My Life With Deth (25 page)

—David Ellefson

T
hings continued to move forward on the musical front. In 2009 I played bass for Tim “Ripper” Owens on a short European tour, which he was doing to support his solo album at the time. Heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio’s wife and manager, Wendy Dio, was managing Tim, so she put us on several dates with Ronnie’s band Heaven and Hell and gave us an opening slot on the main stage of the Download Festival. I ran into our former booking agent John Jackson backstage and we embraced, having not seen each other for several years. I had apologized back in 1994 for putting him in a bad position after my meltdown at Donington in 1988, and we became good friends after that. That can happen when you acknowledge your shortcomings to people.

John told me that he was launching a new festival called Sonisphere, and also that he was thinking about doing a festival of the “Big Four” thrash bands—Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax—in 2010. What’s funny is that I was one of the few musicians who knew about the Big Four dates, and yet I wasn’t in any of the bands at that time.

That said, hints that things might be about to change in that area were making themselves felt. In the early summer of 2009, my family rented a house up in the mountains to get away from the heat in Scottsdale, and Dave started reaching out to me again by phone. We hadn’t met since we’d failed to make the Nashville thing work, and now here we were trying to heal some wounds. Hooking up with Megadeth was beginning to look like it could be a lot of fun again.

I played an F5 show in the middle of July, the same weekend as NAMM’s summer show in Nashville. We flew into Nashville to play the show, and as soon as I landed, I received a text from Dave asking where I was. I thought he might be in town doing something with Dean Guitars, whose instruments he endorses, so I reached back to him. He told me that he was at home in San Diego but wanted to know if I wanted to fill in on something that was coming up.

After F5’s sound check, he and I got on the phone: it was the first time we had talked in three years. It was a very positive conversation, and I thought the next step should be that we would hang out together. It was only a seventy-five-minute flight from Phoenix to San Diego, so a few days later I flew out to see him for an afternoon, just to see if we could be buddies again. He picked me up at the airport and we hung out at his new studio and his home. I flew home again and felt really good about things.

Dave was very excited, too, and wanted to announce that I was back in the band. With things moving quickly at this point, he and his manager wanted to call me to discuss money. I replied that money had been such a problem between us in the past that I would rather they spoke to my attorney, who would negotiate the deal on my behalf. He knew I wanted to do it and wasn’t going to get in my way, so I took my hands off the wheel and redirected them to him.

Predictably, everything went south from there, and the reunion didn’t happen that time. I’d gone to see Judas Priest play in Phoenix that night. They were playing the whole of their
British Steel
album, and I remember thinking how cool it would be if Megadeth ever did the
same thing. I was down there, hanging with the Judas Priest guys, having some laughs and catching up on old times, and later that night I checked my BlackBerry—and there was an e-mail from Dave saying that my attorney had asked for too much money. It had been so close to, and yet so far away from, working out.

But Megadeth and I weren’t done yet, not by a long shot, owing to a set of circumstances that were so fortuitous I have to regard them as a collective act of God. In January 2010, I was back at the NAMM show yet again in Anaheim, California, doing my job at the Peavey booth. On the Friday night of the show, Dave was going to play at Dean Guitars’ party at the Grove in Anaheim. I was out to dinner with one of the guys from Hartke, who was talking to me about some endorsement stuff. After dinner I checked my BlackBerry and there was a text from Willie Gee, Dave’s guitar tech. It read, “Mr. Ellefson, Willie Gee here. Just wondering if you might be available to jump up and play a song with Dave at the Grove?”

I replied that I had a bass with me and that I would be available to play, and that he should just let me know. Later he texted back to say that Megadeth’s current bassist James LoMenzo was going to play instead, and thanked me. I said that it was no problem and that he should tell Dave that I had his back either way, which he apparently communicated to Dave.

The next day, Shawn Drover, the drummer of Megadeth, walked over to the Peavey booth and said hello. I liked Shawn a lot. I’d spoken to him on the phone in the summer of 2009 when Dave and I had talked about rejoining the band. He’s a solid man on his own two feet and he’s a gentleman. He has wisdom and clarity, and he totally understands his role and position in the band without assuming or presuming anything. In short, he’s a real musician I knew I’d like to be in a band with.

I said, “It’s too bad I didn’t get to play with you last night. Dave and I back together onstage would have been a great news story.” He said, “I know—it would have been great!” I added that if things didn’t work
out with James LoMenzo, he should give me a call, and he nodded with an amused smile. We shook hands and I forgot all about it.

However, Shawn is a Megadeth fan to the core, and he knew that they had to get me back in the band.

Two pivotal announcements were made at this time, both of which made a profound impact on me. One was regarding John Jackson’s original
plan, which had come to fruition. As he had suggested, the Big Four of thrash metal announced European festival dates together. This was a historic gathering by anybody’s standards, and I wanted to be there. Secondly, Megadeth was going to play the
Rust in Peace
album in its entirety on a U.S. tour in March, to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.

We were in New York with Hail!, about to play two shows in the area with ex–Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. We were on our way to do Eddie Trunk’s radio show when I received the press release about the Rust in Peace tour coming up a month later. I thought, “Man, I need to be there for this!” I knew all the songs and I knew it was the right thing to do for our legacy, if the door was in any way still open for me to join in. Portnoy was saying, “You should be there for that. It’s not right that you’re not.” I then had to go on Eddie Trunk’s show and do the interview, even though I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut when I saw that press release on my phone.

Then, on February 2, which is my son Roman’s birthday, I was at home having dinner with my family. Shortly after, I walked into my office and I happened to see my BlackBerry blinking. It was another message from Willie Gee, asking me to call him. I said to Julie, “Here we go again!” and made the call. I talked to Shawn, who told me that James LoMenzo would be leaving the band. He and I corresponded by text over the next couple of days. It was such a bizarre and immediate thing to happen, because I was sitting in a pastors’ conference in Phoenix and I got a text from him saying, “Dude. If there was ever a time for you to reach out to Dave, it is right now!”

Notice the irony of this: I’m sitting in a church conference (my future) while Megadeth (my past) is reaching out to me. But as much as I loved my volunteering in the church, I knew that if I was ever going to kick the tires of Megadeth and drive it around the block to see if it was still a good ride, this was the time to do it. I could do everything else another time: they would always be there for me, while Megadeth might not. I also knew that tickets for the Rust in Peace tour were on sale, so I told them that I was both available and interested.

I called Dave at the studio, where he was recording, and he and I and Shawn got on the phone. Dave was real clear about what was on the table. He said, “This is the amount of money I can pay you.” If I’m being completely honest, at that point I didn’t care about the money. I was like, “Let’s just go do this, I want to be part of this again.” That was on February 4, 2010.

I drove over to the band’s studio north of San Diego the next day with a couple of basses in my car. Fortunately I’d kept my chops up and retained my knowledge of the Megadeth catalog over the years. People were always asking me at bass clinics about Megadeth songs, and it was a matter of personal and professional pride to me that I could always pull out a certain lick if they wanted to hear it. So I went over and we rehearsed.