My Life With Deth (16 page)

I remember the Aerosmith tour started in Mobile, Alabama, and then we went to Little Rock, Arkansas. At the second show, Steven Tyler came into our dressing room as he had heard that Dave was upset about production issues on the tour. We weren’t getting a sound check
or much space onstage, and we couldn’t have a backdrop. I agreed with Dave on this. We weren’t a baby band of the kind that Aerosmith often took out on tour with them as their openers. We had paid our dues, and we didn’t deserve to be treated like the new kids on the block. As long as we were onstage, we wanted it to be a Megadeth show, but it clearly wasn’t that.

Steven came into our dressing room to talk with Dave and I remember him being very cool. He said, “I hear there are some problems. Is there anything I can do?” I thought that was very considerate of him, since he certainly didn’t have to do that, as the CEO of Aerosmith. He explained to Dave that he had walked similar roads and that if Dave ever needed him, he’d be there.

I took the opportunity to bring up Steven’s sobriety phone call to me years earlier. I said to him, “You probably won’t remember this, but about six years ago you actually called to talk sobriety with me when I was in my addiction,” and I thanked him for that.

That moment passed, though—and a couple of shows later we were fired off the Aerosmith tour. We had driven to Lubbock, Texas, where we were going to play the Civic Center. We were staying at the Holiday Inn, just a couple of blocks down from the arena. Nick, Marty, and I got off the bus and walked across the street to this little Mexican restaurant. The waitress asked, “What y’all doing in town?” and we told her that we were in Megadeth. She said “Megadeth? What are you doing here? We heard Jackyl was going to be at the show tonight. I heard it on the radio!” So we went to the pay phone—cell phones weren’t quite commonplace yet—called our tour manager and asked, “What’s the deal?” He said, “I know, I know. . . . I’m booking flights home right now.” Our hearts sank. How ironic that the hostess at the Mexican restaurant knew about us being fired off the tour before we did.

I remember flying home that night and feeling like I’d been kicked in the gut for the third time on this Countdown tour. Japan had been canceled, not once but twice; we’d let go of the six-week tour with Pantera
and White Zombie; and now we were getting fired off the Aerosmith tour. It was like three shots to the head. We were so deflated. It was the beginning of the end for Marty: it really took the wind out of his sails.

But we had to move forward. A new album, which we planned to call
Youthanasia
, was scheduled for release in 1994, and we regrouped to write it. During that process, two life-changing events took place for me, and what is more, they occurred on the very same day.

I’d known my girlfriend Julie Foley since 1988, when she worked for Doug Thaler, one of the partners at McGhee Entertainment. McGhee had some of the biggest names in rock ’n’ roll such as Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, the Scorpions, and Skid Row. It seemed like a really good opportunity for us to sign up with their firm. Julie and I really fell for each other, which was a little weird because we worked together. Dating the girl at the office is generally a business no-no. Yet at the same time, there was something there between us.

I remember our first date. Julie took me to a Los Angeles Kings hockey game as their office always had season seats to the hip sports events in town. To start, we went to a Mexican restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, and from there I had to make a stop at a drug dealer to pick up some cocaine before we went to the game, which I think she thought was a little odd. She eventually asked me some years back why I didn’t drink on that first date, and I told her it was because I was on heroin. When McGhee Entertainment dropped Megadeth, partly because I failed to complete rehab, Julie and I said good-bye. I thought that was the end of it. But when I sobered up in 1990, I gave Julie a call, and we became friends. We then began to date and fell for each other again. It truly was a new beginning for us.

Julie has put up with a lot from me over the years. The unspoken attitude of rock ’n’ roll is “I get to do whatever I want. Don’t you all wish you were me?” With all of the best rock ’n’ rollers, whether it be David Lee Roth or Jim Morrison, the message is that we get to live a life where you don’t have to go to work, you can drink and do drugs
and be with chicks all day. However, being sober, I’m called to a new standard. If you take away the sex and the drugs, you’re left with the rock ’n’ roll, which was an awakening for me because it brought me back to why I got into music in the first place when I was eleven years old. It was purely for the love of rock ’n’ roll. How ironic that I’d come full circle.

