David Ellefson (Megadeth) interview

Interview by Davide Sciaky

Puoi leggere l’intervista in italiano qui.

Hi David, how are you doing?

Great, man, excellent.

In my recent interviews I’ve asked musicians how they spent their time in lockdown, but for you the answer is the very reason why we’re talking. You conceived and recorded this album of covers, “No Cover”, in these past trouble months, and now you are about to release it. So, let’s start from the beginning, what gave you the idea to make an album like this?

You know, in early June Thom [Hazaert] and I spoke, because our original intention was to put out the next Ellefson original music LP in October, and we realised that with everything shut down, no touring opportunities, it would be kinda foolish to waste that opportunity until the world opens up.
So, the idea came up about doing some covers and within a phone call we had half a dozen of them picked out, I think ‘Wasted’ [by Def Leppard] being the very first one which is why the cover is a homage to the Def Leppard’s album cover “On Through The Night”.
And then, a couple of more phone call and we had a dozen or so songs, fifteen, and then eighteen and then all of a sudden we had all these tracks picked out, so really through the months of June and July we spent a month recording it, and we spent another month mixing it and by September 1 this thing was mixed, mastered, ready to be turned in.
In fact, even this deal with earMUSIC, and Ward Records for Japan, and all this stuff, it came about very quickly! Normally for something like you take several months to set it all up, but it all came together very quickly, and everybody was very excited about the record.
I think there’s a thing with the year being what it is and everything being shut down, it’s great to make a contribution, to putting something into the pipeline, having some input into our global community of rockers and metalheads, so I’m really proud of everybody, the whole team, the labels, and everybody for just getting on board, sitting with us and moving it forward.

I’m not even a musician, but if I had to make an album covering songs that inspired me and that I love, I know that I may start with maybe 10 songs, but in a blink of an eye they would become 20, 30, 100. How did you choose these specific 18 songs?

You know, it was easy, I was literally either in this room or right outside there’s my backyard where I do a lot of my phone calls [laughs] I just get outside and take the cat out and hang out outside with Thom and I just bullshit and bounce back and forth stuff several times a day, and I remember just sitting there talking about songs that I liked growing up, ‘Sheer Heart Attack’, ‘Not Fragile’ from BTO, it was the first song… it was HIS idea actually to come out with ‘Beth’ which is funny because Kiss’ “Destroyer” was my very first Kiss record and… I noticed we didn’t have a Kiss song, we didn’t have a [Iron] Maiden song, we didn’t have a Sabbath tune, and it wasn’t like we had to go “Oh, we have to include all the icons”, this was NOT that record at all, we didn’t have to include anyone in particular, it was not intended to be an All-Star record.
The guests that came in were brought in after the facts, and quite honestly because they’re friends of ours and we just wanted to include them to be part of something, because everybody’s sitting at home, frustrated, trying to make records with their own bands, their tours are cancelled, so this “No Cover” record kinda became the centerpiece that everybody could come to the middle and sort of join in on.
I think when you’re doing this kind of things, you kinda hear a song and go, “You know what? Let’s ask Frank Hannon of Tesla [who on the album played on Def Leppard’s ‘Wasted’]”, ‘cause Tesla toured with Def Leppard a lot, they’re good friends with them.
It’s funny how ‘Wasted’ in particular, everybody my age, we all grew up playing that song in cover bands, so everybody’s like, “Oh my God, you’re gonna do ‘Wasted’? Fuck yeah, I’m in!”, and there’s a lot of that spirit about this whole thing that everybody was excited about these songs, that we weren’t doing the traditional bar standard karaoke songs [laughs] we were digging deep into the catalogue of these artists and pulling out some real gems.

Yeah, as you said there are a lot of guests and I think it’s really cool, especially the thing that you included some of the musicians that originally recorded some of the songs, like Eddie Ojeda from Twisted Sister for ‘Tear It Loose’, or Russ Parrish from Fight, who now is known as Satchel from Steel Panther, for ‘Nailed To The Gun’. How did you choose who to have on each song?

