My Life With Deth (21 page)

I look back on this time as some of the happiest years of my life, but the initial stages were tough. I went through a long period of grief, of emptiness and anger. Unfortunately, I took a lot of that anger out on my wife, not because she deserved it but because she happened to be the closest person around at the time. Luckily, she remained a calm voice of reason. I’d been sober a long time, and I kept the faith that it would work out if I rolled up my sleeves, got to work, and really put my faith in God to carry me through.

It did work out, of course. I was really getting on with my life now. I had to suit up and show up every day, and what I found was that I was resourceful enough as a person to do that. Unlike with Megadeth, where the money was good but the demands were often small in that all they required of me was a couple of hours a day, now my day was completely different. It was invigorating. My mind was fired up, and I was creatively charged. I began to realize that I was going to be okay.
Despite the reduced income, all my bills were paid and my family’s needs were seen to. As a bonus, after a year or so the Megadeth catalog recouped its advances and royalty checks started showing up.

Did I miss being the center of attention onstage? Sure, at the beginning. But I knew from my recovery work that the greatest rewards in life come from serving, not from being served. That’s what we do in recovery: we prepare a place for fellowship, especially for those in need. Best I can tell, those of us that have the most successful lives do not base them on the size of our tax returns or how many cars we have in the garage. Instead, our lives are built on inner peace, which results from honest self-appraisal, housecleaning of old ways, and continued service to others. I was okay with putting “David Ellefson from Megadeth” to one side and introducing myself on the phone as “David Ellefson from Peavey.” I was playing on a big field now called corporate America, and it suited my personality perfectly.

Of course, there were some interesting contrasts, one of which came when I rolled into the NAMM show of 2003. NAMM sponsors a huge trade conference held in Anaheim, California, every January to showcase new innovations in guitars, basses, keyboards, drums, amps, and other technologies.

The NAMM shows are executed on an extremely large scale, second only in size to the Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany. NAMM is always full of rock and metal fans, and they were constantly coming up to me asking when Megadeth was going to re-form, and how Dave’s arm was. I couldn’t really answer these questions in the way they wanted, of course. My job was to keep my head down, learn how NAMM operated from the inside, and work hard for Peavey. But they kept coming at me, because I was completely exposed to the general public in the Peavey trade show booth. At the end of the show we had to take the gear apart and put it all on pallets to be taken back to Mississippi. It was quite a workload, seeing as I hadn’t set up or torn down gear in maybe fifteen years! I’d had roadies and stagehands to handle those duties for most of my career.

But I didn’t resent my change of status. I was in my late thirties at
this point, married with two children, sober for thirteen years, and there was a wisdom in me to know that the rock star life was the dream of a teenager. The product you’re selling is mostly a fantasy. It’s not really a song or a T-shirt; it’s “Don’t you wish you could be like me?” That’s an immature product from the viewpoint of someone who is heading toward forty.

My Peavey gig was a reprieve from rock ’n’ roll. It was a spiritual steroid, if you will, and it enabled me to recalibrate and take stock of my life. It also enabled me to be an example to my children. As a parent, I realized that the impact I made on my children would be more important than the satisfaction I got from rock ’n’ roll.

That NAMM show was crucial, because it showed me that I could survive it. Every subsequent NAMM show was the same. I was there to work for Peavey. At the same time, Megadeth’s work was becoming more revered. Our early albums were now being looked upon as iconic. I also started to design some amps and basses for Peavey, one of which was a signature-series bass called the Zodiac series. I became more confident in my dual role as a rock star and employee. Some companies might not have welcomed that, but Peavey did.

At that time, Dave Small, a drummer friend from Phoenix, told me that he had been playing with a local guitarist I knew named Steve Conley. I had produced some demos for a band Steve was in called Lifted, which I really liked, so I went over to his house with my bass and played on a track for him. He was initially going to use that track as an audition for a position in the band Halford, fronted by Judas Priest’s lead singer.

The vibe with Steve and Dave was fun, so I went back a couple of weeks later and started playing with them again. That was the day that a new band, F5, was born. Two or three song ideas came immediately. We came up with the band name when Small was watching the movie
Twister
. F5 was the name of the huge tornados, “the fingers of God,” as they are known. We had such an explosive, creative vibe, even though I had said that I would never put another band together again.

I knew how much hard work it would be to put a band together,
and I knew exactly what issues would follow, but I still enjoyed performing. The Good Lord intended me to have a guitar or a bass in my hand, and I loved playing with F5. It was really the first time that I felt validated for my musical ideas, too.

I was on a new path in my life and now a new band was starting to form around me. It was a true labor of love—we rehearsed two or three times a week and it was very exciting. The guys were all younger than me, with a more modern ear. They tuned their guitars down, like the guitarists in Dry Kill Logic had, and, as before, when I suggested ideas that I’d come up with in the ’90s, they sounded totally modern.

The only obstacle I recall came when our first show was booked. It was all ready to go, but I put the brakes on it, suddenly realizing that it was the first show I’d played post-Megadeth. The reality hit me. If I was going to take it to the stage, I wanted it to be great. This slowed F5’s trajectory at first. It probably would have been good for us to go out and play a few club shows rather than me trying to launch it as this big project. Despite this, F5 had an album’s worth of songs and JVC in Japan offered us a recording deal.

