Former David Ellefson has once again opened up about his complicated history with Dave Mustaine and his exit from MEGADETH, saying the bandleader’s recent comments about a former member’s “past behavior” left him frustrated.
Speaking during a new appearance on the Quemar Un Patrullero podcast hosted by Argentine journalist Gustavo Olmedo, the longtime bassist reflected on both the highs and lows of his relationship with Mustaine, as well as the circumstances surrounding his dismissal from the band in 2021.
Ellefson pushed back strongly against remarks Mustaine made during a December interview on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, where the MEGADETH frontman dismissed the possibility of including all surviving former members during the band’s eventual farewell show. Mustaine said he “can’t really do that” because of “the behavior of one of the bandmembers in the past.”
Ellefson responded bluntly: “To have it end where it did, and then [for Mustaine] even recently to say, ‘Oh, because of what one person did, I can’t bring anyone back.’ You know what? F**k off. Just f**k off. Who is that one person? It wasn’t me, ’cause I didn’t do anything that would prevent me from coming back at all. At all. And so this sort of deflectionary thing, to sort of get on some moral high ground, it’s, like, gimme a break. Really? And look, I had rock stars much bigger than Dave coming to my side and coming to my aid, standing by me, saying, ‘Man, just let me know if you need anything at all. That’s really f**ked up.’ It’s f**ked up about how I was handled being discarded. People saying, ‘I’m really disappointed that they chose business over brotherhood,’ ’cause at the end of the day, the brotherhood will always last beyond the business of owning a rock band — especially something we started and built together.”
Despite the tension, Ellefson acknowledged that his relationship with Mustaine wasn’t always strained. Reflecting on the years after he rejoined MEGADETH in 2010, he said the two had periods of genuine closeness.
“When I went back to MEGADETH in 2010, [Dave and I] were close — we were really close,” he said. “I was helping him with some personal things. He became a good friend to me during that time. So there were periods of closeness as men, as brothers. And I found those opportunities were always the best when it was just me and Dave, when there wasn’t another person in the room. We didn’t have to sort of be on stage performing for anyone. It was just me and him being brothers, [at] Starbucks drinking coffee, whatever. And those moments were genuine, they were sincere, they were heartfelt.”
Ellefson also revisited the creative process behind MEGADETH’s 2022 album The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!, revealing that he felt unwelcome during its development and that none of his material ultimately made the final release.
“[Dave] didn’t wanna use any of my music [for that record],” Ellefson revealed. “I could tell he resented me. He didn’t want me to be on that album. And I finally wrote a song [that was originally going to be included on it]. It was a ballad that I’ve kept, ’cause I had Kiko [Loureiro, then-MEGADETH guitarist] play the guitar on it. And it was a very good song — I think an extremely good song that has a place somewhere. But it didn’t make the record.”
Ellefson also revisited the controversy that led to his dismissal in 2021, when sexually explicit messages and video footage involving him surfaced online. At the time, he denied allegations that he had groomed an underage fan and reported the situation to police in Scottsdale, Arizona, claiming the material had been shared without his consent.
He recalled being told by MEGADETH that he was being let go despite his insistence that the accusations were unfounded.
“[The MEGADETH camp] called me to fire me. And I told ’em, ‘Guys, there’s nothing here. There’s no reason to let me go. This is all just nonsense on the Internet. It’s all it is. It’s nothing at all. And I will maintain that position all along,’ and I have.”
Ellefson said the experience highlighted the damaging power of online rumors.
“At some point you could just stay going after people on the Internet and trolls and all this kind of s**t. It’s endless,” David continued. “There is no Internet police, there’s no Internet human resources, where you can go and say, ‘Hey, this guy said this’ and ‘this person said this’, and da, da, da, because you should, because it’s highly defamatory. And defamation is when something harms your reputation, maybe even prevents you from getting more work. Those are real things. And the fact that it can happen on the Internet, which is kind of a fake place. It’s not even real. It’s kind of a fake place, yet that that could somehow come over to your reality. I’m fortunate that the fanbase stood by me. They said, ‘Dude, that is bulls**t. How dare you do that to Ellefson?’”
He also criticized the public statement issued by Mustaine at the time, suggesting it was meant to distance the frontman from the controversy: “The statement that was put out, what Dave personally signed, was deflectionary, to kind of keep it away from him. And I said, ‘There’s nothing to keep away. There’s nothing here.’ I mean, my own legal team even said, ‘Hey, if you wanna open up on the Internet and blast that guy, you have our [blessing]’. And this is a top-level law firm in Phoenix, and they said, ‘We have never seen something so unconscionable’ as a legal word, meaning unconscious — not thinking, with no, basically, human heart. ‘You have our blessing.’”
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