In a candid and unusually personal episode of his podcast The David Ellefson Show, former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson addressed the band’s recent announcement that their upcoming album will be their last, with a farewell tour planned for 2026.
Asked for his feelings about Megadeth “calling it quits,” Ellefson didn’t hold back (via Blabbermouth): “There’s a lot, ’cause, of course, it brings up years and years of thoughts, feelings, emotions, some great, some not so great. I always say these gold records on the wall — which, the only reason I have ’em up is ’cause we have a podcast [laughs]; it just makes for a good backdrop — but I look at ’em, Countdown To Extinction, Peace Sells, Rust In Peace, they all have a story in ’em.”
He remembered the band’s peak years: “And some of the stuff in the ’90s was better stories — the band was cohesive, the management was consistent, the music, I think, was collaborative. We went to new heights, we explored new territory that you could only dream of doing, Grammy nominations, festivals, and the world for touring was really opening up everywhere. So, really great stuff.”
But he also recalled the darker side: “In the middle of it, of course, and around it were addictions, rehabs, canceled tours, lost finances in the millions. And so for things to sort of flush out the way that they did with me not being part of the final farewell of something I started, as one can imagine, [it’s] probably not something I’m super happy about. And saying that while still being grateful for all that it was, because I think at some point you have to find a path through it because this is reality.”
Reflecting on the past, Ellefson described his personal split with Mustaine: “Look, I feel like Dave Mustaine ended our friendship in 2001, and that was it. And he ended it very loudly, very publicly. He personally signed his name to it. He said we would never play music together again. And that’s it. That is it.”
“…So from there on, I, I moved on. And I learned from 2002, with the career-ending nerve damage to his arm, and then two years later there’s a new album with a new band and new financial terms and I’m not part of it and lawsuits to settle business matters, and just all the things go, there’s a whole story there of a lot of this stuff. I was out, then suddenly I was back, and it was great. And he and I tried to mend fences, as I think we did. He was generous to me. Things were good,” he added.
When Ellefson rejoined in 2010, the power dynamic had shifted: “Clearly, Megadeth is a Mustaine family-run business. And it started that way, I think, probably a little while after I came back to the band [in 2010]. ‘Cause when I came back to the band, it was not — it was Dave. And I kind of became a good friend to Dave. I knew him and he knew me in a way that no one else could.”
He continued: “Dave had his friends before me growing up in California, but I’ve certainly known him one of the longest of anybody on the planet, at least from the inner workings of a band kind of thing. So, as bands go, though, there can be tensions, there are all those things.”
“Certainly, what was made clear to me in 2004 is, ‘Hey, it’s a new day. It’s a new way. Dave’s in charge. It’s not gonna be what it was. It’s not gonna be collaborative.’ [Former Megadeth drummer] Shawn Drover always used to remind me of that. He goes, ‘Dude, those days when of us all getting in a room and writing a record, dude, those days are long gone,” Ellefson remembered.
He also recounted his approach during the inception of the Th1rt3en album: “In fact, I remember when I came back and we were doing the Th1rt3en album after about a year on the road, Dave asked me, he said, ‘Oh, I’d like to have you write.’ I said, ‘You know what? No. Why don’t you write the songs? I’ll play bass for you. Let’s just keep it clean. Keep it simple. Let’s not even blur the lines.'”
“And that’s why I did other musical things. I did the Ellefson solo records and various other things to just have a little… I [thought], ‘Let me take my creative stuff over there.’ I knew in no way was that ever gonna sort of trump the brand, if you will, be bigger than the Megadeth brand, yet it was a way to have a little creative outlet on the side, kind of get my yayas without interfering with Megadeth.”
“‘Cause I knew — look, we got it back together. Let’s keep it clean, let’s keep it simple. Let’s just do that. And I think every time we tried to write, it was always a sore spot. It was problematic. And I was, like, ‘Oh, I wish we weren’t even going down this road.’ Now, of course, everybody wants their name on the record; everybody wants to feel some of the financial windfall. And how things are split financially doesn’t always have to be how they’re split with the credits and stuff like that.”
The business side weighed heavily: “There’s a weird thing in bands that how things are financially split… If you’re a founding member of a band, to some degree, you should be entitled to a piece of everything and all of it, basically, ’cause it wouldn’t exist if you weren’t there. And that deal got changed in 2004. That immediately changed the landscape. It changed my feelings about it. It drew us into a legal dispute — rightfully so.”
“And no one wins in lawsuits, to some degree, yet sometimes they have to happen because things need to be done the way they need to be done. And I guess the good news for me is that financially it landed certainly much better for me, and getting paid directly for my sources rather than… ‘Cause sometimes that’s what happens, is money goes through the channels of the organization, and sometimes people don’t get paid,” Ellefson continued.
“So that needed to happen, and I’m glad I went through the process. It’s not a fun process — I didn’t sleep for nine months because of it — but that’s when I had my little band F5 and I was trying to at least kind of keep my nose creatively involved in some stuff.”
