MEGADETH's MUSTAINE Says ELLEFSON Was 'Like A Vulture' During Songwriting Process

Germany's Bonedo web site recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. The entire chat can be viewed at this location. It is also available below. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On how MEGADETH's sound has evolved over the years:

Mustaine: "We were trying to go back to our roots after Marty [Friedman; guitar] left. And it was a lot easier because you had one guitar player you were making happy, and that's me. And when Marty left, we had a guy named Al Pitrelli come in, and he was no replacement for Marty. But Chris [Broderick, current MEGADETH guitarist] is quite the replacement; Chris is probably twice the guitar player that Marty is.

"I like Marty; he's a good kid. He's a little strange, but he was a good guy. He helped me get to where I'm at, to a degree, and I wish him well."

On MEGADETH's new album, "Endgame":

Mustaine: "We are doing basically what we wanna do right now. I think the record is exactly what my career needed at this point. I think it's exactly what the music industry needs for a shot in the arm again.

"The heavy metal community's got so many talented people, and we needed someone like me or any of the other three of the 'Big Four' [of '80s thrash metal; a list that also includes METALLICA, SLAYER and ANTHRAX] to get out there and make a record like this. So I did my share. [laughs]"

On his guitar playing:

Mustaine: "I play a lot in the pentatonic scale, but I play a lot in minor scales, too. Some people will say that that's where my limitation is, and you know...

"I'm a very highly rated guitar player. Right now, there's a lot of charts out that are rating all the guitar players in heavy metal. I'm Number One for a reason. And if you read the latest book from Joel McIver ['The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists'], I'm Number One in that book, too. Look at all the descriptions about it; it talks about everything that I do with a guitar.

"Now I don't have any one thing that I do too much, and I try and do a little bit of everything with the guitar, and I think that that's what secured that position for me.

"There's a lot more guitar players that are better than me — I know that — but as far as what the charts say right now, there's not."

On how drummer Shawn Drover came to join MEGADETH:

Mustaine: "Shawn Drover got into the band in a very peculiar way.

"I had asked Nick Menza [former MEGADETH drummer] to come back to MEGADETH [in 2004], and he'd come out and we were playing, and he kept disappearing. And it was really weird, because he would leave, he would go to the store, and sometimes he'd come right back, sometimes he would never come back. And his drum tech disappeared one day. So we said, 'The guy's gone. We've gotta get you another drum tech.' So Glen [Drover, then-MEGADETH guitarist] says, 'My brother's a drum tech.' So we call up Shawn. Nick's laying on the couch in the office at the studio [while we were calling Shawn on the phone]. And Glen goes, 'Hey, Shawn, it's Glen.' [Shawn] goes, 'Hey, Glen, it's Shawn.' [Glen goes] 'Here's Dave.' [I go] 'Hi, Shawn, it's Dave.' [Shawn goes] 'Hey, Dave, it's Shawn.' [I go] 'Here's Nick.' [And Nick says] 'I don't even wanna fucking know you.' And we were like, 'What did he just say?' He said, 'I don't even wanna fucking know you' to Shawn Drover while his brother was standing right there. And [Glen] looked at me like Nick just clogged the toilet. And I went outside with [Glen] and [Glen] goes, 'I can't play with this guy.' And I said, 'I know. I fired him once already too. Don't worry, I'll fire him again.' And I fired [Nick]. He got sent home. His girlfriend tried to mount some huge campaign to smear us, but that doesn't work; the truth came out. And Shawn came out, 'cause Glen said he could play the songs. I said, 'OK, what have we got to lose?' And he came out and in four days, he had the whole set down, the fifth day we drove to Reno, the sixth day he was playing with MEGADETH, and the rest is history."

On MEGADETH's songwriting process:

Mustaine: "When you write songs, for some people there's two parts: there's the music and the lyrics. For other people, it's the music and the melody and the lyrics. And that's the difference between bands that are really simple bands and bands that are really complicated. One of the things that is a huge bone of contention is lyrics.

"We had a song called 'Reckoning Day' [on 1994's 'Youthanasia']; I wrote the entire song, and David Ellefson [former MEGADETH bassist], Junior, had said, 'Hey, why don't we call that song 'Reckoning Day'?' So, because of the way he is, I know if I would have said, 'I was gonna call it 'Reckoning Day',' he would have said, 'Well, I said it first'; this kind of childish crap. So I just said, 'Alright, whatever.' So I surrendered and let him call the song 'Reckoning Day'. The same thing he did to Nick Menza's song. Nick wrote the lyrics to 'Countdown to Extinction' [the title track of MEGADETH's 1992 album], I put them all in order, and Junior goes, 'Hey, let's call it 'Countdown to Extinction'.' 'Cause he started to develop this real uncanny knack for being like a vulture around us while we were songwriting. And he got credit for coming up with the title for 'Countdown to Extinction' too. And in print it looks like he did something. The truth is he was digging through our lyrics and basically took the title out of our words. That's not cool. But you know what?! That's why he's in the little baby bands that he's in right now. He'll probably never be back in the level that he was."

On his current relationship with David Ellefson:

Mustaine: "I forgave him, but I have zero interest in ever seeing him again. He sued me; don't forget that. He tried to destroy MEGADETH. So as far as I'm concerned, as far as the fans are concerned, he should be persona non grata."

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