There is very little that David Ellefson hasn’t done. The former Megadeth bassist has won a Grammy, headlined stadiums and festivals across the globe, and sold tens of millions of albums. But what led up to this unparalleled success? It was years of hard work and hard touring, an era that’s being celebrated in his latest band, Kings of Thrash. Joined by fellow Megadeth alums Jeff Young and Chris Poland, Ellefson is set to embark upon a massive tour which will see the band play two classic Megadeth albums in full, Killing Is My Business…and Business Is Good! and So Far, So Good…So What! We sat down with Ellefson to discuss the legacy of these landmark releases, Megadeth’s early days of touring, and what the future holds for Kings of Thrash.
Greetings David and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
David Ellefson: I am well thank you!
Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. I can feel the excitement through the computer screen because we are not months, not weeks, but days away from hitting the road with Kings of Thrash. When did the idea for this band first come about and what’s it like performing with Jeff and Chris again?
DE: The idea came to me around 2021. I knew that these records…these are kind of weird records in our catalog *laughs*. Obviously, the first one, Killing Is My Business, had been remixed. There’s three different versions, which is why we called this last one The Final Kill. That’s it, never again, we’re done. So Far, So Good…So What! was this other record that fell between Peace Sells and Rust in Peace. Those two records have such fanfare around them that Killing and So Far, So Good…So What! were kind of these records that were discovered by fans over the years.
So Far as a big record. It came out at a cool time It was the end of the 80s. “In My Darkest Hour” was in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. So there’s a lot of good stuff going on around them. I’m just saying in the trajectory, they were these two records that required more of a deep dive from the mainstream. I’ve just noticed over the years that fans are asking for this stuff. They love these records. They keep asking, “Hey man! Play “Liar”! Play “Mary Jane”, “Skull Beneath the Skin”, “Looking Down the Cross”.” To me, that was the impetus of this.
I’ve stayed in touch with pretty much everybody. I’ve talked with Jeff and Chris over the years, so to connect back with them…to be honest with you, I’ve jammed with Chris a few times over the years. That’s been cool. Jeff and I actually played together at NAMM on a Ronnie Montrose Remembered show. I played bass for Ronnie with Jimmy DeGrasso on drums in the late 2000s before I went back to Megadeth in 2010. It was kind of weird. I look over and oh, there’s Jeff over there! It was me, Jeff, Gilby Clarke, Brad Gillis, Jimmy, and a whole bunch of people in the room jamming. It was fun.
Jeff and I started this because we went into the studio and started writing some material, some that we’re probably gonna try to roll out on the tour, which is very old school. “Hey man! Let’s try it tonight and see how it goes!” It’s a little more daunting now with YouTube because once you play it, it’s out. Back on the pre-Peace Sells tour that we did, we played all of the Peace Sells record night after night, tweaking those songs and finetuning them. That was kind of our pre-production for the record. Pre-internet, if you weren’t at the show, you didn’t hear it. It gave us a chance to tighten up the record, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s gonna be cool to not only do our setlist of Killing and So Far, So Good, but to also start tightening some of these new songs we’ve been writing as well.
Many of the songs off Killing and So Far, So Good haven’t been played live in decades, if not ever. Why didn’t Megadeth play more of these songs live in recent years?
DE: To be honest with you, vocals. We tried. I remember when we did the tour with Five Finger Death Punch over in Europe back in 2020, there was an initiative for us to try and do it. I was working on them. Even one of our management guys was really pushing to get some of this stuff in the set to get a little more old school. It’s funny. The farther you go forward, the more people want you to go backward. It’s funny how your past is your best path forward at a certain age of your career because fans want to hear this stuff. They hear the hits and the stuff they heard on the radio. Those are staples in the set.
I will say over the years the reason we started moving away from this material is that this stuff was written…obviously, it was the earliest stuff we wrote, so it’s fun to explore creating and creating new stuff, which is what the 90s was honestly. But it’s funny because the 2000s was this attempt to return back to this era. Of course in 2010, we did the Rust in Peace 20th anniversary. It’s almost like we got as far back as Rust in Peace, which is 1990, but we never got all the way back to the 80s. I think I’ve been pretty in touch with that. I think more than anybody, I’ve been the most in touch with the 80s. I started writing and contributing on So Far, So Good…So What!, as far as composing riffs and songs and lyrics. So to me, So Far, So Good is a sweet spot. I love it, and I love going back and playing the songs off Killing.
