Earlier this year, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine was asked by SiriusXM’s Eddie Trunk if he had any plans to bring back former members of the band for guest spots on the band’s lengthy farewell tour. Mustaine said: “I can’t really do that, because of the behavior of one of the band members in the past,” presumably referring to former bassist David Ellefson who was fired in 2022 after it was revealed he was involved in an explicit texting exchange with a 19-year-old female Dutch fan.
“To have it end where it did, and then for Dave even recently to say, ‘Oh, because of what one person did, I can’t bring anyone back.’ You know what? F*ck off. Just f*ck off,” Ellefson told the “Quemar Un Patrullero” podcast. “Who is that one person? It wasn’t me, ’cause I didn’t do anything that would prevent me from coming back at all. At all. And so this sort of deflectionary thing, to sort of get on some moral high ground, it’s, like, gimme a break. Really? And look, I had rock stars much bigger than Dave coming to my side and coming to my aid, standing by me, saying, ‘Man, just let me know if you need anything at all. That’s really f*cked up.’ It’s f*cked up about how I was handled being discarded. People saying, ‘I’m really disappointed that they chose business over brotherhood,’ ’cause at the end of the day, the brotherhood will always last beyond the business of owning a rock band — especially something we started and built together.”
Part of Ellefson’s podcast appearance can be viewed below.
