Metal Anarchy

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has shared a new excerpt from his “In My Darkest Hour” memoir via Rolling Stone. The piece finds him reflecting on his decision to fire David Ellefson amid a sex video scandal that saw the bassist caught masturbating with a young woman online.

Mustaine said the following:

“I found out about the scandal the same way that everyone else found out: I heard about it online. On May 10, 2021, sexually explicit videos of David Ellefson masturbating appeared on Twitter. The videos resulted from an online interaction with a nineteen-year-old Megadeth fan with whom Ellefson had engaged in some sort of relationship. When more details were revealed, the story quickly went viral.

It was impossible to separate fact from fiction, truth from fantasy, as the internet exploded in typically histrionic fashion. But this much was clear: that was definitely David Ellefson, Megadeth bass player, in the videos.

The next day, we released an official statement saying, “The situation is being watched closely.”

That was true. It was also true that I was reevaluating my nearly 40-year relationship with David and the turbulence it had so often caused in my life. As original members of Megadeth (David likes to say he was a “founding” member. I don’t view it that way. I started Megadeth and invited him to join), we had been friends and creative partners; we had fought like enemies.

We had played a lot of great music together. We were codependent junkies, feeding and fueling each other’s addictions. Ultimately, we had grown apart, trust shattered (at least for me) by David’s 2004 lawsuit after the band’s breakup. We fought in court. The outcome was not nearly what he hoped for — let’s leave it at that.

To the surprise of the vast majority of the Megadeth universe, we patched things up in 2010 and David returned to the band, albeit as a salaried player and not a creative partner. But things were never great between us; there was too much history, too much anger, too much behavior that I found distasteful.

Part of the problem was that our initial friendship was based primarily on two things: music and drugs. David and I were never on equal footing when it came to Megadeth; it was my band and mostly my songs, and that was always a source of friction.

When we both got sober, the distance increased, in part because we had lost the awful, unhealthy thing that had bonded us, but also because we approached sobriety and recovery from different places, with different points of view. I tried not only to be substance-free, but also to live a more honest and spiritual life.

There are plenty of people in the fellowships who want to be better human beings and to provide support for their fellow travelers, people who are committed to genuine transformation. And there are others who mostly just talk the talk.

I try to stay away from these folks. Sometimes unsuccessfully. All of this is by way of saying that by the time those embarrassing videos turned up on the internet, my relationship with David — and David’s relationship with Megadeth — had already begun to deteriorate.

Again.

Some of it was probably borne of professional jealousy — long a friction point between David and me — and some of it was probably frustration stemming from financial pressure. I’m speculating, of course, and I’ve never asked David about this — we haven’t talked in several years — but I heard that David was upset that we canceled the tour when I was first diagnosed with cancer. And he was sometimes short-tempered and impatient with me when I was going through treatment and trying to work on the album. Some days I had a lot to offer in those sessions; sometimes I was too tired and sick to contribute much of anything. While everyone else seemed to be compassionate and understanding, David sometimes was not.

Hey, on some level I get it. My illness cost everyone involved with Megadeth a lot of money. It was a scary, uncertain time. But it’s during the darkest times that a person’s character is revealed.

Would David have remained a member of Megadeth if that video had not surfaced? Who’s to say? I’ve seen enough guys come and go with Megadeth, and I’ve experienced enough upheaval with David to know that the end was likely near. But, certainly, the scandal hastened the process.

Within a few days, we informed David that he would be separating from the band. Then, on May 24, I released an official statement through the band’s Facebook account. I tried to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible, as enough damage already had been done:

‘We are informing our fans that David Ellefson is no longer playing with Megadeth and that we are officially parting ways with him. We do not take this decision lightly. While we do not know every detail of what occurred, with an already strained relationship, what has already been revealed now is enough to make working together impossible moving forward. We look forward to seeing our fans on the road this summer, and we cannot wait to share our brand new music with the world. It is almost complete.’

The last part of that statement was both true . . . and not true. Yes, the new album was basically finished. But Ellefson’s dismissal complicated matters. As Megadeth’s bass player, David was all over the new album, and his participation would almost surely become a distraction, if not worse, when the album was released. There would be financial entanglements as well. In the end, we made a decision: David’s bass parts would be scrubbed completely from the album and re-recorded with a new musician.”