David Ellefson has dropped some steaming hot tea about his dismissal from Megadeth saying that he was “kicked to the side of the road” after news of his social media sex scandal broke.
Earlier this year, Ellefson was fired from Megadeth amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Addressing the incident during a chat with The Cassius Morris Show, the musician said he wanted to face the claims, rather than hiding behind a publicist.
“I went through the process that I told them [his publicist] I was gonna go through, to just walk through it and say, ‘Hey, this is a bunch of bullshit,’ and I did — I did my part. And I confessed my… Look, I was caught on ‘Candid Camera’; there was no hiding from it. So you just address it. You take the sword. You deal with it. It was embarrassing,” he revealed.
However, he says that Megadeth’s next moves absolutely fueled the fire and made the situation worse for him.
“Look, they threw a Molotov cocktail — proverbial — at my house and burned my house down. [Iasked them] Would you please help me? Would you please support me? I could use some help right now.’ And quite honestly, I was just kicked to the side of the road to just deal with it on my own. So it’s, like, all right. Well, then now we know where the loyalties lie. And now we move on.”
When asked about why he thinks the band wasn’t willing to help him, Ellefson says he’s baffled.
“I don’t know for sure ’cause I’ve had no further conversations with anyone since then. But I can only go back to maybe the lawsuit I filed [against Mustaine] 20 years ago, me not being agreeable to just remix the catalog — those things, for sure. I’m sure this was a longstanding resentment toward me, and this was an opportunity to settle the score. And it is what it is.”
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Ellefson continued: “The truth of it is when you’re in a band, when you’re in any relationship — brotherhood, marriages, whatever — you have to agree to disagree, ’cause you’re not always gonna agree on anything. And I think when things were reset 20 years ago — this was no longer gonna be a band; it was no longer a partnership; it was his [Dave’s] way or no way. That was very clear. That’s why I wasn’t in the band 20 years ago when this happened. [Mustaine basically said] ‘This is the way we’re doing it. There is no negotiation. It’s my way or the highway.’”
The musician also addressed Megadeth’s break up in 2002, stressing that it wasn’t a hiatus like some reports say.
“When the group disbanded, and it disbanded in 2002 — it was not a hiatus; it was not taking time off; it was very clearly a disbanding — and when that happened, we were all left to our own. And it’s that way to this day. It’s kind of, everybody fends for themselves.
“When I came back 10 years ago, I was glad to be there, agreeable to be there, happy to be there for the fans, play the songs, to be part of the legacy. And look, clearly I put in another 10 years of gas in the tank. So it was a good thing. And that was always my attitude: do it for the love of the music, the love of just being there for all of it. And I was looking forward to that continuing, obviously. But I guess it’s not what they want now.”
Despite saying that he doesn’t “have any sour grapes” over his dismissal from Megadeth, his latest interview certainly seems to imply otherwise.
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