Looking at origins, Ellefson didn’t sugarcoat it: “So, there’s a lot of history here with this band. This band started with a resentment. It started with a ‘fuck you’, Dave‘s sort of revenge against [his former band] Metallica. And it wasn’t entirely that. I mean, that gets a little blown out of proportion.”
“To some degree, Dave was his own artist away from Metallica. He had ‘Mechanix’ and some songs before Metallica, and he certainly wrote songs after. So I think that that’s a little unfair to paint that entirely on Dave that Megadeth was just this revenge toward Metallica. It may have often been fueled by it, but how could it not be? He was not a founding member of Metallica. He was there for, as I always call it, a year and a half in the life of Metallica. And [he] certainly changed the course of what they did. But they went on and had their own successes.”
As for the farewell, Ellefson admitted: “But, look, for Dave to call it quits or to retire, I should say… Farewell… I don’t even know if he’s retiring. He’s just basically saying Megadeth‘s over… Would I like to be a part of it? Yeah, of course. Who wouldn’t? I’m a founding member of it. I’m a 30-plus-year member of it.”
“Is that gonna happen? Who knows? It’s too early to tell. I don’t know what they have planned. I have no idea what it is. They just announced it.”
“Do I think there should be some sort of farewell that everybody gets to participate in? I mean, look, [the] ‘Back To The Beginning’ [concert in Birmingham] with Black Sabbath. Look, they made nice. They brought all four of Black Sabbath‘s original members. They brought everybody back. You had [former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist] Jake [E. Lee]. Now, was everybody there? No. There were some key people — Bob Daisley — some people that weren’t there. But for the most part, they brought a lot of the people back.”
“And just speaking of Black Sabbath, they brought the original, the core four back, and they said goodbye. Not only did they say goodbye, but everybody got to say goodbye to them. And I think when you’re doing a farewell, that’s important, that you get to say goodbye and everybody gets to say goodbye to you. I think that’s an important part of it.. But that’s me. I’m not in the band anymore. I have no say in it. So that’s just me. That’s just one guy with an opinion, quite honestly.”
Podcast co-host Joshua Toomey suggested everyone who ever played in Megadeth should be part of the goodbye. Ellefson agreed: “Well, I strongly stand against the notion that Megadeth was only Dave Mustaine, ’cause it wasn’t. And everybody knows that. So, if Dave needs to retire, wants to retire, I get it. I understand. He’s given a lot. It’s taken a lot out of him, as anyone can imagine. So, look, God bless you, brother. If you’re done, this is it, you wanna go do something else with your life, spend time with your family, just not play guitar, I get it.”
“I mean, dude, believe me, I’m 60. There are some days I just kind of go, ‘God, really? Should I write another album, another song? Do I really wanna go on stage?’ And the answer always comes back to yes, I do. So I do. So I can’t speak for him, and I’m not gonna speak for him. But, look, again, I haven’t talked to the guy now in four and a half years, so I have no idea what his reasoning is, what the thinking is behind it.”
He acknowledged fans’ connection to the band regardless of lineup: “Someone made a point, they said we’re all fans of Megadeth music, even if we’re not maybe fans of a particular lineup of the band, or we’re not fans of certain members of the band, we still all love Megadeth music. And I thought, okay, I’m down with that. I can get behind that.”
Turning to his firing in 2021, Ellefson said: “It’s unfortunate that things landed between me and Dave where they did, because as I said right from the beginning, they didn’t have to. And I made it very clear on the phone call when they were firing me that they didn’t have to do that. It was unnecessary. Whatever those circumstances were, they were nothing to be feared. We can move on. But whatever. They made their decision, so let the chips fall where they may.”
“I don’t really even like going back to that period of time, because I felt like a lot was leading up to that stuff behind the scenes, conversations that Dave and I were having about things that maybe we just weren’t agreeing on. And that’s okay. You can agree to disagree. You don’t have to agree on everything.”
Finally, Ellefson shared advice he carried from touring with Overkill: “[Overkill singer] Bobby Blitz said something really good to me when I was touring with Overkill. ‘Cause he said he and D.D. [Verni, Overkill bassist], they’re the boss. They run Overkill, they run the band. And he said, ‘No matter how we go into the room with separate ideas, we come out as one voice.’ And I thought, ‘Man, that’s a great way to put it.'”
“And I always felt like Dave and I did that. No matter what we felt like when we got in the room, we leave this room as one voice. And Dave, being the leader, Dave being the self-appointed voice of the group, let him have that voice. So I always felt like I stood behind that. I was unified with him. Whether I agreed with it or not, you get on board with it, and that’s what it is, and you go with that. And look, for the most part, Dave‘s way worked pretty good. I wasn’t there to defy that.”
For Ellefson, this complicated mix of admiration, resentment, and reflection marks the end of an era. For fans, it sets the stage for one final goodbye to a band that shaped metal for four decades.