As much as it was fun to move past it into the 90s and other stuff, with slower tempos and bigger, melodic things, and not being this one trick pony of only playing thrash…I don’t think Megadeth ever was a one trick pony. We always had a lot of diversity. But now to go back and revisit this stuff, and especially with the attention to detail of what’s being played. I just got off the phone with Jeff right before our call and we were talking about some stuff that he was listening to of tapes from the So Far, So Good…So What! era, to really hone in on the detail of these things, stuff that I have since forgotten, little details. It’s really great when you can dig back in and really, really play it like it was on the record. It’s a challenge. It’s fun. Even for me and Jeff who performed on that record together, for us to go back and really, really hit the bullseye with this stuff, it’s a fun challenge.
I want to go back in time to the earliest days of Megadeth, leading up to the release of Killing. After forming Megadeth with Dave Mustaine and subsequently recording the Last Rites demo, there was a brief period that Kerry King played with the band. How many shows did he play with Megadeth and how far was the band into the development of Killing? Was it ever considered that he join full time?
DE: We were hoping he would join full time. I got the sense from the beginning that he was not gonna join. He was a big fan of Dave’s from his days in Metallica. He’s said as much in interviews that to get to play with Dave in those days were a dream come true. He was very inspired by Dave, so that was cool. He played five shows with us, three in February of 1984 and two in April of 1984, all up in the Bay Area where we had debuted the band. It’s funny. These songs, it’s not like we wrote Killing Is My Business and then Peace Sells. When I first met Dave, he had what became “Set the World Afire”. The original name escapes me at the moment, but it had the word “Megadeth” in it, which is where the name of the group came from. That song didn’t end up until the third record, yet it was the first song he wrote after Metallica.
It’s interesting where songs kind of find their home in a body of work on an album. An album takes on a life of its own. You write a bunch of songs, so there was “Looking Down the Cross”, “Skull Beneath the Skin”, “Chosen Ones”. The tempos were much slower. It’s funny with “Chosen Ones”. I was playing with my fingers and it had this real Geezer-ish bassline to it, same with some of the fills on “Skull Beneath the Skin”. Then when we sped everything up, that’s when I started playing with a pick just to really nail the pocket better.
“The Conjuring”, I remember seeing a tape. There’s one on the internet that someone filmed. I think it was the third show we played in Palo Alto, at the Palo Alto Keystone. That would’ve been February of ’84. The whole narrative at the beginning of the song was not in the song yet. He actually spoke it, almost like a sermon *laughs*. He spoke it and then we started the song, so I guess once we went in the studio, that’s when that lyric got placed into the beginning. “Welcome to the sanguinary sect of worship…” That whole piece got laid into the song once we recorded Peace Sells, so it’s interesting how songs develop over time.
It’s funny that at that Palo Alto show, Dave broke a string on his guitar. Kerry had two guitars. He had his BC Rich Mockingbird and a black Warlock. He must have been playing his Warlock because Dave reached over and grabbed the red Mockingbird. Someone took a photo of it and that’s the cover of the Megadeth Anthology greatest hits album. It’s Kerry’s Mockingbird and Dave broke a string *laughs*.
I never put 1 and 1 together, but that makes sense!
DE: Yep, fun fact *laughs*! Thank God Kerry was in the band, so we had a second guitar ready. Between Kerry and Dave, Dave played most of the lead stuff. Kerry did some though. There was some back and forth of the two of them playing leads. Kerry’s a fantastic rhythm player. He can play that shit in his sleep. He just felt it. It came so natural to him, but once Kerry came and played those shows, he met Exodus and saw what the Bay Area thrash scene was. That lit him up and that’s when he went home and really got Slayer tightened up. I think it gave Slayer a direction. It gave him something to aim at and say, “That’s it. That’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna really be a thrash band.” Kerry just needed to see it and live it and be in it. That was the final piece for Slayer.
As the story famously goes, Killing Is My Business was self produced after the band spent half of their budget on food, drugs, and alcohol, ultimately dismissing original producer, Karat Faye. In what ways did this impact the direction and final outcome of the album?
DE: Well you say “half the budget”. Keep in mind it was only an $8,000 budget, so you’ve got four guys and a manager. You gotta do drugs, booze, food, cigarettes, gas to the studio which was an hour away in Malibu. So four grand, it was the 80s, but…it was the 80s! I could imagine a lot more than that got spent on other records that were being done around that time in L.A. *laughs*. I’d say four grand, we did pretty good. That’s a pretty conservative drug budget.
