Published: Friday, 11 October 2024 21:44 | Written by NI Rocks |
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In October 2019, David Ellefson was a guest on the Friday NI Rocks Show and we chatted about his solo projects, Metal Allegiance, Megadeth and much more. Five years later, he has departed from Megadeth and has been involved in numerous other projects. Ahead of the arrival of his band Kings of Thrash for a tour that includes dates in Dublin and Belfast, we arranged to have another chat on 8th October 2024 (coincidentally, five years to the day since our previous chat!)
You can hear that conversation on the Friday NI Rocks Show for 11th October, along with seven tracks that he plays on. We chat about Kings of Thrash, Dieth, The Lucid, Ellefson-Soto, working with KK Downing and more.
BLACK STONE CHERRY - Out of Pocket (ft Jess Leach)
BLACK OAK COUNTY - Camouflage
RICKY WARWICK - Don’t Leave me in the Dark (ft Lita Ford)
Y&T - Cold Day in Hell
SAXON - The Great White Buffalo
SLAUGHTER - Live Like There’s No Tomorrow
ELLEFSON – Wasted
Interview with DAVID ELLEFSON Part 1 (9 min)
MEGADETH – My Last Words
Interview with DAVID ELLEFSON Part 2 (9 min)
THE LUCID – Saddle Up and Ride (ft Violent J)
Interview with DAVID ELLEFSON Part 3 (5 min)
DIETH – Walk With Me Forever
Interview with DAVID ELLEFSON Part 4 (6 min)
MEGADETH – Rust In Peace…Polaris
ELLEFSON-SOTO - Vacation in the Underworld
FIREHOUSE - Love is a Dangerous Thing
VAN HALEN - Can’t Stop Lovin You
BON JOVI - Hey God
TYGERS OF PAN TANG – Rock Candy
STORACE - We All Need The Money
CASANDRA’S CROSSING - Closer to Heaven
GUNSHY - Ticket 2 Heaven
SINNER - The Biggest Lie
SLASH’S SNAKEPIT – Doin’ Fine
MAMA’S BOYS - Gentleman Rogues
PAT MCMANUS BAND - Belfast Boy
NI ROCKS – Hi David, thanks for taking some time to talk to Rock Radio NI. You’re coming back to Europe in a few weeks time with Kings of Thrash, kicking off the Anarchy in the UK tour. That includes shows in Dublin and Belfast. You’re no stranger of course to Europe and the UK, but it has been a while since you’ve been in Dublin and Belfast – are you looking forward to those shows.
DAVID – Yeah, absolutely. In fact it was such a highlight to see those. I think the last time that I was in Dublin or in Ireland, was probably November 2010. The next day we flew to Warsaw in Poland and started the Big Four. That was the very first show and that would have been 2010. I guess we were in Dublin in 2015, right ahead of the “Dystopia” album. It was Megadeth and Lamb of God and we played the Arena there. It was a four band bill. That was probably the last time that I was there.
NI ROCKS - Kings of Thrash of course focuses on the early Megadeth albums – particularly the first three albums, but I notice that the tour posters mention that you’ll be playing some tracks from the 1994 album “Youthanasia” as well. What can fans expect from the show?
DAVID – Exactly that (laughs). A bunch of deep cuts – songs that they haven’t heard in many, many years. Megadeth’s first trip over to Dublin and Belfast was on the “So Far, So Good…So What!” tour (1988) and they probably heard a lot of these songs, but it’s been that long ago since we did that. I just think that it’s a great trip down memory lane. A lot of fans have been clamouring to hear these songs and because of the way we operate and we’re pretty nimble, we can go into the crevices and go into a lot of cities that a bigger group couldn’t or wouldn’t go to. It allows us to take these songs to the people and give them what they’ve been asking for.
NI ROCKS - The band features yourself obviously and former Megadeth guitarist Jeff Young of course as well as drummer Fred Aching who has played for the Bullet Boys and Dead Groove Band and singer Chaz Leon. How did you link up with Fred and Chaz?
