DAVID ELLEFSON: 'Risk' 'Still Remains One Of The Great MEGADETH Records'

Former MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson says that he wouldn't go back and do change anything about the "Risk" album, explaining that the controversial LP "still remains one of the great MEGADETH records".

Issued in 1999, "Risk" received a mixed response from critics and alienated hardcore MEGADETH fans due to its departure from the band's heavy thrash metal roots to a more commercial, pop rock sound. The album debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard chart and was later certified gold for selling half a million copies in the United States.

In a new interview with Oran O'Beirne of Overdrive.ie, Ellefson reflected on "Risk" for the album's 25th anniversary, saying (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I think with 'Risk', with MEGADETH, we wrote that record mostly at rehearsal, then we went to Nashville and finished it in the studio and it didn't have time to simmer and percolate and really kind of sink into us.

"Here's what I found: if you're not a fan of your music first, it's hard to convince someone else to be," he explained. "And that album just didn't — and now I listen back to it, and it still remains one of the great MEGADETH records, even though it doesn't sound like a MEGADETH record of the past, leading up to that point. But we didn't have enough time to let it just kind of absorb into us. And then next thing you know, we're right on the road playing these songs and it's, like, 'Oh, shit. These songs aren't really connecting so much.' To just have the time, to let the stuff, to let the material absorb…

"[Former MEGADETH guitarist] Jeff Young is really big on this whole mindset of we're analog creatures, and that's why digital music, it doesn't connect with us, and it doesn't stay with us."

Asked if he would go back in time and do something different with that album if given the chance, he said: "No, because you'd have to start all over on that. You'd have to go back to the rehearsal room.

"Here's the long and the short of it: our manager at the time was really leaning on us to dig deeper into this radio approach, an approach that worked very well on 'Cryptic Writings', because we said, 'Hey, let's make a third of the record… We've gotta reinvent the band in a way that's competitive with what's happening around us.' There's a radio format here in America called Active Rock radio, and now bands like DISTURBED, SHINEDOWN, GODSMACK, they own that, HALESTORM, they own that format. And we had some success with it, with 'Symphony Of Destruction' and 'Sweating Bullets' and stuff like that in the early '90s. And then with 'Cryptic', a third [of the songs were] radio, a third metal, a third kind of whatever, and it worked. It was the right approach. With 'Risk', there was just kind of this really heavy push, 'If some is good, more must be better.' And our attitude as well, 'When we get down to Nashville [to make the album], we'll crush out these metal tunes. That'll be easy. No problem.' And the truth of it is it took so much time crafting the other songs for the record that we didn't really have the time or the mindset to make those metal songs that the record should have had to sort of balance it out. So it tended it to be a record that was skewed more as a crafted radio album. And admittedly, there's a piece of it that we didn't include, that we just kind of ran out of time, focus and energy for. And that's the part that's on us, for sure. And I think what that taught us was, and then for 'The World Needs A Hero', we started to re-chart the course of the ship again, was we have to like the songs. If we like it, there's gonna be a bunch of other knuckleheads just like us who are gonna like it too. So let's preach to that choir, rather than trying to go out and get a tribe that we aren't a part of and may never get invited into, let's just make our tribe tighter. 'Cause, look, that's ultimately how MEGADETH and thrash, our genre, that's how it grew."

This past July, former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman once again said that he and his then-bandmates did "the best" they could while making the "Risk" album, saying that the controversial record was "exactly where we were as a band at that time." In an interview with Whiplash.net journalists Gustavo Maiato and Mateus Ribeiro, Friedman was asked how he looks back on "Risk" 25 years after its release. He responded: "I haven't heard it since back then. I don't think it was much of a risk, actually. And I just remember we did the best we could. And it's exactly where we were as a band at that time. And that's all any album is, really. An album is like a yearbook in school or in high school or college or whatever. An album is a yearbook of that period of time. So you can't really go back and say, 'Oh, this sucks' or 'We didn't mean to do that' or 'It was not a good idea,' or whatever, you can't go back and say that, because it is what it is and it was what it was. At the time, we believed in it and we did the best we could and that's all I can say about any album, really. It's the same answer for any album."

Friedman previously discussed "Risk" I na December 2018 interview with SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". At the time, he said: "Well, I think anything that needed to be said from me about that was probably said at the time. I haven't even thought about that since then, so I couldn't give you an intelligent answer. I'm barely thinking about what I did yesterday, much less back then."

He continued: "I'm sure whatever it was at the time that it happened, everybody involved with it was doing the best that they possibly could — I'm sure of that — because that is something that's happened on every record before that and every record since that and every record I'm doing now.

"When you're doing it, you're doing the absolute best that you can. And pretty much if you look at any press of any record, when it comes out, what the people are saying right then, right at that time, that's what it is. And then, depending on the results of that, people's stories change, but at the time, you're doing the best that… You really, really, really believe in that — everybody believes in it — and then that's it. So I definitely wouldn't even begin to think of whatever specifics were going on back then — it's just the farthest thing from my mind — but I can assure you that anything was done with the best of intentions and the hardest work. And everybody was just trying to do their best."

Six years ago, MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine said that "Risk" was the result of him "capitulating" to Friedman's "desires to be more of an alternative band." He told SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation LA Invasion: Live From The Rainbow Bar & Grill": "We kept slowing down and slowing down and slowing down. If that record would have been called THE DAVE MUSTAINE PROJECT and not MEGADETH, I think it would have been successful. People wanted a MEGADETH record. They didn't wanna see Dave bending over backwards to keep Marty Friedman happy, 'cause Marty wanted us to sound like fucking DISHWALLA."