It’s funny, both of those guys were Thom’s ideas.
It’s so funny, I was literally sitting here at my laptop while we were recording, we were starting to get this record going, and out of nowhere on my iPhone I get a notification from YouTube that says, “Check out F5’s ‘Nailed To The Gun’”, so my band F5, we did a cover of ‘Nailed To The Gun’ back in 2007, and I had Jimmy DeGrasso playing on it.
I hit Andy [Martongelli] and Thom right away, I emailed them and said, “Oh my God guys, we’ve gotta do ‘Nailed To The Gun’, it’s such a fucking great song!” and then Thom goes, “Dude! We’ve gotta get Russ Parrish!”, I mean, Russ was IN Fight.
So Russ came in, and between him and Andy they shared the guitar solos, and I had Jimmy DeGrasso play on it again. Jimmy has been doing some stuff with Andy Freeman from Last In Line, and he said, “Hey man, Andy would love to do sing on that, on ‘Nailed To The Gun’” and I said, “No problem, come on, come all. Let’s do it!”.
And then Thom wanted to do ‘Over The Mountain’… Thom had a heart attack actually, in July.
When we were just finishing recording, just starting to mix the record, Thom had a heart attack and was in the hospital for a week, and it took him a couple of weeks to come out of it, and during that time I had Todd Kerns cut the vocals for ‘Sweet FA’, and then I had Andrew cut the vocals for ‘Over The Mountain’, and it was always intended that Thom would also participate in those, but than as we sat back and listened to them Thom said, “You know, man? These guys did a great job, it doesn’t need any more” [laughs] they’re great! So we just left them like that.
With Eddie Ojeda, Thom’s a big Twisted Sister fan, he loves Twisted, W.A.S.P. … let me think, what else did he… well ‘Beth’ was his idea, it’s pretty even, I might have had a few more picks on this one, but I wanted Thom [to choose some songs], obviously because he’s in the band, of course, but also because he’s ten years younger than me, so his choice of songs is a little different than mine.
I always joke that in 1983, when I moved to LA and we started Megadeth, that was the year I stopped buying records, partly because I was too poor [laughs] to afford records!
But, also, I lived in LA and LA had great FM Hard Rock radio, there were two great stations, and KLOS is still there, and so you just had to get in your car, turn on the radio and everything was there, the new Dio, Maiden, but also the new Yes, Beatles, Zeppelin, you know what I mean? You didn’t have to buy records, everything was on the radio!
Meanwhile Thom was a teenager, a young teenager, and lived back in Green Bay, Wisconsin and was just starting to buy records, so he was buying W.A.S.P., Quiet Riot, he was picking out the new Kiss albums in the Eighties, just like I was picking the new Kiss albums in the Seventies.
So there’s a cool musical heritage to this album that it doesn’t matter what age you are, and what age you get into Rock and Roll, great music always stands the test of time.

I think that many Italian fans are proud and feel particularly connected to your solo band because half of it is composed of Italian musicians, Andy Martongelli and Paolo Caridi, who have been touring with you, when that was possible, and I think they also contributed to this album and to “Sleeping Giants”. How did you find about them?

