Rolling Stone has published an excerpt from MEGADETH leader Dave Mustaine's new memoir, "In My Darkest Hour", in which he writes about the May 2021 leak of sexually explicit footage of bassist David Ellefson — the scandal that ended Ellefson's second stint in the band and saw his parts re-recorded by another player for what became "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!"
Mustaine's account begins with distance. "I found out about the scandal the same way that everyone else found out: I heard about it online," he writes of the videos, which surfaced on Twitter on May 10, 2021 and stemmed from an online interaction with a 19-year-old MEGADETH fan. "It was impossible to separate fact from fiction, truth from fantasy, as the Internet exploded in typically histrionic fashion."
Most of the excerpt is not about the leak at all, but about a four-decade relationship that had already worn through. "I was reevaluating my nearly 40-year relationship with David and the turbulence it had so often caused in my life," Mustaine writes, before restating a distinction he has never let go of: "David likes to say he was a 'founding' member. I don't view it that way. I started MEGADETH and invited him to join."
He traces the damage to Ellefson's 2004 lawsuit after the band's breakup — "We fought in court. The outcome was not nearly what he hoped for" — and to the terms of the 2010 reconciliation, when Ellefson returned "albeit as a salaried player and not a creative partner". Sobriety, he argues, widened rather than closed the gap: "Part of the problem was that our initial friendship was based primarily on two things: music and drugs... 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."
His conclusion is blunt. "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."
Ellefson, for his part, denied at the time the social media claims that he had groomed an underage fan, and filed a report with police in Scottsdale, Arizona alleging the unlawful distribution of sexually explicit images of him. Speaking to Metal Hammer in January 2024, he said: "When you bare it all, you've got nothing to hide... What I feel the worst about is the embarrassment that it caused some people, like my family, who didn't deserve it." He also said the decision to part was Mustaine's alone: "There was a sentiment from one of them saying, 'Let's step back, let Ellefson deal with it. It leaves the door open for him to come back.' Dave didn't want that."
Mustaine described the call in 2022 as one he had to make as the band's leader: "It was a hard decision that had to be made... I've forgiven him before when he sued me and I'll forgive him a thousand times. I just won't play music with him anymore."
The two are, as it happens, on the same festival bill this month: both MEGADETH and Ellefson's current band are due at Louder Than Life, hours apart.