DAVID – So, it’s funny, I knew Chaz – he had a Megadeth tribute band called Woke Up Dead – and when I did a book signing tour for my book “More Life With Deth” (2019), which was my second memoir; we signed in La Jolla California, there’s a store there called Warwick’s. And they had hired Woke Up Dead to play out on the sidewalk (laughs) for the fans coming in and I went out and jammed a few songs with them on the sidewalk; it was really cool and a lot of fun. That was when I first met him. Fast forward to 2022 I guess it was and The Whiskey had reached out to Jeff about us playing at the Ultimate Jam night that they do on Tuesday nights. That’s Chuck Wright from Quiet Riot, that his little brainchild. So, they were going to do a tribute to the Big Four and Jeff asked me if I want to come out for the night and jam some tunes and I said yes. They had picked Chaz to be our singer; because they kind of put the band together for us. So they picked Chaz and Jeff had seen a video the next day of Fred playing in one of the Slayer tribute bands and he said that’s our guy – that guy is killer! So, we invited him in and that’s how it happened. It just clicked together fairly effortlessly, especially musically. It just fell right together for us.
NI ROCKS – I’m sure that you get asked all the time, but do you see a point where Kings of Thrash might write and record some new material?
DAVID – We have written some stuff. We had a song called “Bridges Burned” that we actually rolled out on the tour that we did back in 2023 I guess that was. The reason that we did was that there were some riffs that Jeff had from back in 1988 (laughs). Before Kings started, I mean literally maybe a month or so before Jeff and I played at the Whiskey together at the Ultimate Jam night, he and I were actually in the studio, just throwing some ideas back and forth. We had about four songs that we put down. We didn’t have a singer – Mike Heller who’s also the drummer in The Lucid and in Raven; he helped demo those up for us. We had the beginning of a creative process together and Jeff and I have written some songs for a few singers that we’ve worked with on a few things. We realised, by the nature of it, Kings of Thrash, it’s real sweet-spot and the origin of it was around playing an homage to Megadeth, but not just Megadeth; we throw a Metallica song in there – we throw in “Jump in the Fire”, we’ve played early Def Leppard. And of course coming around the UK and Ireland that gives even more opportunity to pick some ripe cover songs. You know, bands that were the influences of the 70's, the new wave of British heavy metal. Let's face it, you guys are the origin story of heavy metal as we certainly know it here in America. We've got a nice little list of covers as well as well as the “Youthanasia” stuff. And of course, those first three albums, that we have to draw from. So our set list is pretty vast man. I'm impressed for a band that's only been together for a couple of years of course, we've put the time in. We always want to give every tour a new set list, a new experience and that just grows our repertoire and it just grows more and more songs for us to be able to choose from.
NI ROCKS – You have the band Andry, featuring the Greek singer (Andry Lagiou) supporting the full tour. And on the UK and Ireland dates you have Hellgrimm as well. I noticed that on the European dates you have your band Dieth supporting. Are you doing both sets then?
DAVID – Yeah, I'm playing both sets. So, I’ve got to bring two black T-shirts, one for Dieth and one for one for Kings (laughs). And you know, I brought that up to the team. Dieth is a brand new band and it's an original band. People love to come out and see me and Jeff play these songs from our past, I mean it's kind of a no brainer. It's pretty easy, right? People line up for that. Promoters get excited about it. To break a new band, is very hard because it's a new name. It's everything; you're just starting from scratch. So I said, let's think about doubling them up. I'm willing to do it and I've got a heavy workload coming up. I kind of had the last month off to be honest with you and I've just kind of relaxed and chilled, and now this week I'm full music mode again. I've played a lot with both Dieth with Kings. I mean we're always kind of ping ponging back and forth. Back in July, Dieth was out with KK's Priest in Europe and then I went straight down to Australia with Kings, so these songs are all just right under my fingertips. It all comes back pretty easy and I think it's gonna be a fun night out to have both of my groups on the same bill; because people don't have to ask when’s Dieth coming, why always Kings of Thrash! Let's just do them all at once and this way we can have one big family BBQ together.
