David Ellefson has opened up about feeling like he had to “hate” Metallica on behalf of former Megadeth bandmate, Dave Mustaine.
During an appearance on The Jeremy White Podcast (via Ultimate Guitar), David Ellefson discussed meeting members of Metallica after Mustaine was fired from the band.
“They were totally cool. Lars [Ulrich] was chatty, he did most of the talking and James [Hetfield] didn’t say a lot. But they were very cool.”
“I didn’t know what to make of them because I’d heard of them from conversations with Dave talking about them and being in a band with them.”
He continued: “[Mustaine] had his side of it, of course. It’s one of these things – if you’re my friend, you’ll hate all my enemies and you’ll love all my friends too.”
“Which side do you pick with that? But those guys have been nothing but great and I’ve become good friends with them, as with all of the Big Four.”
“So I got over long ago, like, ‘Hey, this loyalty of if I’m gonna be in Megadeth, I have to hate Metallica somehow, what a bunch of bullshit.'”
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When asked what it’s like making music with his new band compared to working with Mustaine, Ellefson replied: “Well, look, every situation is different, and you walk into it… I think the main thing as a professional is you walk in, and you need to quickly assess out who’s in charge, who’s writing the songs, what are we doing here.”
“And I think you just look at that for what it is. And I knew right from the beginning Dave’s gonna write most of the songs and he’s gonna come up with a lot of the ideas.
He continued: “He came up with some great ideas for bass parts. He is the Tchaikovsky, if you will, he is the composer that composes the songs.”
“And when he comes up with a part, you can make suggestions but usually, just do it his way. And that is what that setting is over there. This setting over here is very different…”
“I always said, with Megadeth, I can pretty much do Dave Mustaine on demand, whatever he needed, I could play.”
“And that didn’t just happen, we were in the room and we started the band together, I was there when the initial riffs of ‘Looking Down the Cross,’ which was initially called ‘Speak No Evil,’ when that was starting.”
“I was there watching it, picking up on it, and learning the part. And then you develop these things.”
“Look – good songs, having aggressive management is important, being the right thing at the right time… By the time I got to L.A. in 1983, all of the Sunset Strip bands had been…”
“I went basically to the Troubadour when Wasp was getting signed to Capitol, it was their last show.”
“I think that was a night I met James and Lars actually, I think they were on their show, ironically. And that was probably June or July of ’83, and that was kind of the end of it.”
“Armored Saint, Ratt, Motley, that whole scene had moved through. Obviously, Metallica was the big hero of the next thing, and behind it Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth.”
For more on this topic, check out the Metal Observer.
Check out David Ellefson discussing Dave Mustaine:
