My Life With Deth (27 page)

The highlight of that tour was playing at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal City. Kerry King hadn’t been able to join us in the encore jam at the Big Four show in Sofia, Bulgaria, because he had been called to approve some video footage of Slayer while it was going on, so we invited him to come up and play “Rattlehead” with us onstage. He’d been the very first performing guitarist in Megadeth apart from Dave, so it was a great opportunity to capture the moment. It was cool to have Kerry up there.

I happened to be on the cover of
Bass Player
magazine at that time, which was a huge thing for me. I was so thrilled when they called me about that. They told me that it was high time I was on their cover, as I’d done a lot of writing for them over the years and never been on there. It was the same month as the magazine’s Bass Player Live event, too, where I also played, so I was completely thrilled. That was definitely
a high point in my career, and even more so because it wasn’t simply part of the regular press for a Megadeth album.

We went to Australia in December. That whole year was such a great ride, playing for people all around the world. It was good to be back. Fans saw that there was a genuine camaraderie onstage, the band sounded great, and obviously no one was complaining that we were playing
Rust in Peace
all the way through.

In January 2011, I inked a deal with Jackson Guitars for a signature bass, which you can see at the bottom of this page. My relationship with them is a good one, because, having worked with endorsing artists at Peavey for so long, I can walk into the office and communicate with them on a business level as well as be the famous guy who endorses their instrument. I know the numbers and I know how the machine works, and their office is only fifteen minutes away from my house in Scottsdale, so it’s very cool.

Since then I’ve often performed at bass clinics for Jackson and Hartke, my signature amp manufacturers. I did many of these events in tandem with my friend Frank Bello, the bass player in Anthrax.

NAMM in 2011 was amazing. It was great to be there as a bass player, back with my home band, performing for my peers, which we did at Dean Guitars’ Friday-night show at the Grove venue, close by the Anaheim Convention Center.

After NAMM, we went into the songwriting and then the recording sessions for the next Megadeth album,
Thirteen
, which was probably the most fun album I’ve ever recorded with the band. Within a week I had all of my bass lines for its thirteen songs done and in the can. We brought back “New World Order,” which was an old track which we’d demoed in the fall of 1991 in the
Countdown to Extinction
sessions.

Within a ten-week period or so, between the Indio Big Four date and the next Big Four show in Germany, we wrote and recorded the record. We’d never named an album after a number before, and thirteen is a cool, spooky number, so there were a lot of firsts there, among them the fact that it was my first full-length album since I’d rejoined the band.

We played more Big Four shows in Europe in summer 2011 and then joined the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem tour in America. Then there was the Big Four show at Yankee Stadium in New York, which looks to have been the last of those shows for now. It was wonderful. I was really happy for the Anthrax guys: it was right in their backyard, after all, with them being the New York champions of the Big Four. It was the final flag in the ground, ending on U.S. shores, where all of the Big Four are from, which had huge significance. It was also bicoastal, because we’d played one in California, too: the two shows on the West and East Coasts represented the origins of the four bands really well.

We released
Thirteen
on November 1, and we played the Jimmy Kimmel show the night before, dressed in Halloween costumes. I was the Wolfman, Dave was Frankenstein, guitarist Chris Broderick was the Phantom of the Opera, and Shawn was Dracula. A couple of days later we flew down to South America to kick off the Thirteen tour and
carried on playing live dates all the way through until December 8, 2012. The back end of the tour essentially turned into the
Countdown to Extinction
twentieth-anniversary tour. It was great to celebrate our legacy with these anniversaries as well as create new music.

I looked back and realized that we had pretty much done three years of nonstop touring since I rejoined the band in early 2010. I needed some relaxation time, as everybody in the band did, before we began recording the next Megadeth album,
Super Collider
.

It’s been a three-year victory lap for us, and now my kids are three years older. They’re really growing up. It’s been so rewarding to see Athena take an interest in music: she’s artistic and passionate and rapidly becoming the wonderful guitar player and pianist of the Ellefson household. I’ve also seen my son pursue his interests and become focused on languages, engineering, and sports trivia. To see them become interested in creative arts is a huge thing for me as a father: the cycle feels complete.

When Roman was a baby, he hated it whenever I left to go on tour. He didn’t know where I was going; he just knew I was leaving, and he hated it. He was fifteen when I rejoined Megadeth and it was completely different this time. When the press release went out, he immediately received tons of texts and instant messages from his friends saying, “I can’t believe your dad’s back in Megadeth!” and this time, it was a good thing. It was a big change for him and Athena, of course, although I’m not away for long, extended tours anymore, and we talk via Skype every day.