NI ROCKS – At this point I thought we’d play something that we might expect to hear from Kings of Thrash during the tour – something from those early Megadeth albums. Would you like to pick a track?
DAVID - Well, how about we play… so there are the singles, “Wake up Dead”, “Peace Sells”, of course, and then “Mary Jane” and “Anarchy in the UK”. You know, those are the singles from those early records. So, let's go for a deep cut. Last song on side B of “Peace Sells” - let's play “My Last Words”.
NI ROCKS – We’ve actually spoke before, back in 2019 ahead of the UK dates on your ‘Basstory’ tour – before most people had even heard of covid, back in those days! A lot has changed in the five years since then and I wanted to talk about some of your musical projects since then. We’ve talked about Dieth a little earlier. During that interview we had talked about your upcoming show, at that stage, in KK’s Steel Mill with KK himself. Within a few months of that gig happening KK’s Priest came about – with most of the members, except yourself, who played on stage that day– (Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, AJ Mills and Les Binks). Did you ever think about joining at that stage or what was the process there?
DAVID – Yeah, you know, it's funny, right as we were walking off stage from that show I told KK - dude, you better pack a suitcase, cause the phone's gonna be ringing for more of that. I mean, that was incredible, you know? And that might have been one of the first shows KK ever played at his own venue. It started with an invite. Hey, come on stage, let's play “Living After Midnight” or something. And then my friend Todd Decker here in America, he was working on some real estate stuff with KK over the years and that's what kind of connected us all back together again because you know KK was retired. He'd put his guitar down, proverbially speaking, I guess and just kind of walked away from that and was into some other things and new adventures in life. So when we got on the phone, I was kind of like, come on, dude, let's jam a tune. And then we got Ripper involved and then me and Ripper and KK got on the phone together. And then Ripper brings up Les Binks, the drummer. And I'm like, oh my God, Les is still around. And I said KK can we just fuckin’ play “Unleashed in the East, and then I'll just die and go to heaven and I'll never bother you again. (Laughs) We really had a great setlist, kicking it off with “Riding on the Wind”. KK said that they had never played “Before the Dawn” in Judas Priest.
He was excited about it, and hammering out “Between The Hammer and the Anvil” off “Painkiller” - because that was the tour Megadeth did with them - “Painkiller” / “Rust in Peace”. And so, obviously I heard that show every night. But man to kind of get to deep dive into some stuff! And I've said it before, I am Ian Hill’s biggest fan; I know him now as a friend and as a gentleman and I am just the biggest fan of his playing because he really understands how to play bass guitar in a heavy metal band. He just has all of it right. All the notes are in the right place. Of course, they've had great producers. Judas Priest is to me is really the template of the greatest heavy metal band ever. To have a great singer, great guitar parts, great songs, survived decades in the business and everything and at some level you're still at least kind of friends, if not best friends after going through those transitions. So they just have the ultimate respect from me and of course KK is forever a part of that, you know. When he started KK's Priest, I was in South America on ‘Basstory’ and I was calling KK like pretty much every day going dude - another interested promoter in Peru and Mexico and everywhere I was going.
He’d said right I'm going to get on to some other stuff now and then that became KK’s Priest. I could tell, it obviously wet KK's appetite - he said ok, I'm hungry and I'm back. As he said ‘I've tasted blood’ (Laughs). He was back and as a friend to him, if I could help in any way with that, I'm good. You know what I mean. And because I know! I've been in and out of Megadeth and I know what that's like. And I and I just kept going too. I just kept musically, being who you are; just keep going. As much as we're known from our bands, and they've defined us in our past, that doesn't have to just be all that we are moving forward either. Which is why, for me doing Kings of Thrash gives a nod back to that part of my life because that is a part of my life. It will always be a part of my life. Just as KK will always be part of Judas Priest’s history.
