Megadeth main man Dave Mustaine recently appeared on Eddie Trunk’s Sirius XM show and reflected on the writing process for the band’s “Super Collider” album. Needless to say, there were aspects of it in regards to former bassist David Ellefson that Mustaine was not happy with. “I came in one morning and [producer] Johnny K was in there [working on] a song named ‘Kingmaker,’” Mustaine said.
“’Kingmaker’ was done and I came in there, and I heard Ellefson and Johnny K in there recording a part at the beginning of the song. And it was nothing to do with the song; it had nothing… the riff wasn’t in the record anywhere. And I came in and I said, ‘What are you two doing?’ (They go) ‘uhh … uhh…’ You know, trying to explain, ‘I’m gonna f*cking poach your song and I’m going to put one of my riffs in front of the song.’ And it was so pathetic. I just felt so sorry for the two of them. I just said, ‘Go ahead. Leave it in there.’ But if you listen to ‘Kingmaker’ tonight when you go home, you’re gonna hear the beginning of the song, there’s a really dumb*ss part in there. And that’s it.”
Ellefson responded to the comments on the latest episode of the “2020’d” podcast. “The record was done, or at least my bass parts were. And Dave, at the end of the session, at the end of the day, he said to me, he said, ‘Hey, man. If you wanna go through the record, if there’s anything you wanna add or tweak or change, blah blah blah blah,’ giving me free license to do so, ’cause he had signed off on everything. So [I said], ‘All right. No problem.’ So after he left, me and [then-MEGADETH guitarist] Chris Broderick and Johnny K sat in the studio and I said, ‘You know, I do have this one little bit, this little thing,’ and I showed it to them, and Broderick goes, ‘Dude, that would be really cool at the beginning of ‘Kingmaker’.’ And I said, ‘Huh. Interesting idea.’ And in my opinion, I think ‘Kingmaker’ is probably the better song on the record, just off the top for me. Johnny liked it. We sat and we worked on it and put it together. And we were all excited. Dave walks in the next day in a much different mood — grumpy, I might add [laughs] and not feeling so joyous as the night before. And I think either me or Johnny said, ‘Hey, I’ve got something I want you to listen to that we worked on last night.’ And there was this kind of disapproving look. And Johnny plays it for him, all excited. ‘Cause I think the three of us [Johnny, Chris and me] all heard the same thing: ‘Hey, if you wanna add anything, if you wanna work on anything, please do.’ Well, Dave didn’t seem to maybe remember that conversation. And so what he walked into was, ‘Why the hell are you messing with my song?’ And I think he pulled Broderick aside and said, ‘Don’t you dare add David Ellefson’s stuff to my songs.'”
Ellefson went on to say that the songwriting process when he returned to the band in 2010 had changed from 10 years prior when he last worked with Mustaine. “And I’d been working with all kinds of other people where it’s, like, ‘Hey, killer idea. How about this? How about that?’ You know — collaborative,” Ellefson explained. “You’re having musical conversations in the room. And knowing how things had been in the past, Dave will start with something, bring in an idea, and maybe someone says, ‘Hey, that’s cool. How about we add this little bit here? Or maybe that riff goes with this riff.’ And so I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got something that might go with that.’ Dave immediately took his guitar off, walked in the office. I looked at [then-Megadeth drummer] Shawn Drover, and Shawn and Chris are just shaking their heads. I said, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ He goes, ‘Dude, trust me. The days of collaborating are long gone. That Megadeth that you were in, that’s way over.’ So [I spoke to Dave] in the office, and Dave, he was furious, but yet we didn’t want our newfound friendship to deteriorate, so I said, ‘What’s the deal?’ And he said, ‘Don’t try to put your ideas into my songs.’ I said, ‘No problem.’ I said, ‘All good. Today is day one. No worries.’ And that was the last we ever jammed together. Everything after that, on every other Megadeth record after that, it was just Dave writing the songs, doing his thing.”
Ellefson said his dismissal from the band, which came following an online scandal involving sexually explicit text messages that were leaked to social media, was the final straw for Mustaine. The former Megadeth bassist said Mustaine had years of built-up resentment towards him. “I kind of saw the events of last year as just the perfect opportunity to choose box office over brotherhood,” Ellefson said. “I look back at it now and I feel like I got kicked out of hell. So, whatever. It was abusive, for sure. It was just abusive. It was unnecessary. … Dave even said he had a resentment toward me that he couldn’t let go, and I didn’t know what it was.”
Ellefson said that Mustaine kicking him out was similar to what Metallica did to Mustaine years earlier. “Look, I think part of it, too, is he’s obviously not gotten over this thing about being fired from Metallica, so he wanted to do to somebody else what he felt they did to him, which is kick him out and then someone else play his guitar parts. ‘So let’s kick Junior out and then have someone else play his bass parts.’ And to me, I’m, like, I don’t care. I already f*cking helped put the record together. I played on the record. I got paid to be on the record. So, hey, if you wanna get someone else to play, whatever.”
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