DAVID ELLEFSON: How One Fan Letter Changed The History Of MEGADETH

GearGods.net recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

GearGods.net: One thing I was wondering was that it seems that right around "Countdown To Extinction", you and a couple of other bassists in that scene really started getting away from playing along with the guitars and really coming out there. I remember picking up the first bass tab book that I ever owned, which was "Countdown To Extinction". Was that something that you were really conscious of at the time or was it something that you didn't think about?

Ellefson: It was very much so. "Countdown To Extinction" record was a very intentional record. We came off of the "Rust In Peace" after about 18 months on the road and specifically finished up the Clash Of The Titans tour, which is a big arena tour of MEGADETH, ANTHRAX and SLAYER. We just realized that that was as big as thrash metal was ever going to get. In order to take it up into the arenas and to really blow it out to that level took the combined efforts of all three of us to do it. What we saw with MEGADETH, that lineup that we had at that time, we realized that there was this incredible songwriting ability and melodic sensibility in the band that went beyond just playing thrash metal. We had no intentions of dissing thrash metal, but we just knew that we could do even more. So we went into writing "Countdown" in two writing phases. The first stuff was probably more thrash stuff because we were playing thrash every night in the Clash Of The Titans tour. So when we came off the road, we spent another two months in writing sessions in November and December of 1991 knowing that we were going to turn the calendar to '92 and in January go in and start recording. Those last two months produced some really different material with things like "Sweating Bullets", "Symphony Of Destruction", "This Is My Life", "High Speed Dirt", "Captive Honor", and as a result, we were very deliberate about creating and every note was scrutinized with extreme detail. "Rust In Peace" was written in a band room and then we went in and we just pushed the red button and tracked our parts. "Countdown To Extinction" was a painstaking process of really analyzing every note: why is it there, is it played with purpose, does it serve a great melodic and harmonic springboard for this song. This is why that record was almost excruciating and almost painful to make, yet also very liberating because we said, "Hey, we're not going to stick to the status quo. We're not going to do what we've always done. We're really going to push ourselves to take this thing to a whole other level and really let there be an extension to MEGADETH." As a result, it's been the most successful record that we've ever had to this day. Of course, there were some stars that lined up: MTV was really into playing metal at the time; the heavy metal movement was very popular. So there were a lot of outside indicators that kind of put the wind in our sails because two years later, when we went in to record the "Youthanasia" record, suddenly Seattle music was upon us and MTV was not into playing heavy metal. As a result, a record that could have equaled "Countdown To Extinction" in terms of sales did about half as much.

GearGods.net: Right around then, was when everyone started avoiding calling themselves metal. It was a weird two-year change.

Ellefson: It was weird. It was interesting for us because while the United States started being ashamed of heavy metal, we started break into other territories of the world like South America, where we saw this amazingly bright future for metal. These were countries that were just coming out of dictatorships, and every other month there was a revolution and they were overthrowing their government. When you have that kind of political strife, heavy metal is the soundtrack to that political upheaval, which is why we've had just such an amazing career down in South America. As things have changed here in North America, and as we tend to be very fickle in the United States — we're a remote-control, click-of-the-mouse society where what's in today is gone later today. We change our minds and want the latest and greatest and our attention span is very short, not just with music but with everything: clothes, fashion, bottled water, computer operating systems. We're very fickle and we demand the latest and greatest right now. Music is affected by that. I think for us, over the years, we started to see . . . Fortunately, we're a global/international band, so the rules that apply in the USA don't always apply everywhere else. What that allowed us to do was just be MEGADETH regardless of sales and all the other things that are sometimes the things you live and die by as a band.

GearGods.net: Since you brought up "Youthanasia", there was one thing that I was curious about with that record. I heard rumors at the time that a lot of the tempos for those songs were altered around when you went into the studio at the producer's request. Was that an urban legend? Is that true at all?

Ellefson: No, no, that's true. [Producer] Max Norman pointed out that most songs that you hear on mainstream, contemporary radio are about 120 bpm because that's the rate of the human heart. That's why music resonates with so many people because it's in sync with the heart rate. It's something that your body will adjust to and it synchronizes along with you. It's like walking into "room temperature" when your body acclimates to it, your body doesn't feel hot or cold, it just feels normal. Music has the same sort of thing because music is just energy and energy that resonates well with the human body is usually accepted by the human body as opposed to something that is perceived as either offensive or too soft or too light. It was an intentional thing. There were a few tempos on there that could've been played faster and would've been at probably more of a thrash style to it, but the very earliest MEGADETH songs that we wrote were initially very slow: "The Skull Beneath The Skin", "Looking Down The Cross" and "The Conjuring" were songs that were not fast tempos. I remember the day that a fan wrote a letter to Dave [Mustaine], and the METALLICA "Kill 'Em All" record had just come out and a lot of those tempos were a lot slower than the original "No Life 'Till Leather" demo tape Dave had played on. A fan said something like, "I hope your new stuff is faster than METALLICA," and at that point it was game on [laughs] and all the tempos jumped literally 20, 30, 40 bpm. That one fan letter probably changed the course and the history of MEGADETH. It fueled Dave's nature to want to be on top, want to be the best, want to be in the #1 position and it was cool because it unlocked this ferocious nature within the band. It made MEGADETH a true thrash band.

Read the entire interview at GearGods.net.