Plan B brought Dave Mustane’s Gigantour to the forefront of festivals

When Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine feared his playing days were numbered because of an arm injury, he searched for Plan B.

“I wasn’t going to give guitar lessons,” Mustaine said.

So he invented Gigantour, a multi-band road show devoted to heavy music, especially heavy music that focused on hotshot guitar players.

By the time Gigantour came to be in 2005, Mustaine had sufficiently rehabbed the injury that originally sidelined him, and he placed his reconfigured Megadeth into the traveling festival’s headlining slot.

“I always liked the festivals we played overseas that featured a lot of different kinds of bands,” Mustaine said. “A festival like this helps rebuild a sense of community. Heavy metal bands have been treated so (poorly) over the years that all the bands tend to fight among themselves. I think that gets easily resolved if you do what I am doing.”

The third installment of Gigantour presents Megadeth, In Flames, Children of Bodom, Job For a Cowboy, and High on Fire. The tour is in Worcester on Friday when it kicks off the 10th annual New England Metal and Hardcore Festival at The Palladium, 261 Main St., Worcester.

In bringing Gigantour up to speed, Mustaine also reinvigorated Megadeth, the band the guitarist created in 1984 after he was booted out of a fledgling Metallica. Megadeth developed a signature sound that fused thrashing fury and melodic catchiness. Such albums as “Killing is My Business … And Business is Good” and “Peace Sells … But Who’s Buying” easily won over metal devotees and helped define a new era of heavy music. Megadeth sustained its popularity into the mid-’90s with the albums “Countdown to Extinction” and “Youthanasia.”

Through the late ’90s and early part of this decade, Megadeth saw success ebb and flow. From record-label shifts to lukewarm reception for releases, Megadeth was more or less stalled.

Mustaine intended to make a solo album, but when pressured to deliver a contractually obligated Megadeth record to his publishing company, lo and behold the solo album became Megadeth’s new “United Abominations” record.

The timely subject matter of the songs and sleek, powerful arrangements reinvigorated the Megadeth audience, which snapped up enough copies of “United Abominations” to put the band back into the upper tier of the record charts. Megadeth responded with concerts that were likewise inspired, events full of guitar fireworks and rebellious spirit.

In assembling Gigantour, Mustaine has been very good at cherry-picking groups that represent a broad spectrum of metal styles. Yet almost all the bands to have played Gigantour feature at least one incredible guitar player.

“I think over the last 10 years, there were no good bands doing lots of guitar solos. It was really weird. You’d see these bands that were successful and you’d meet the guitar player and wonder, ‘You can play, but you don’t. Why don’t you?,’ ” Mustaine said, explaining how bands such as Children of Bodom or last year’s selection of Dream Theater so nicely fit the Gigantour bill. “Shredding is what I like,” he said.

So in a way, it looks like Mustaine did end up giving guitar lessons after all.