where nothing is happening. In an interview with The Jeremy White Show, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine said it costs the band somewhere between $45,000 and $52,000 to sit around on days off. So maybe those expensive shirts on tours make a little more sense to fans now.
"Oh, it's pretty expensive," said Mustaine. "I think it's about 45 thousand dollars a day for us just to sit still. I think — it might be 52. But that's just sitting still; that's not doing a show. Show days are more expensive… [That's] salaries, hotel rooms, insurance — everything. The buses, the bus drivers, the trucks, the truck drivers. Yeah, a lot of stuff."
Mustaine also touched on Avenged Sevenfold spending $2 million on busses for their upcoming tour, saying it's not exactly what Megadeth does.
"I think that might be 'cause his band takes out more buses. For example, we take two. I'm sure that they probably take more than that. And I think because they're so successful that there could be — I'm not saying this — but there could be certain people that would be more willing to give them an incentive to use their company because of what great promotion it would be to have those guys using a bus company.
"If I had a brand new bus and I wanted to get popular, bands like [Avenged Sevenfold] would be a great band for promoting your company. So you would think charging these guys two million bucks, man, they would either have to have a lot of buses or he's talking about a long time. Buses are generally between five to 10 thousand dollars a week. 'Cause that includes fuel and the driver and his hotel. Sometimes you have to do double drives in Europe; you have to do that."
