From Megadeth to Dyeth: The Resilient Journey of David Ellefson

Host PJ Pat dives into the latest news about former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson. Referencing an article from Metal Hammer magazine, PJ Pat discusses Ellefson’s life lessons, his struggle with addiction, the infamous sex scandal, and his new venture with death metal band Dyeth. From funny anecdotes to serious reflections, PJ Pat explores Ellefson's journey and his return to the music scene. Tune in for an engaging mix of rock history, personal insights, and a healthy dose of metal passion.

00:00 Introduction and Today's Topic
00:21 Host Introduction and Megadeth Memories
01:03 David Elfson's Scandal and Departure from Megadeth
02:53 Life Lessons from David Elfson
11:19 David Elfson's New Band and Future
12:28 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

[00:00:00] If you're curious just like I am as to know what the hell is happening with Dave Elson right now and what he's doing these days, well guess what, I found the perfect article for us in the latest Metal Hammer magazine and this is what we're gonna get into today. You ready? Let's do this!

[00:00:21] Hey Metalheads out there. Welcome to the It's One Louder Podcast. I'm your humble host PJ Pat. And today we're going to be talking about my second favorite metal band of all time. Megadeth. My first favorite band, naturally, like a lot of you, is Metallica. I mean, you can't beat that. The Originators. But Megadeth was actually my first heavy metal concert.

[00:00:40] I went to see Megadeth when Euthanasia came out. And man, you know, you know that was an awesome concert because everything before that was amazing. And man, to this day, I still think about that concert and how it really changed my life in terms of understanding the potential of energy that can come out of a concert.

[00:00:59] And man, it just gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. Alright, let's talk about David Elfson, the bass player of Megadeth, one of the founding members, an amazing bass player. Now the most recent news that I've heard was that, you know, there was this whole sex scandal. Um, And, uh, he got caught, you know, doing a nasty online with this underage girl.

[00:01:19] And that didn't sit well, obviously, with a lot of us, but also with Dave Mustaine specifically. kicked him out of the band and I haven't really heard of him since, you know, I think there was some issues between him and Dave, uh, leading up to that. So, you know, that was a perfect excuse to get him out of the band and, you know, Dave didn't waste time on that.

[00:01:38] All right, the article is called Life Lessons. David Elveson, the ex Megadeth bassist, talks about addiction, his sex scandal, and starting afresh in new death metal band, Dyeth. D I E T H. Huh, okay, well that's news to me. Good to know. Words by Matt Mills. Pictures, Macy J. Pielock. Hey, do you mind doing me a quick favor?

[00:02:01] If I'm bringing you value right now, smash that like button and subscribe. It really helps out the channel. Really appreciate it. Now let's get back to the article. One of the great supporting actors of heavy metal, David Elfson, describes himself as a lutient to Dave Mustaine. Together to do a wage 40 year campaign that brought Megadeth to legendary status.

[00:02:19] The Thrashers became the Big Four's bad boys. While Dave Jr. manned the low end, complimenting 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.

[00:02:39] Okay, so it was an underage girl. It was a 19 year old fan. My bad. Now Dave's back with supergroup Dyeth, swapping light speed thrash for grooving death metal. Hammer hears what he's learned from four decades of metal's front lines. Rock and roll runs in a family. In 1956, my mom went to see Elvis in Des Moines, Iowa.

[00:02:58] 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 mom got Elvis scarf that night. She was down in the mosh pit. Your instrument chooses you. Why a kid in the cornfields of Minnesota would choose the bass player is beyond me, he says.

[00:03:18] 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, Canadian band, Sweet, and Kiss, and I loved it. It just spoke to my soul.

[00:03:36] Get a bass! Okay, I see what's going on here. These are David Elfson's life lessons. So, number one, rock and roll runs in a family. Number two, your instrument chooses you. Number three, 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!

[00:03:54] 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 blonde, change my last name, and go to Hollywood tomorrow. Another lesson, 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.

[00:04:14] He's a polar opposite of me. I need 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. Lesson number five, hate is a good motivator, sometimes in brackets. Now that I'm not in Megadeth, I think at this age, to drag out resentment and be fueled by anger would be age inappropriate.

[00:04:35] Well, Dave, you might have thought about something else that was kind of age inappropriate that you were doing on camera with a 19 year old girl in 2021, but you know, I digress. 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.

[00:04:51] He could write a song. I'm convinced that none of us can come up with this shit. It comes to us. Lesson number six. Success can pass you by. When Peace Sells Who's Buying became a hit, I missed that whole thing because we were on tour. But I do remember putting our album on our turntable and watching the Capitol Records logo go round and round.

[00:05:09] 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? Lesson number 7. Heroin wasn't very metal. In 1983, cocaine had just been on the cover of Time Magazine.

[00:05:32] It was obviously a huge epidemic in Hollywood. It was everywhere. In the clubs, it was booze, weed, 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 and roll, but it was certainly in punk and jazz.