But I could tell with KK, that he was excited about new music and carving a new path and doing something new. I just saw him again the other night here in town and I think he does a really good job with his setlist. He kind of plays a Kings of Thrash setlist! He's playing “Diamonds and Rust”, “Before the Dawn” and he plays “The Ripper” - all the stuff that we want to hear. Those classics. But is still able to write new songs and I gotta say Ripper is at the top of his game. It's like the best I've ever heard and seen him. I mean, he's amazing, so I'm really happy for them that they got another chance at that.
NI ROCKS – They played in Belfast here a couple months ago too.
DAVID - And at the time I was in Megadeth, so as KK and I were talking about doing stuff, he keeps saying goes you're Megadeth and that that's why he chose to, you know, move on with a different bass player and a different band, because in his mind, I was not available. I already had a gig and he wasn't going to try to poach me from Megadeth. He's like, let me get my own team and start my own thing.
NI ROCKS – I think your first release after I spoke to you in 2019 was probably the Ellefson covers album called “No Cover”, but your first release after you left Megadeth was The Lucid album which was released in 2021, but I think work started in 2020. It’s a different sound than most people would associate you with. How did you become involved in that project?
DAVID - Well, my friend Drew Fortier, I've known for a for a while and he's a creative little dude, sweetest little man you could ever meet. You know, just a kind soul. And yet, I never really was familiar with his music. I knew he played in Bang Tango for a bit after he had done a documentary on them, so I had mostly known him as a film-maker and he had me jump in on the ‘Dwellers’ movie for a bit there. During COVID, obviously everybody was like, oh my God, but now and then it created a great moment. Like you said, the “No Cover” record - that was me just calling everybody up; going hey, let's not get discouraged, let's keep playing, let's keep making music.
NI ROCKS - Yeah, that was a great album.
DAVID - It came out really great didn’t it! Ear Music put that out for us. And that was really a cool moment. And so Drew started sending me songs. And I was like, these are really cool. In fact, I think the song “Hair” was the very first song he sent me. So, during COVID I went over to LA to where Mike Heller's studio was and Vinnie flew out from Detroit. So I mean, like we really decided, ok, let's put forth the effort on this. Drew drove out from Indianapolis and we were in the room together as a band while I was cutting bass parts and making songs together. I like to be in the room, man. I like to be in the room with people; creating parts together or making music together. It's one of the reasons I don't have a big home studio here. I like to go to a studio, work in that environment, have someone - I play the parts, you move the knobs and levers and let's be collaborative. I'm fine with having people produce me and work with me on parts. I bring my best and you bring your best, and together we make something really cool. That's how The Lucid record came together.
And then we did another batch of tunes, I guess it was the start of ‘23. I told Drew hey it's a quiet Christmas, so let's just let's just drop something. I think we literally did it Christmas Eve or something; the day before Christmas or the day after. I said, hey, it's quiet on the news sites, let’s stir the pot. That’s when we had Insane Clown Posse (singer Violent J) and we got involved with them a bit. It was just really a fun thing to do radical left turns you know. That's one of the things when you're not in a big band that always controls the narrative. Again, like Kings of Thrash. I can be nimble and light on my feet and I can move through the crevices and explore and really do some fun things now.
NI ROCKS – We talked about Dieth earlier on and that band started in 2022 with a couple of singles and the album (“To Hell And Back”) was released in 2023 through Napalm Records. That’s a truly international line-up with a Brazilian singer, yourself obviously and a Polish drummer. Again, how did you make those connections?