Right, especially when you consider Black Sabbath spent the modern equivalent of half a million dollars on cocaine alone while making Vol. 4.
DE: Right, so all things considered, I think we did pretty good *laughs*.
Absolutely, but knowing that and the fact it was self-produced plays into the raw, aggressive edge of the album for me. Is it safe to say Killing is the punkiest or most savage Megadeth album?
DE: *laughs* “Most savage”, that’s actually a good description! When I came back to the band and Shawn Drover was in the band, he loved Killing. He got me back listening to Youthanasia, because I hadn’t listened to that album in years. He got me back into listening to that and I really came to appreciate how good we were. It’s funny about Killing and Youthanasia, both of those records we played in the room as a band at the same time. So you go from Killing, which is pretty raw. That was the first time me, Dave, and Gar (Samuelson) recorded that stuff at the same time. The three of us would hit record, take guitars, bass, drums, bang. What we got, we got. There was no fixing it really. That was what we had because, again, we only had $4,000 left after all the rest of the stuff we just discussed *laughs*. It had to move quick.
Then you go to Youthanasia, so literally 10 years later. We recorded Killing in December of ’84 and here we are in the early part of ’94 recording. Dave and I had been together a decade. Youthanasia was the third record that that lineup had recorded of Nick (Menza), Marty (Friedman), and us. You think about how tight we were after making three big records and two world tours. That’s what makes a band tight. You gotta just get in the yellow submarine and go. Playing shows, gigging, living it, and just being in it: That’s what makes a band grow and makes you better.
Killing is full of classic songs that would come to define Megadeth, like the title track, “Love You To Deth”, and “Rattlehead”. Yet no song on this album caused greater commotion than the band’s cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots”. How soon after the album’s release did Lee Hazelwood’s people come after the band?
DE: Dude, it was like 20 years. We used to laugh and say, “Well, they cashed the check for 20 years.” *laughs* We were trying to get the album finally certified gold. I think it is in America, which would traditionally mean if it sold half a million copies in the USA, it probably sold that much more in the rest of the world. The thing sold a million copies plus. Of course, now you add digital streaming in there, that adds another equation of how they measure that now. So I assume the album has sold well over a million copies.
It’s funny because I learned about this doing a panel at a college with a music business attorney. Someone asked a question about this and he referred to “Weird” Al Yankovic that when you rewrite the lyrics, technically it’s called a parody and you need to go to the artist to get their approval. Funny enough, my band The Lucid just did it with the Faith No More song, “Epic”. We renamed it “Sweet Tooth” and our singer Vinnie (Dombroski) from Sponge and Violent J from Insane Clown Posse, they rewrote the lyrics. We went to Faith No More to get their approval and they consented. They signed off on it. They gave us the approval to do it, but we had to do the same thing. Having had this experience with Lee Hazelwood, I remember telling Drew (Fortier), “You better ask them if we can do this. You don’t wanna put it out there and go, “Hey, listen to our song!”, and then they go cease and desist.” That’s what happened.
As the story goes, “Weird” Al went and asked everybody. I was told, I don’t know if this is fact, but I was told that the only person that denied him was Prince. He’s the only person who said, “No, you can’t do a parody of my song.” As legend as it though. Of course, you can’t ask Prince now, but I learned a lot in that little music business symposium that I was a guest on. That’s why on The Final Kill, Dave went in and re-sang it the way it was originally intended. We even did the same thing for our version on Best of the West that’s coming out. Because it’s a recording, we had to go back in and recut the vocal, to make sure the vocal was recorded so that it reflects the original composition and that we’re not putting out a parody of it.
It’s appropriate Kings of Thrash kicks off this tour in the Chicagoland area. Not long after the release of Killing, Megadeth embarked on their first ever tour, which included a June 30, 1985 stop at the Metro in Chicago as the opening act for Exciter. What are your memories of this tour and specifically of the Chicago show?