I also began to work with Billy Smiley, the guitar player and songwriter of a big Christian group called Whiteheart. I had met him in Nashville on the last day of my bass overdubs on the
Risk
album. He was moving to Scottsdale at the time. I connected with him three years later and we became friends. He came to my house the day after Megadeth ended, and told me to get back up on the horse and ride, and to start writing new songs. It was fantastic that he did that. We recorded an album together under the name Symphony in Red, which rearranged hymns for rock bands, similar to what Trans-Siberian Orchestra does with Christmas songs. I played with Billy for the next few years, doing sessions on and off, mostly in Nashville. One of them was an album by famed Christian artist Scott Wesley Brown, called
The Old Made New
, which is still one of my favorites of the albums I’ve played on because of the lyrical content. I put it on when I’m driving in my car and it just feels good, a very inspirational record.

As F5 began in early 2003, my name was suggested to Soulfly as a possible bass player. I went down to see them at the Marquee Theatre in Tempe, and they were really good. Primer 55 guitarist Bobby Burns was playing bass and the guitarist Marc Rizzo was amazing. I spoke to their manager, Gloria Cavalera, and told her that I’d be happy to record and tour with them if they ever needed me, and so she decided that Bobby and I would both play on the next album,
Prophecy
. It was a very fun session, and very creative.

Soulfly’s singer, Max Cavalera, was a great guy to play with. The album was just about the most relaxed metal session I’ve ever been a part of. Max didn’t dictate the bass parts to me: he had hired me to do what I did, and so he let me have complete free rein for everything. I had total liberty with the bass parts and I was very creative with them, which was very different from Megadeth, where many times bass parts were written for me as part of the overall composition or production. It was two completely different schools of thought.

It wasn’t the right time to join Soulfly full-time, although I did enjoy my experience with them. I was still fairly new in my Peavey position, and that was a steady job I could do at home. If I’d gone out on tour with Soulfly for long periods, I doubt I would have been able to keep it. The Peavey gig provided security and stability for my family, and it also allowed me to work with F5. As long as I could get my job done I could tour, although I never wanted to be away for more than a couple of weeks, for ethical reasons. I wanted to be home and be a good example for my kids. I was able to attend my kids’ sporting events at school and so on—which wouldn’t have been possible had I still been a member of a full-time touring band.

I did play two weeks of shows with Soulfly, though. Bobby Burns had suffered a minor stroke and Gloria called me and said, “Can you be in San Diego on Monday?” She had Dan Lilker come in to fill in after me. Soulfly with me in it sounded great. It was really heavy, and there was a great musical kinship and camaraderie among us. We played really well together. I’d experimented with lower tunings in F5, so I was accustomed to that approach in Soulfly. In fact, most of the things I did away from Megadeth were in unusual tunings.

I was recording the
Prophecy
album with Soulfly when all of a sudden Dave called me and said, “Hey, I’m ready to play again.” It wasn’t the first time we’d spoken since the split: we’d had a couple of conversations, but they were not friendly, because when I declined Dave’s offer to manage the Megadeth catalog, it meant that Dave had to handle all the collateral damage himself. However, I was genuinely thrilled to hear from him.

I met him in Starbucks again, on Ninety-Second Street and Shea, by our homes in Scottsdale, where we had had many Megadeth meetings. He called me two days later and said that Sanctuary were interested in resuming their deal with us, and I assumed that we would simply pick up business again right where we had left off. However, the terms were that this time everything would be completely rearranged, with my participation and reward only a fraction of what it had previously
been. As Dave has stated, it was initially hoped that the project would be his solo record, not a band album. It was almost as if I was being offered the position back in the band as a legal obligation.

I declined the offer and a short while later I decided to launch a lawsuit. The suit was specifically designed to drive both parties back to the negotiating table. It was simply a matter of a member leaving the band, rather than any kind of corporate meltdown. It was mishandled, however, and in many ways not something I really wanted to do, even though there I was, smack-dab in the middle of the whole thing.

What I learned from it was that you can win a battle and ultimately lose the war. It strained the relationship between Dave and me, and it divided the fans, because that’s what happens when you go through a nasty breakup like that. I didn’t sleep for nine months while it was going on, because taking this kind of aggressive legal action is not in my nature.

If I had to do it all over again, I would never have filed the suit. I would simply have driven over to Dave’s house, discussed it with him, agreed to the deal, and then simply had the attorneys handle the legalese. But I had to go through this as a learning process, and the terms to which we ultimately agreed were better, if not hugely so, than the original terms I’d been offered.

Time does heal wounds, for sure, and after a little while you gain some perspective and you realize that you should be thankful for a lot of things. I learned to follow my instincts, and when my instincts said no to the lawsuit, I should have listened. I had a record deal with F5 and my life was starting to blossom in a whole new direction. I was building self-confidence. I’d moved away from Megadeth being my only identity and I could stand up for myself. That in itself was a good thing.

As soon as the lawsuit was settled, I enrolled in college for a two-year course to finish my bachelor’s degree in business. I continued to work for Peavey, certain that my life with Megadeth was over.

A THOUGHT

Politics Leads to Religion

Most of us have a political stance on any given subject. It’s our God-given right as humans to have opinions. I generally consider myself to be a liberal-minded person with a “live and let live” mind-set, which has developed from traveling the world all these years. When you see people from other cultures with beliefs different from yours, it reminds you that there may be more than one way to do things in this world. In short, keeping an open mind has helped me to be tolerant of other people and their lives.