DAVID – Yeah, I got introduced by my friend Opus who plays drums in Dead by Wednesday; who I put a record out for through my label. And Opus is great, I hired him to play with me and Frank Bello when we toured and he has just been a good friend of mine. He was the one who made the introduction to me with Guilherme (Mirand). I didn't really even understand all that it was. I knew he was in Entombed AD and Martin (Furia) from Destruction was kind of a friend and around it somewhere. So Guilherme sent me the track and I really liked it. It was “Iin the Hall of the Hanging Serpents”. He sent me the track, I went into the studio here in town and I cut the track. And again, this is COVID era. It was January ‘22, I guess. So I went in the studio and cut the track. We really liked it. And Guilherme says, hey, lets do some more. So we just kept writing and I went over there - I guess it was April 2022 - and I just said let's shoot a video. Because we’d talked about it and I said I'm coming over. I got there and we banged out that video. I've flown literally around the world just to go meet people sight unseen and get in a room with my bass and make music, shoot videos. Victory goes to the bold, right? I've done that. I did that with Temple of Brutality when I flew to Florida; when Stet Howland was still in W.A.S.P. and we made a record in like a week. It was fun! Are they going to be forever, are you gonna win Grammys? Like, who knows? I mean, I moved to LA, met Dave. We started a band called Megadeth. Who knew? You know what I mean. I've done this my whole life. I've driven and flown around the world for the pursuit of the next musical experience.
NI ROCKS – You provided lead vocals for the track “Walk With Me Forever” which we’ll play shortly. That was your first time I think doing lead vocals, on a released track anyway. How did that come about and what can you tell us about that track?
DAVID - It was and the truth be told on that song is that Guilherme wrote the lyrics for it. And he wrote it about his friend Lars - LG from Entombed AD, who had passed away from cancer. And it's a lonely, haunting song about not being able to say goodbye, not fully being able to kind of complete the circle. And, you know, Guilherme has got a great gutteral voice for the for the heavy stuff. This, of course, required a different temperament. So I just said, let me step up to the mic and just kind of outline some melodies. And as I'm singing both Michal and Guilherme are like, dude, oh my God, your voice sounds great. Really, I said, I was just kind of making a little demo of some ideas. So they're the ones that that sort of forced the issue. We were in the studio at Kristian Kohle's place in Darmstadt, Germany where we were working on part of the record. He really did a great job producing me. It's one thing to say the words in pitch, it's a whole other to really get the mood of the song. So that was a great experience for me, because obviously I could sing and I write all the time but to put it together. The truth of it is, I’ve got a real clean voice, so to sing over top of heavy loud guitars and stuff like that, it's just not something that I've always gravitated toward. It takes a certain type of projection to do that and so this song was kind of handcrafted for me because it is a ballad and it's something that my voice suits well. We tune down to C in that band and C is a good key for me to sing in. So it all kind of came together at a good moment there for me.
NI ROCKS – It’s a great track and we’ll play it shortly, but before I do, are there plans for any more tracks from Dieth? Another album or more singles?
DAVID – Yeah, yeah, we've got new stuff. In fact, we were just working on a track back in August. I was over in Gdansk and we were shooting a video and we were in the studio cutting some new tracks. I've even been working on some stuff here at home. So, there's definitely more meat on the bone there. There's more material coming down the pipe.
NI ROCKS - Sometime next year then?
DAVID - Yeah, I think so, yeah.
NI ROCKS - Very good. We'll play that track now.
NI ROCKS – In October 2022 I bought a vinyl copy of the album “Vacation in the Underworld” that was released by Rat Pak Records. That album was a collaboration between yourself and singer Jeff Scott Soto and I thought it was an excellent album. How did that project with Jeff come about?
DAVID - You know, after the “No Covers” record, Andy Martongelli and I were writing some songs and we were talking about singers. And he said dude, you love Jeff's voice, you're friends with the guy; why don't you just call him up and say let's start working on something? Andy’s really good about that. He's really good at urging me to send the e-mail, pick up the phone and make a call; because I'm always like, nah, they wouldn't want to work with me, they're busy, they’ve got other stuff going on, you know. (Laughs) So finally I just picked up the phone and he was all in, and it was great. Andy and I had a lot of the material written musically but when Jeff got involved, I mean man, within about a month or six weeks that thing was done. Again, it was COVID time, so people weren't busy touring, but man it clicked together really well.
NI ROCKS - It's a great album, actually it appeared on my Facebook memories today because it arrived; obviously I live in the UK but I ordered it from America from Rat Pak Records and it arrived this time two years ago. The vinyl one;, I like my vinyl. So it was two years ago that it arrived with me. It is a great album.