DE: Well I’m glad I wore the right shirt *points to “Chicago – Windy City” shirt*. This was totally an accident. It’s the shirt that cycled up to my black t-shirt pile today *laughs*. It’s good timing! It’s funny you mention that because when I brought this up to the band and management when The Final Kill came out in 2018, I pushed for this. I said, “Why don’t we go out, one night only: Megadeth plays Killing Is My Business.” It got half saluted and then it kind of got pushed aside for other touring because, let’s face it, it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of costs. It’s not just as easy as…Kings of Thrash, we can go “Fuck it.” Fire off a show. It’s easier. There’s smaller moving parts.
I was thinking, “What is one of the venues that might still be around?” I think the only one that’s still around from back in that day is the Metro in Chicago. I think it’s the only one. We started the tour at Hammerjacks. That was a well known club. Kix and a lot of other bands played out there back in the day. In fact, I remember talking to Frankie Banali. We did a comic con together and he was telling me about, because he was from the east coast and he moved out to L.A. to meet Kevin DuBrow and form what became Quiet Riot. He was from that area and he used to gig there, so we were sharing Hammerjacks stories.
We started there and I don’t think there’s any place still around from that tour, including all those clubs up in the Bay Area, they’re done. Fender’s Ballroom in L.A., that’s gone. None of those places are around, so I thought it would’ve been cool. I was actually pushing to play the Metro on this tour as well, but the Forge in Joliet won out, which is an awesome venue. We know the people well, so we’re glad we’re kicking it off there. It’s the right place to play.
You mentioned earlier how Megadeth was always more than just a thrash band. That really showed come the release of So Far, So Good…So What! It seemed the band was going for a different approach. While thrash remained at the core, the songs became more intricate, boasting influences of Iron Maiden and Mercyful Fate, especially on a cut like “In My Darkest Hour”. Were you and Dave setting out to achieve something greater musically with this album?
DE: Megadeth has always been an in the moment, emotional, wear it on your sleeve kind of band. It just was that. There was never any pretenses around anything. I remember Dave got the call from our friend Metal Maria (Ferrero) that Cliff Burton had died the night before in the bus accident. Dave picked up his guitar and wrote most of the music for “In My Darkest Hour”. That music has this very somber, sad tone to it and that’s why. That was when he wrote it. It was a very emotional, sad moment. At the same time, “Hook in Mouth” and “Liar” are songs that I musically had the impetus of starting and getting them going, me and Dave collaborating on them.
I agree. That record has a lot of different stuff to it, a lot of different emotions. “Set the World Afire”, again, the first song Dave had written post-Metallica, finally ends up on there. I remember we were watching a show one night, late night TV, and there was some movie. I forgot the name of it, but it literally had these lungs from hell and it was dragging this guy down in. That’s how we got the idea for “Into the Lungs of Hell” *laughs*.
Jeff was just telling me that on “Anarchy in the U.K.”…we had Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols come in and play on it. Well that was the producer Paul Lani’s friend. We did not know him. Paul said, “I think I can get him in here.” So he finally got him in there to do it. Before that, and Jeff forgot this too, Jeff actually played a solo. There’s a whole solo during that section unheard. He’s gonna let me hear it when I see him here in a couple of days. I’m excited to hear it because he said he laid down a solo, and then I guess Steve committed to doing it, so he came in and that’s where we put it. Jeff has the outro licks as well, so Jeff’s on the song.
It’s funny when you make records. There’s all kinds of things that get used, don’t get used or sort of tucked away. That’s kind of a little Easter egg of So Far, So Good…So What! Even on the remixes, there’s the Paul Lani mixes, which have some different edits. I noticed there’s some different lengths to some of the songs. The original version of “In My Darkest Hour” just starts cold. The remix has the acoustic intro bit. Some of those little things would often get shaved off by producers and mixers. They’d trim the fat, if you will. “Hey, let’s get rid of the few extra seconds on the beginning or the end or the middle and make it a bit more of a concise song.” Sometimes when you go back in and put the tape on, there’s all this other stuff that was happening. Sometimes when you’re mixing, you’re selective about what gets used and what doesn’t get used.
So Far is the first and only Megadeth album to feature Chuck Behler on drums. As a bassist, how did Chuck differ as a drummer from Gar?
DE: So far, and I guess this is like the Steve Jones thing, I think we’re gonna get Chuck to come out and play with us in Flint, which would be super awesome. To me, this is a celebration of the legacy, especially since he played on that album. He came out and played when I did a solo tour. I played at the Token Lounge there in Detroit. This is probably 2019. Chuck came out and he played on a few songs with me. I’ll tell you what, his feel of what he plays and his groove, man, those songs were so easy to play. He’s got this real lazy, behind the beat groove.