That’s really been my journey up to the present day, and sobriety has allowed me to have a daily diligence and to be aware of the distractions. Drugs, women, envy of other people, pride, gluttony, worrying that if one band sells a million albums, then we need to sell two million—these are human fears and temptations and they exist for all of us, but they are magnified in this particular industry. Addictions can magnify them even more.

In late 1993 Julie quit her job with Doug Thaler, who had moved on from McGhee Entertainment to start his own company, Top Rock Development Corporation. Julie was his top employee and office manager, and Mötley Crüe was their number-one act. This was around the time that Mötley parted ways with their singer Vince Neil. Julie felt that it was time to move on, and that her time was done at that company. She had no regrets, as she had enjoyed a really exciting and fun career in artist management.

Now that I wasn’t using drugs or drinking, I had some reserves of money saved up. Julie had been flying out to Scottsdale, Arizona, every weekend and looking at homes, as we were ready for a new adventure outside the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. Plus, as a musician in a global band, I didn’t have to live in the city any longer, as I did when I started my career there in 1983. So we moved to Scottsdale in September 1993 and bought our first house.

It was a leap of faith to move out to Arizona and leave the music hub of Los Angeles. Add to that the financial responsibilities of buying a home and cars and developing a life together as a family, especially with the volatility that comes with life in a rock band. Dave and his family had also moved out to Arizona a couple months prior, so it was
just the two of us band members making the migration at that point. I only knew one other person in town. His name was Craig S., and he was a real guru in the Phoenix recovery community.

Beyond our buying a home, the move to Scottsdale was really a major life changer for me and Julie. That was when I joined the recovery program for real as an active member, not just to show up late at the meetings and sit at the back as I so often did in L.A. I found it difficult to develop strong ties with the recovery community in Los Angeles in my early sobriety, but in Phoenix it was easier and much more relaxed. I learned to arrive early and be an active participant in the program. Craig became my official new sponsor, and I really went through the process top to bottom. I realized that I was capable of a lot of destruction, even as a sober guy. In order to keep that tendency in check I rigorously practiced the principles of recovery.

After the songwriting for the
Youthanasia
record in early 1994, there was a two-week break. Julie and I flew to Hawaii for a quick vacation getaway. It was on that vacation that I proposed marriage to her. I was lying on a massage couch one morning at the hotel, and mid-massage it just hit me that I should marry her on this trip. Originally, this had been just a vacation, nothing more. However, it was such an amazingly powerful inspiration that came over me. I went upstairs to our hotel room and proposed to her, right then and there. I said to her, “Why don’t we just get married while we’re out here, rather than having to plan for a big wedding and reception? Plus, we can hold a celebration when we get home to Arizona for all of our friends and family.” She accepted and agreed, and we bought a ring later that day. We found a pastor and we arranged to get married on the beach of Wailea, Maui, on April 2, two days later.

Before the ceremony on the morning of April 2, Julie and I went down to the restaurant to have breakfast. Afterward we went up to our hotel room, and I saw that the red message light was blinking on the telephone by the bed. I called voice mail and there was a message from
our next-door neighbor back home in Scottsdale. Her name was Lori and she had been watching our house while we were away. She was crying on the message, and she said, “David, something terrible has happened to your dad. You need to call home immediately.” My heart sank. I knew my dad had been admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, the week of our trip, because he had ongoing heart problems.

I immediately called my brother and my mom back home, and it turned out that my dad had passed away the previous night from congestive heart failure. He was sixty-nine. I was stunned. It was bittersweet, to say the very least, to get married on the same day that I lost my father. I was sobbing all the way through the wedding ceremony on the back lawn of the hotel, by the beach. One Ellefson had passed, yet another came into the family, on the very same day.

We cut the honeymoon short and flew back to Minnesota for my dad’s funeral two days later. My mom told me that my father had said to her, “I hope David and Julie take care of each other out in Hawaii.” He wanted me to marry her, and here I was returning to Minnesota with Julie as my wife—to attend his funeral.