DAVID - Nice. Yeah.
NI ROCKS – Are we likely to see any further releases from Ellefson-Soto at some point?
DAVID - Yeah, that's all I can say is yes.
NI ROCKS - Ok, you can’t tell me obviously. (Laughs)
DAVID – (Laughs) Are there more songs? Yes. Are you working on some? Yes. We'll leave it there. (Laughs).
NI ROCKS - OK, that's fine. It's good to hear. I appreciate that; it's good to hear.
DAVID - Gives you hope? Yeah, good.
NI ROCKS – Again, we’ll play something from that album later in the Show. Is there a track from that first album that you’d like to pick to play?
DAVID - You know, why don't you just play “Vacation in the Underworld”? I mean, that's a really good song. And what is interesting about that song in particular is that my friend Steve Conley, who was in Flotsam and Jetsam but was also in F5 with me; he sent me that track during COVID and he said, hey, I'm thinking about putting a couple things up online on YouTube, just to kind of pass the time during COVID. I said sure send it over and he sent me that over; and that also has Ken Mary on drums. A fantastic drummer who I've been friends with since he played in Alice Cooper; when Alice took Megadeth on tour with him in 87. And he’s my neighbour, he lives here in Phoenix nearby me. So, I played bass on it and I sent it back to Steve and then and then kind of right after that, we started working on the Ellefson-Soto record. And I know that Steve's a big fan of Jeff and Yngwie and all that stuff, and I said dude I'm working on this record with Jeff Scott Soto. Can I use that song because I think he'd be perfect on it and he was excited and goes hell yeah. So it's funny that it became the title track of the record and it was just kind of this ancillary thing that was sort of floating around out there. So I'm thankful that Steve let me use it because I think we made a pretty big noise with it. That became the lead single and we shot a video for it. It's played exceptionally well, of course, so we’re very happy about that.
NI ROCKS – When we talked back in 2019 we talked about Altitudes & Attitude and Metal Allegiance. I noticed that there was a 10th Anniversary Show in January this year. There has always been talk about a third album since the second one came out I think, but is there anything happening there?
DAVID – Yeah, it's funny that band. Obviously we were pretty active with it there for a while and you know the tough thing with that is just scheduling that and also because we had so many people then, promoters are like, well, if this person's involved, we'll take it; if this person's involved, we'll pay you that. So it always became sort of subjected to the singers and different people. And at some point, we just kind of went, you know, touring this is very hard and expensive. It was actually Alex Skolnick. He goes why don't we just do events? We can do cruises, we can do NAMM and the House of Blues has become our anchor. That why it's more of a celebration type of band rather than something that's out trying to grind and sort of make the doughnuts, you know, out on the road. And so that's why we've done it like that because it was the 10th anniversary, you know. Menghi said, let's try to do an East and West Coast. So, that’s why we did that. That's why we did an East Coast one and now we're preparing, for Nam and the House of Blues coming up in January as well.
NI ROCKS – The upcoming Kings of Thrash tour will take you into mid November - so 2025 isn’t far away. Have you any plans for next year that you can share that we haven’t talked about already?
DAVID - Yeah, it's funny, right? I'm right on the cusp of a whole bunch of stuff that is coming together right now. I can't tell you quite yet. That's why the next six weeks or so between UK and Europe is front view right now. We're always booking things a year out, so there's a bunch of stuff coming around. In fact, there was just another call today about something. It's great when the phone rings and as people know, I try to say yes to as much of it as I can just because being in the room and making music with your friends is really what this has always been about, you know? And I just try to keep that as the priority.
NI ROCKS – That’s all the questions that I have. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I thought we’d finish with another Megadeth track. Again, do you want to pick one?
DAVID - Why don't we play “Polaris, Rust in Peace; that way we get something off that album. I think fans would be pissed if we didn't play something off that album. So there you go.
NI ROCKS – Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