I still love playing metal, but my least favorite part of the touring experience at this point is the travel. Time zones still create problems for me. My main focus is that ninety minutes to two hours onstage at around eight in the evening, with the gym visit and phone calls in the daytime. Tours these days are better if they last over three weeks, even though that is a long time away from home, simply because you need at least two weeks for your body to get used to that daily routine.

For thirty-five years I’ve stood in the rifleman’s position with my hip twisted and my left arm out, playing a fifteen-pound bass guitar hanging from my shoulder. I’ve got a chronic chiropractor’s issue, which I have to deal with out on tour: my lower left sacrum goes out, and that affects the whole left side of my spine and the vertebrae in my neck, and that can make you sick. Dave, with his martial arts training, can give me a pretty good adjustment: he can twist my lower back so it pops back into place. Most people can’t bear to watch, because it looks
so painful, but it actually brings great relief. That’s my only significant health issue, though.

When traveling I usually only suffer from respiratory issues like bronchitis and sinus stuff: I’ve been blessed with a strong stomach, and I don’t get too ill with food. Nothing is worse than playing onstage with a fever, because just touching your guitar strings hurts and the kick drums thunder through your head, so I normally travel with antibiotics in order to get through it quickly. The feeling is not unlike detoxing from heroin, so getting ill onstage is more or less the only time I ever think of that drug anymore. I don’t take any pain relief, either: while my addiction may not be my fault, my recovery is definitely my responsibility, and these days doctors dispense drugs like they’re candy—so I have to be vigilant.

My faith walk continues and progresses. I now study in a Senior Mentoring Program, or SMP, for members of a congregation who wish to become ordained. It is run by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, which offers online studies. My pastor suggested that I would be a good candidate for it, and so I now spend a week each year on campus in addition to pursuing my online studies. It’s something I’m passionate about.

To be accepted into the course was a real miracle: to be saved from heroin addiction, to be rewarded with success, and then to be pulled into church work and still be allowed to sharpen myself with spiritual knowledge is an incredible series of gifts, and an amazing journey. It was interesting, because one or two of my fellow worshippers questioned the fact that a guy in a band called Megadeth could really be studying on this course. I keep my lifestyle clean with even more diligence as a result, especially as I’m now technically Vicar Ellefson, essentially a pastor in training.

As I write this, I’m on a one-year sabbatical to allow myself the necessary time to go through another album and tour cycle. The studies were really enjoyable, although one particular challenge was preparing
for stage warm-ups while having my laptop on backstage and keeping an eye on the Tuesday-evening seminary chats that are part of the course. Time zones make that a bit more difficult, too. I will complete the remaining three years: in fact, by the time you read this I will probably have resumed them.

Pastor Jon was a little sad that I had to unplug from my worship leader role with MEGA Life!, but he was excited about me getting more involved in church work. He also told me that my son, Roman, is one of the very few kids he’s met who has the true heart of a pastor. I consider Pastor Jon a friend and a mentor, and he’s provided some fantastic opportunities for spiritual growth for me and my family, so I felt some conflict when I told him that I wanted to rejoin the band. But I knew I had to do it: I had to clean my slate.

My reasoning was that I had been a sober member of the band for many years, and whoever pulled me off the Megadeth campus for eight years—whether God did it, or I did it, or if it was a combination of the two of us—I was clearly supposed to go back and take care of unfinished business. In Corinthians 6, Jesus says that if you’re at a church and you’re ready to praise God, but you have anything outstanding with your fellow man, leave the church immediately. Don’t give up your money, don’t sing any songs. Go and make it right with that other person before you come back into the church and stand there as a hypocrite praising God.

That’s pretty heavy, and for me it meant I had to go and repair my relationship with Megadeth. It’s interesting to have gone to college to study business and also work in a church, because the church is where business and spirituality come together. Boy, what a collision that can be if it’s born of human design.

So what does my future hold? It appears that we can do Megadeth for as long as we want, or at least as long as we can still headbang and fit into our jeans. We’ll keep producing new material, and there seems to be an ongoing demand for us to play live. I’m still active as a volunteer with MEGA Life! Someday I’ll likely settle down into a church and
work there, but until then, an amazing opportunity for some ministry work lies ahead of me. If there’s ever a chance to be of service, which happens because people e-mail me from all over the world asking about sobriety, I take it.

I truly have a “mega life.” God is the author of all of life and everything fits together perfectly.

A THOUGHT