You know, it’s funny, Kiko [Loureiro] introduced me to Andy back on the “Dystopia” tour.
Kobra Paige is a friend of mine and she was looking for a guitar player for Kobra and the Lotus, so I hit Kiko and he goes, “Let me introduce you Andy”, I had him come to our show, it was literally the next day, in Bologna, it was a quick thing.
I met Andy and I loved him, he’s got a great look, he’s got a great energy about him; so I helped connect Andy and Kobra together.
Then I hired Andy to play… we did some “Basstory” dates, I did a solo Basstory tour, which is a sort of a live concert/clinic tour which I did across Europe, I think it must have been in late 2018.
That was when I got to play with Andy myself, he brough Paolo in… and fucking Paolo is like the best drummer I’ve ever played with, I was just like, “I love this guy!”. And that’s a broad statement, ‘cause I’ve played with some of the greatest drummers, I’m very blessed [laughs] including Charlie Benante¸and Dirk [Verbeuren], Dave McClain, but I was so impressed with Paolo!
Mostly because at soundcheck in Legend Club in Milan, that was our first little gig we did together, and I said, “Hey, let’s just play just a warm up kind of soundcheck, let’s just play Iron Maiden’s ‘Wrathchild’”, so Paolo counts it off and, I swear to God, he plays so much like Clive Burr.
I thought Clive Burr was in the room, you know, I thought this was like the fucking “Killers” album that we’re playing. And I was like, I had such great respect for Paolo in the first fucking eight measures of music I played with the guy, I was like, I want to play with that guy any time I can.
That’s what an impact Paolo had on me.
And of course, Andy not only he’s a fantastic player, he’s also a great musical director: he put our band together for that Basstory tour, he put me solo band together last year when we did the “More Life with ‘Deth” tour, we did a pretty extensive tour across Italy and southern Switzerland, and Andy put the band together, Paolo and another guitar player named Valerio [Edward De Rosa], and I have nothing but respect for the quality of what they do, for the hipness, you know, they’re very hip, they’re on the pulse of how great records are made.
I’ll send Andy riffs and he’ll modernize them, so they don’t sound like 1988 David Ellefson, they sound like we’re in 2020 [laughs] I have nothing but respect for them.
Then, also, Andy brought in Alessio… Garavello, I believe that’s how you say his name, he’s a fellow Italian, but he also mixes our records and he’s up in the Wembley area of London.
So, yeah, our little Ellefson hit factory is mostly of Italians: not only is the music good, the food is great, the coffee is even better [laughs].

As I was going through the tracklist I noticed that on the album you have Charlie Benante from Anthrax, Dave Lombardo formerly of Slayer, Dirk Verbeuren of Megadeth, and even two former drummers of Megadeth, Jimmy DeGrasso and Chuck Behler. To represent all of the Big Four you only needed Lars Ulrich of Metallica…

[Laughs]

…have you thought of involving him too on the album?

You know, it’s funny, Lars would probably do it too, we’re buddies, not that it would ever come out on a record because that’s a pretty big operation over there with Metallica.
But Lars is fun, he’s a fun guy to jam with, in fact when we walked in to do the jam for the Big Four, when we did the Sofia thing, Robert [Trujillo] right away handed me the bass, “Junior, here, you play bass!”.
We were learning [Diamond Head’s] ‘Am I Evil?’, all eighteen of us, and I had never jammed with Lars before! So it was fun just to stand next to him as a drummer, we’d been buddies for years, but just to stand next to him as a drummer and just play bass and drums together, and get his feel, and here were James [Hetfield], ‘cause James defines a big sound in Metallica, obviously.
So it was fun, then we had everybody there, and it was fun just for a moment to play bass in Metallica! For a second, then of course we had Dave [Mustaine] and Scott Ian and everybody else jumping in.
That was definitely a collaborative moment, and now you see on YouTube all these sorts of collaborative jams, and there’s some great stuff up there, Charlie Benante has been part of some of the best stuff!
He’s really been active with that, but I think what Thom and I wanted to do was, we wanted to record this as a master and have this sit in perpetuity forever as a piece of recorded work what we can all be proud of.
And, hopefully, two years from now we will look back and go, “God, remember when fucking COVID was here and we couldn’t even do anything?”.
This is a record that outlives COVID, it outlives this moment in time, it’s sort of a great record that will live forever for all of us.

I mentioned Jimmy DeGrasso and Chuck Behler, but you also have another piece of very early Megadeth history, Greg Handevidt who I think was in the very first lineup of the band. I’ve seen also that you’ll tour Australia next year with Chris Poland, so I think it’s fair to say that you have a good relationship with many former members of Megadeth. I was wondering if you’ve ever thought, or maybe even discussed, about the possibility of doing a special show with former members of Megadeth.