[00:05:49] But I tried it anyway. If you came to me at age 15 in Minnesota and said, Hey Dave, do you want to 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. When you're a few beers and a few joints into the night and feeling good, you think, Eh, fuck it.

[00:06:10] Another lesson, drugs are a downward spiral. As we moved into the so far, so good, so what record, Gart 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.

[00:06:28] We played Donington, but canceled 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. Another lesson he learned? Talent is a gift. 1989 was a really ugly year. I went to rehab a couple more times and he told me, Dave, there's only one thing you've got to change.

[00:06:48] Everything. It freaked me out because I was like, I've got to quit the band. They said, God's gift of music is a talent he gave you. If he wants you to have it, he'll let you keep it. Another lesson, not injecting saved my life. I got clean on March 1st, 1990, before any needles went into my arms. I knew that would be the end.

[00:07:08] I saw it around me, band members in the 80s got heavily into that. Being number 2 isn't bad. Countdown to extinction, reaching number 2 in the US in 1992 was amazing. The fight against Metallica, who reached number 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 number 1 because of Achy Breaky Heart.

[00:07:28] Typical America, some cheesy country song is going to be number one. Man, I remember that Icky Breaky Heart fad. Man, that was everywhere. Every party I went to, every dance club, they always played that at some point in the night. Everyone jumped on board and danced that stupid dance, whatever it was. Okay, next lesson, a Grammy win was overdue.

[00:07:46] 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! We've been nominated 12 times over 20 something years, wow.

[00:08:06] I think Metallica won a couple of awards and that must have been sticking it to Dave Mustaine. I know a lot of you know the history between Dave Mustaine and Metallica. Obviously, Dave Mustaine was part of Metallica initially and they kicked him out. So I think he always felt resentment, had this grudge towards Metallica and this heavy high competition versus that band.

[00:08:24] And, um, I'm sure all the music award nominations going to Metallica, especially when it came with that black album, did not help Dave Mustaine's mental health at the time. Hey, rock fan. If you're really digging this type of content and want to support the channel, give Cause you want to see more of this stuff.

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[00:09:33] The writing was on a wall in Megadeth. Making the last Megadeth album, 2022's The Sick of the Dying and the Dead, which is an amazing album by the way. If you want to go check it out, it has a lot of remnants of Rest in Peace. So definitely go check it out if you haven't heard it yet. It was not easy. My parts were intentionally taken off the record.

[00:09:51] Dave would ask, who wrote this part? And those parts were somehow surprisingly replaced with riffs he came up with. Whoa, that's crazy. It's like, if you don't want me writing on your record, then stop inviting me. Ouch, that must have been super hurtful for Dave, okay I gotta specify, Dave Elfson, um, if what he's saying is true, where Mustang was taking out his parts and rewriting them.

[00:10:14] Man, there must have been, I mean think about that, over 40 years together and it just ends up like that type of dynamic? I mean that's pretty sad, you know? And I think that's what I was saying earlier, you know, for Dave to boot Dave Elson out because of that sex scandal, I mean that was a perfect excuse, but I was always reading rumblings about those two Daves just not getting along, especially in the latter years, you know?

[00:10:36] So it was just an excuse, what he needed. My sex scandal was liberating but embarrassing. There's two sides to it. One, when you bear 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.

[00:10:57] Out of respect for them, I'm going to keep the family dynamic off the table during interviews. That's at their request. Another lesson, some minds cannot 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 Elfcent deal with it.

[00:11:14] 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 Vilarm. Miranda, ex entombed AD guitarist, about his diet thing. I said, send me a song.

[00:11:34] I played on it. In Megadeth, because Dave and I played together for so long, we could finish each other's sentences. With this, it was so random. It was dark and bizarre and caught my attention. Alright, last lesson for Elfson. Singing is the future. What Dyeth brought that I didn't expect was for me to start singing.

[00:11:51] 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 bit more. Ultimately, the singer is a storyteller. Wow. And that concludes the article. It says here, Dyeths, or Deeths or Dyeths? I'm not sure how you say it. Deeths?

[00:12:08] I'll say Deeths this time. Debut album to hell and back is out now via napalm records. Wow I had no idea he started you bet any singing on top of that. All right Well, I definitely got to check it out. Maybe some of you are curious as well. D I E T H. Let's go check it out No, really interesting. Well, there you go short and sweet Hopefully you learned a thing or two about this one.

[00:12:31] I certainly did. I'll go check it out I may or may not like it who knows but that's not the point. I'm, so glad that dave elson Has gotten his shit together and his back playing music I mean that truly is his talent his bass licks and just the way he plays on it I love his tone too like his kind of a clean sound.

[00:12:49] He plays more like a lead guitar type style sometimes But yeah, dave elson glad you're back on your feet brother You know, we all deserve a second chance, and I'm glad you took it by the horns. Devil horns up for ya. Keep on rocking. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.

[00:13:10] Thanks for sticking around until the end, pj, pat, and I really appreciate it. Connect with him on Instagram at rock with PJ Pat and on Facebook at the it's one louder page.

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