One of the great supporting actors of heavy metal, David Ellefson describes himself as the “lieutenant” to Dave Mustaine. Together the duo waged a 40-year campaign that brought Megadeth to legendary status. The thrashers became the Big 4’s bad boys while ‘Dave Junior’ manned the low end, complementing rapid-fire riffs with years of backstage excess. But in 2021, the bassist’s second stint in the band came to a premature end, as a leaked video of him on an intimate call with a 19-year-old fan got him dismissed. Now Dave’s back with supergroup Dieth, swapping lightspeed thrash for grooving death metal. Hammer hears what he’s learned from four decades on metal’s frontlines.
ROCK'N'ROLL RUNS IN THE FAMILY
“In 1956, my mum went to see Elvis in Des Moines, Iowa. She told me the place wasn’t very full, but Elvis said, ‘Next time I’m here, this place will be full!’ Sure enough, it was. My mum got Elvis’s scarf that night – she was down in the moshpit!”
YOUR INSTRUMENT CHOOSES YOU
“Why a kid in the cornfields of Minnesota would choose the bass guitar is beyond me! I’m convinced that we don’t pick our instruments; our instruments choose us. The pastor of our church had a son called Dwight: a cool, long-haired guy who listened to a radio station out of Chicago. So I started hearing Bachman- Turner Overdrive, Sweet and Kiss, and I loved it! It just spoke to my soul: 'Get a bass!’”
BE DETERMINED
“At 16, I was rehearsing with my band on my father’s farm. It just hit me out of nowhere: ‘I gotta get to California!’ This was when Van Halen were popping, in ’80 or ’81, and I was on a mission. I told my parents I was gonna dye my hair blond, change my last name and go to Hollywood tomorrow! Ha ha ha!”
OPPOSITES ATTRACT
“My first impression of Dave Mustaine was that he was very sure of himself. He takes no shit from anyone because he grew up learning how to fight. He’s the polar opposite of me. I needed someone like him to fight and scrap our way through the bullshit of Hollywood and the music business, and he needed someone like
me to soften the edges.”
HATE IS A GOOD MOTIVATOR (SOMETIMES)
“Now that I’m not in Megadeth, I think, at this age, to drag out resentment and be fuelled by anger would be age-inappropriate. It would be very disruptive and, publicly, not seem very cool, either. But if there was one person who could pull that off, it was Dave. He could write a song! I’m convinced that none of us come up with this shit; it comes to us.”
SUCCESS CAN PASS YOU BY
“When Peace Sells... But Who’s Buying? became a hit, I missed that whole thing because we were on tour. But I do remember putting the album on our turntable and watching the Capitol Records logo go round and round. [Then-Megadeth guitarist] Chris Poland went, ‘That’s the same label as The Beatles and Frank Sinatra!’ The other thing I remember is being in our apartment. MTV News [which used the Peace Sells bassline as its theme] came on and Chris went, ‘Was that our song?!’”
HEROIN WASN’T VERY ‘METAL’...
“In 1983, cocaine had just been on the cover of Time magazine. It was obviously a huge epidemic in Hollywood. It was everywhere. In the clubs, it was booze, weed and cocaine, and heroin was on the fringes. Gar [Samuelson, ex-Megadeth drummer] and Chris had been in a pretty popular jazz-fusion band called the New Yorkers. Heroin wasn’t in rock’n’roll, but it was certainly in punk and jazz.”
...BUT I TRIED IT ANYWAY
“If you came to me aged 15 in Minnesota and said, ‘Hey Dave, do you wanna snort some heroin?’ I’d have been like, ‘God, no!’ But when you’re drinking and smoking, and there’s some white powder next to some brown powder, it’s like, ‘Hey, what’s that? It’s heroin? What does it feel like?’ When you’re a few beers and a few joints into the night and feeling good, you think, ‘Eh, fuck it!’”
DRUGS ARE A DOWNWARD SPIRAL
“As we moved into the So Far, So Good... So What! record, Gar and Chris were gone but the drugs were still there. Through that tour, my addiction continued to escalate. When we played Donington [during Monsters Of Rock 1988], my girlfriend found my stash of dope and called my parents. We played Donington but cancelled the other Monsters Of Rock shows, went home, and I went to rehab. I agreed to do it for 10 days – I stayed three days, went, ‘Fuck this!’ and left.”
TALENT IS A GIFT
“1989 was a really ugly year. I went to rehab a couple more times and they told me, ‘Dave, there’s only one thing you’ve got to change: everything.’ It freaked me out because I was like, ‘I’ve gotta quit the band!’ They said, ‘God’s gift of music is the talent He gave you. If He wants you to have it, He’ll let you keep it.’”
NOT INJECTING SAVED MY LIFE
“I got clean on March 1, 1990, before any needles went into my arms; I knew that would be the end. I saw it around me: bandmembers in the 80s got heavily into that.”
BEING NO.2 ISN’T BAD
“Countdown To Extinction reaching No.2 in the US [in 1992] was amazing! The fight against Metallica [who reached No.1 the previous year] was not my fight. I am glad to be friends with them. I was more upset about Billy Ray Cyrus being No.1 because of Achy Breaky Heart. ‘Typical America – some cheesy country song is going to be No.1!’”
A GRAMMY WIN WAS OVERDUE
“Getting nominated for a Grammy is huge. When they read the list of nominees and you’re one of them, it’s a surreal moment. Then they go, ‘And the winner is... not you!’ When we won [Best Metal Performance with Dystopia in 2017], even the Grammys were like, ‘It’s about time!’ Ha ha! We’d been nominated 12 times over 20-something years.”
THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL IN MEGADETH
“Making the last Megadeth album [2022’s The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!] was not easy. My parts were intentionally taken off the record. Dave would ask, ‘Who wrote this part?’ and those parts were somehow, surprisingly, replaced with riffs he came up with. It’s like, ‘If you don’t want me writing on your record, then stop inviting me.’”
MY SEX SCANDAL WAS LIBERATING BUT EMBARRASSING
“There’s two sides to it. One: when you bare it all, you’ve got nothing to hide. Fuck it, now you can truly be yourself! We all come into the world with our birthday suit on, so what are we ashamed of? What I feel the worst about is the embarrassment that it caused some people, like my family, who didn’t deserve it. Out of respect for them, I’m going to keep the family dynamic off the table [during interviews]. That’s at their request.”
SOME MINDS CAN’T BE CHANGED
“Dave, his manager and his lawyer [called me after the scandal]. There was a sentiment from one of them saying, ‘Let’s step back, let Ellefson deal with it. It leaves the door open for him to come back.’ Dave didn’t want that. He made his decision and it is what it is.”
IT’S POSSIBLE TO START ANEW
“I knew my playing days weren’t over. Six months post-Megadeth, in January 2022, I got an email from Guilherme [Miranda, ex-Entombed AD guitarist] about this Dieth thing. I said, ‘Send me a song.’ I played bass on it. In Megadeth, because Dave and
I played together so long, we could finish each other’s sentences. With this, it was so random! It was dark and bizarre and caught my attention!”
SINGING IS THE FUTURE
“What Dieth brought that I didn’t expect was for me to start singing. At my age, I suddenly landed in a death metal band, and who knew it would be the perfect range for my voice?! I’d love to explore that a little more. Ultimately, the singer is the storyteller.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer #383