Yeah, I mean, first, I get along with everybody [laughs].
I got that from my mom, she was what they call “Minnesota nice”, and I think it’s a great quality, I like to get along with people! And when you’re making music together, to me making music with people was always an escape from life, and now that escape is my reality, I’ve escaped to a new reality [laughs].
You know, they say “playing music”, it’s not “working music”, it’s not “effort music”, you play! It’s like a playdate, “Come over, bring a guitar and let’s fucking play some songs!”.
That’s the spirit of what it should always be, I think.
As far as the former members, it’s funny, I actually brought that idea back in 2004, when Megadeth was being resurrected, I thought it would be kinda cool to do something like that where we resurrect everybody together, but obviously it didn’t happen.
I don’t know if we’ll ever be inducted in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, obviously that’s probably that one moment where technically everybody who recorded on a record would be invited.
There’s a few who are not with us anymore, Gar Samuelson, Nick Menza, of course, but Chuck Behler has remained a good friend of the band, he comes out to the shows, we actually let him sit on the stage by the amps watching Dirk play, and Chris Adler, and Shawn Drover… you know, Chuck is one of the good dudes, so I feel good about lifting him up and getting him back out playing.
Same with Greg Handevidt! Greg has remained one of my dear friends: after Megadeth, after we put the band together and we parted ways in ’83 we didn’t talk for a few years, and then he joined the Navy down in San Diego, and I remember when we were doing “Rust in Peace” he was stationed down in the Gulf, by Kuwait, during the Gulf War, on a battleship.
That connected us, you know, life gets fucking real. You’re like, wow, I’m touring the world with Megadeth, obviously that’s exciting, and here’s Greg serving in the armed forces, literally in the heat of battle and that brought us back together again, we remained good friends, and he’s an attorney now [laughs] he’s a lawyer, he lives back in Minnesota again.
I called him up and said, “Dude, strap up man, we’re gonna do ‘Love Me Like a Reptile’ [by Motörhead]” which is a song that he and I used to play in cover bands as a kid, right around the time we discovered Def Leppard, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Venom, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, so it was fun to have him, and he was so excited to be on a track with Doro.
To me, as I get older, especially, you go back and you remember your childhood friends and those experiences, and I think “No Cover” was a chance to, in a kind of sombre season of our life, in 2020, was a time to sort of reflect and like, let’s bring everyone together, COVID’s got us separated, let’s let music bring us together.
I think that really was the aim above all with “No Cover”.

Talking about Megadeth, when I interviewed you three years ago, and you told me that you were already starting to think about the next album. Of course, with everything that happened, Dave’s illness, and now the pandemic, things weren’t easy for you and everything got delayed. Now, when you’ll release the album it will be the one that came out after the longest gap in between albums in Megadeth’s history. Where are you at now with the album, when do you expect to release it?

It’s being recorded, so things are moving along, which is great.
Ideally, like with [my solo band] Ellefson, you would drop a new record around touring [laughs].
Look, I think 2021 will see some new music from Megadeth, as far as dropping the full-length record, that hasn’t been determined.
I think fans just want to hear something, let me just say that, if we have something ready that we are comfortable releasing, we will do that as soon as possible.
But, you know, keeping in mind it is a full-length record, we’re not recording a single, it’s a full-length record so it will be treated as that.
Tour dates have obviously been announced, festivals in Europe, “The Metal Tour of the Year” for 2021 here in the United States as well, so when it’s safe and we’re allowed to open up, we’re angling for that to happen by next summer, I’m sure the new record plans from the record label, the management and everything will be angled around that as well.

Can you anticipate something about it, like, how many songs do you expect to put on the album, or what the style of the music is…?