By April 1994, my old life had been washed away.

A THOUGHT

Marriage

Getting married was one of the most trusting processes in the world for me, because it truly meant letting go of my past. It also meant partnership with another person on a whole new level. Julie wasn’t a groupie rock ’n’ roll girl. She was the real deal, with a good head on her shoulders, and she has become the true champion of our household in the years after we married, especially raising our two children.

What’s even more humbling is that we often mirror the examples set before us by our parents. I was lucky that my parents were married until the day my father passed away. They set a good example for me in marriage, as did Julie’s parents. My father was a real straight shooter, and knowing that our marriage was finally in place was one of the best gifts I could have given him at the end of his life.

“Most people adjust their lives to meet their goals, but addicts adjust their goals to meet their lives.”

—Anonymous

L
ife goes on despite the sadness of bereavement, and I remained on pretty solid ground with my new life during this period. There really is strength in numbers when you’re trying to move away from old playgrounds, playmates, and playthings. This was the first big proving ground for me of my motivation for being clean. When I watched other addicts go back down the old roads, it initially looked like fun. It was the morning after that didn’t look so pretty.

Megadeth continued to work as prolifically as ever. In 1993, we recorded a song for the Beavis and Butt-Head compilation album
The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience
. At the same time, we were also asked to cover a Black Sabbath song for the
Nativity in Black
tribute album. We went into that session at Enterprise Studios in Burbank, where we had done
Countdown to Extinction
, and right away I suggested that we do “Paranoid.” It was easy, and it was one of the more popular Sabbath songs. I used to play it in cover bands back in Minnesota. It was a no-brainer.

When Dave called, saying he wanted to get started on our next album,
Youthanasia
, it was a real relief for me to start working again. From a recovery point of view I had never sat down and made amends with him before. In early 1994 I sat down with him at the Orange Tree resort in Phoenix, where he and I sometimes played golf together, and I made amends with him. It was important that I clear my side of the street, and I felt it necessary to sit down man-to-man and clean a few things up. You can’t walk around with a life of resentment. It was great, because it started a new journey for us.

This was an exciting time, personally as well as professionally. When we moved out to Arizona, Julie cashed in her pension and put it in the bank. I had bought our house, but it was a little scary because I had taken this risk assuming that we would record another Megadeth album. It was a real leap of faith, and I had no backup plan. After all, I had no plans for a solo career. I grew up wanting to be in a band, because I was seeking camaraderie and a brotherhood to lock arms with. I wanted the band to work.

I started writing some songs with a friend of mine, Pat Schunk, who was a great guy from the Midwest I’d met through Nick Menza. Nick, Pat, and I would go mountain biking in the hills of Los Angeles just above the San Fernando Valley, in and around the
Rust in Peace
and
Countdown to Extinction
records. We hit it off and started writing some tunes together at his home in Studio City, a few blocks from where I lived at the time.

After we compiled a dozen songs or so I started shopping some of them around to friends at record labels and other music publishers. Megadeth was big enough that when I rang people in the industry, they would take my call. I realized that if my time in Megadeth ever came to an end, I might be able to continue a career in rock music. You don’t just become a solo artist, but I did enjoy the songwriting process and registered the songs with EMI Music Publishing. I even submitted a few of them to Megadeth to consider for
Youthanasia
, but I soon realized
that they weren’t written in the same spirit. They weren’t heavy metal songs.

It was good to get involved in the songwriting process with people outside the band. It not only gave me a greater appreciation for Megadeth, but it opened me up musically. I revisited instruments I would never be able to play in the band, such as keyboards and acoustic guitar. I learned to appreciate the skill of writing other kinds of music. Moreover, I got to experience some real producing, even if it was just for myself. Understanding the layering of instruments and working with other professional players is a process I still enjoy. A highlight of those sessions was when I hired John Bush of Armored Saint and Anthrax to sing on one of the songs. Those songs are still there, and effectively make up a solo album if I ever choose to make one.