Use the Man

"Use the Man" is the third song as well as the second single of American thrash metal band Megadeth's seventh studio album Cryptic Writings. The song went up to the 15th position in the U.S. Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks.[2]

This song is about a man who died after he had his first shot of heroin. Dave Mustaine stated that "I went to where this guy had lived and saw a lot of his stuff. There was a bunch of photographs of him, a Guitar Player magazine, song lyrics and a song he had written. This guy had plans. He planned on shooting heroin just one time and getting his life together, but he died." [3] David Ellefson also added that "We have a friend in town here [Phoenix] that tries to help people with addictions and he had lost a friend to an overdose. He told us the story on that."

The song's introduction is the beginning of The Searchers' 1964 version of "Needles and Pins", which was a tentative title for the album. Marty Friedman expressed his opinion about this: "Cheers to Dave on a great idea for the intro part. The Searchers had a hit with Sonny Bono's 'Needles and Pins' in the '60s, so what a great idea to start a song about a drug overdose with a clip from it! Classic Megadeth and very cool. This song has me playing much more guitar textures than ever before in the band. We were growing big time here."[3] This introduction was removed on the remaster.