No. [Laughs]
Part of it is because it’s still a work in progress, you know, Dave and I used to say back in the old days, “Nothing is final until it’s vinyl”.
Things even still kinda get re-written on the fly, even though we got basic tracks down, things still kinda get changed, so it’s always a work in progress until it’s done.
Let’s just say, look, if you’re a fan of “Dystopia” I think you’ll definitely be very happy with this new album, that much I can say.

My next question, I feel like you partly already answered me just now. What I wanted to ask you is: with every new release, bands always make grand statements about how that will be the band’s “best album ever”, “the heaviest”, the fastest” and so on. So I was wondering if you ever feel like, “Okay, maybe I don’t want to overhype it, I don’t want to create expectations so high that it would be hard to meet them”?
But, actually, after what you just told me I guess it could already be how you feel now.

Exactly, that’s why I’d rather not hype it and set the stage, I’d rather… ‘cause, number one, it’s not done and, number two, I know – when I was just in Nashville [where the band is recording the album] – what I heard, and I have my own opinion about it.
And, again, like I said, if you’re a fan of “Dystopia” I think you’re gonna like this record, but to elaborate any beyond that, I really can’t, and it would be foolish of me.
It would be like you back in June saying, “Hey, I heard you’re recording some covers, what does it sound like?”, I’d be like, “I don’t know! We’re recording the basic tracks, Thom’s recorded some vocals and Dave Lombardo might play on a song, I don’t know!”, you know what I mean?
It’s like, you kinda don’t want to… when you’re building a house you don’t give someone the keys until it’s done. It’s dangerous to walk in and look at the work in progress if you’re the potential buyer [laughs]. It’s better to have it done, and finished, and polished off, and that’s the time for the presentation.

I only have one last question, which might be a bit delicate but… Thrash Metal is a very aggressive and rebellious genre, and when bands like Megadeth, or other bands that have been around for a long time, release a new album I sometimes hear people saying stuff like, “How can they find that aggression, how can they be pissed off with the society now that they are older, successful, they made money, etc.?”. How would you answer to that? Where do you find your inspiration today? Where do you find that aggression?

I completely agree with that.
In fact, I’ve had the same conversation with Dave as we had both just moved here to Phoenix, I remember exactly where we were, there’s this curve on the freeway, when we were making the “Youthanasia” record in 1994.
I was about four years off drugs and alcohol, I got married, we got houses, we were driving Mercedes-Benz, nice cars, we had money in the bank… I asked him, I said, “I don’t know, are you kinda worried we are not that angry anymore?”.
I remember he looked at me and he goes, “Uh?” [with an angy tone] and I said, “Nevermind” [laughs].

Still angry.

Yeah, exactly [laughs].
When Dave and I drive together in the car, which we don’t do that much anymore obviously, ‘cause we’ve got our own families, lives and stuff, but I remember in the early days driving around LA, I had a van and I would drive, Dave would ride shotgun and sort of guiding me around LA, ‘cause I was new in town, but his mind was always working, he was always thinking about lyrics, and songs and stuff.
And I guess we were in that same mode with “Youthanasia”, he was thinking of lyrics and songs, and obviously that record still had good teeth and aggression, you know, ‘Train of Consequences’, ‘Blood of Heroes’ and that kind of stuff.
So, look, I think that’s just a blueprint that’s in our DNA with Megadeth… it’s still there, man.
When you get together with certain musicians, you sort of find your stride; when I get together with Thom and Andy, the Ellefson band has a stride.
When I get together with the Metal Allegiance guys, we have our stride.
When we get together as Megadeth, it has its own sound; even if we just plug in and warm up to ‘Peace Sells’ and ‘Symphony of Destruction’, and then we start working on  some new songs together, we immediately find our stride like [snaps fingers], right there.
That definitely hasn’t gone away, so, fear not, the old impulses an urges are still there, which I think is a good sign for the new music.

And around that time Dave wrote ‘Angry Again’, so maybe he was answering you.

Exactly, right, so it was all part of the same conversation [laughs].