Dave Mustaine inspired Luke Perry movie role

Actor Luke Perry says his character in an upcoming film was based partly on Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine.

Perry stars as a rocker who has to overcome injuries and emotional turmoil in The Beat Beneath My Feet, released on May 12.

And the former Beverly Hills 90210 star says Mustaine’s sacking from Metallica and the 2002 arm injury that almost left him unable to play guitar inspired his work in the film.

Perry Tells the Irish Independent: “I thought about the gentleman from Megadeth – Dave Mustaine. He was a guy who had a lot of trouble in his life because of different issues. He got asked to leave one band and started up his own. Something happened to his arm and he was challenged physically to play the guitar.

“I thought, ‘There’s something inside that guy that really drives him to overcome all those things and find his way back to making music.’ So I wondered about that a lot when thinking about the challenges he had to overcome, so there may have been part of where that came from.”

The Beat Beneath My Feet tells the tale of a teenage boy who discovers his unruly neighbour is really a disgraced rock god who ‘died eight years ago owing a fortune in unpaid tax.’ The boy agrees not to reveal his secret on condition that he teaches him to play the guitar.

Mustaine’s arm injury came about after he relapsed into drug abuse and the circulation to his arm was cut off by a hard edge of a hospital chair. He eventually recovered.

Megadeth are currently working on the follow-up to 2013’s Super Collider with Mustaine saying fans would be excited at what’s going on behind the scenes after the departures of Chris Broderick and Shawn Drover.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.