There’s this lick in “Hook in Mouth” that’s the tell-all, right when the chorus ends. It’s a pretty fast lick. When Chuck was playing drums, I was like, “Oh my God!” He plays his fill and he plays it nice and pocketed and lazy. I just leaned back and played the lick. It was so easy *laughs*! There’s things like that about Chuck that really made me appreciate his playing. Now I hear it, even if I just play along to the record to relearn stuff. I’m just like, “That’s right Chuck. Pull it back man.” Chuck’s right here, whereas Menza was right up on the top of the beat, and Gar was kind of the same thing.
On Killing Is My Business, depending on what we were drinking or snorting before we hit the red button to record *laughs*, I listen back and I can tell what that was! We’d hit record, do “Rattlehead”, and it was off to the races. I can hear it, by the time the middle part comes where there’s the build, now it’s like, oh my God. Take a break, take a breather real quick, and then fucking hit the outro. We didn’t record to a click track. This was very low dough, lo-fi recording. It was literally hit the red button, you’re hearing the band as the band is.
The interesting thing about Killing is we had all done demos. Obviously Dave had done the (Metallica) No Life ’til Leather demo. Gar had demos that he had done with Chris Poland in their band, The New Yorkers. I had recorded stuff back in Minnesota and Iowa with bands that I was in, so we had all been in the studio doing demo stuff, but none of us had ever cut a record before. Killing was the first time any of us had put the ax to the wax as they say and really cut a real record. It was interesting when Dave and I went in for the mastering. I think Gar was there too. It’s when they actually cut the lacquer and they take the master tape and they master it.
They’re literally cutting the lacquer with the grooves and that lacquer is what they replicate all of the vinyl from. I remember sitting there with the mastering engineer. One of the things that he liked is we only had eight songs. It was all we had that were there inside this body of would that would become Killing. “The Conjuring” really wasn’t there. “Set the World Afire” didn’t really fit. It was these eight songs. The mastering guy loved it because the grooves were really wide, which meant a lot more low end. The more programmed material you put on it, the thinner the grooves became and you’d sacrifice low end.
It’s funny with Killing, Peace Sells, and So Far, and even when we went in to do Rust in Peace, we only had seven songs. I’d record a bass part and (Mike) Clink would look up at me and go, “So do you have any more songs?” “No dude! This is all we have!” *laughs* Finally, me and Nick, I laid down my riff for “Dawn Patrol” and Nick laid down his “My Creation” lick, which I think finally ended up on Warchest or one of the remixes. That’s how “Dawn Patrol” got used and I guess that made nine songs? Those records were not really that long. It wasn’t until we got into Countdown to Extinction where we had a proper eleven songs, plus some bonus material. Those early records, it was like, “This is all we got. This is what we have.” Eight songs for a record.
Speaking of cutting records, I know Kings of Thrash are currently working on their debut EP. What can fans expect musically and is there a tentative release date in mind?
DE: First up is this Best of the West – Live at the Whisky A Go Go. That’s out on March 24, so that’s the first thing. It’s funny that we’re touring for a live album. With KISS and Frampton Comes Alive! and all these live albums I remember growing up, they’d do the tour and then they’d do the live album. For us, we’re touring the live show and then putting the live album out. From there, being together, that’s when most of our productivity happens. Jeff, Chaz (Leon), and Fred (Aching), because they all live in the L.A. area, they get together a lot. They work. I go back and forth from time to time, but just being in the room, on the bus, in the hotel, at the gig, that’s when you become a band.
We have these songs demoed. We have them laid down. We’re working on some lyrics and melodies. I’d like to think maybe by the time we’re done with the tour, things will be in pretty good shape. Like I said, we’re gonna try to put at least one of them out on the stage and run it up the flagpole and see how it sits in the midst of everything else. There’s certainly an attempt to put out some original material and not just have it be a legacy act.
The new Kings of Thrash live album, Best of the West – Live at the Whisky A Go Go, comes out Friday, March 24 on Cleopatra Records. The Thrashin’ USA Tour kicks off tonight, Thursday, February 16 at The Forge in Joliet, Illinois. For more information on Kings of Thrash, visit www.kingsofthrash.com. For more information on David Ellefson, visit www.davidellefson.com.
Great interview, my man!