On September 17, David Ellefson and MEGADETH will play the same main stage at Louder Than Life in Louisville, roughly five hours apart — Ellefson with METAL CHURCH, MEGADETH on the band's farewell run, with IRON MAIDEN headlining the day. Detroit's WRIF asked the obvious question: will he stick around to watch?
"Will I stay around and see them? Who cares? I don't mind. Whatever," Ellefson told Meltdown. "It's not my band anymore. That group, as it sits now, is not my MEGADETH. So, to me, it's Dave's band, and he's doing his thing. And like I always said five years ago, I wish you well."
Five years out from his exit, he sounded genuinely uninterested in relitigating any of it. "Look, to me, I don't care anymore. I haven't been in MEGADETH now in five years. I've done so much more. My musical palette is wide, it's full. I've got a whole new friend group and buddy group and I'm in a new tribe." He had just come off two weeks with KINGS OF THRASH playing early MEGADETH material — "probably songs that MEGADETH won't be playing when I see them next week."
The gratitude is on the record too. "I'm grateful for my time there. The band wouldn't have happened without me. I'm a founder of it. I helped start it, me and my friend Greg Handevidt." He has had Handevidt on his podcast specifically to piece the founding story together from more than one memory.
On whether he would join the farewell tour, Ellefson has not slammed the door — and says he floated a bigger version of this idea more than twenty years ago. Back in 2004, when Dave Mustaine first tried to reassemble the band, Ellefson suggested bringing in Jeff Young, Chris Poland, Nick Menza and Marty Friedman rather than a single lineup. "Why don't we make it be something bigger?" he recalled asking. "If I were calling the shots, absolutely. But then again that's me and I get along with everybody."
That extends to the current lineup. Ellefson is friendly with bassist James LoMenzo and pointed out that he and Kiko Loureiro were the ones who recruited drummer Dirk Verbeuren in 2016, after Chris Adler returned to LAMB OF GOD and passed on Verbeuren's number. "I have no ill will toward anybody who's performing with Dave right now. They're certainly capable musicians."