MEGADETH's DAVID ELLEFSON On His Autobiography: 'I Didn't Really Have An Aspiration To Write A Book'

Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal of Metal Assault recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Assault: I'm mainly going to talk to you about your autobiography, "My Life With Deth", which is officially released on October 29th. I've had it for a while actually and I've read it. It's really cool to have your perspective on things, but first of all, how long have you been wanting to write a book like this?

Ellefson: You know what?! To be honest with you, I didn't really have an aspiration to write a book, at least autobiographical. I mean, I thought about it, of course. Probably the biggest thing with this is, when is the right time to do it? My co-author, Joel McIver, really urged me in 2010, when I came back into MEGADETH and all these big things were going on with the "Big Four," the "Rust In Peace" 20th anniversary, and it was just such a huge moment for MEGADETH and also for thrash metal, that he was like, "Man, now is the time!" So I followed his lead with it and I'm glad he encouraged me to do it, because Joel is an accomplished author and he's done these kinds of books before, so to have him lead the way for me with the process was great. The story was easy, because it's my story and it was just about putting that down on paper more than anything. But to have the process of writing the book, editing it, finally releasing it and all that stuff, it was cool to do that with Joel, because it's nice to have a partner, someone who's [gone] down that route before.

Metal Assault: Even though it's your story, and like you said, it's easy to put down on paper, it must have still been a bit of a challenge to think back about so many years of your past life.

Ellefson: Yeah, like Joel told me, writing a book can be a very emotional experience. It can be very cleansing. It can be at times somewhat painful. But I've done a lot of other things in my life where I've gone through some personal house-cleaning, inventory and looking at things in my life and getting me really in touch with my part in things. So because I've gone through a lot of that process on my own over the years, writing the book wasn't so difficult on that level. It wasn't like I needed to tell this story as some sort of a personal cleansing or anything [laughs], which I'm glad about because it's a pure story and it's not one that sort of has any anger or retribution in it. It's not one of those things where I got to tell my side of the street. It's not a book like that, and so many of them tend to be. So I'm glad that mine is a pretty clear perspective of not only my life in MEGADETH, but ultimately, when I was looking back at the final edits of it, what I was probably most happy about was this is the story about a guy who fell in love with rock 'n' roll and fell in love with playing the bass, and those two things shaped and carved out the journey of my life.

Metal Assault: Right, it's not like a dirty rock n' roll tell-all kind of a memoir. It's more of an uplifting, serious book.

Ellefson: Yeah! I would agree with that, because it's just not in my nature to go and do all that, to just throw everyone under the bus so that I can get my glory [laughs], because in order for someone to rise up, someone else has to be pushed down. And that's not how I lived my life and it's just not the kind of book I wanted to write. As I was talking about my family, about lifestyle issues, about faith, religion and all these things, the one thing I thought about was, at the beginning and end of the day I'm a rock 'n' roll kid. So I was thinking about our fans and how they would enjoy reading the story. And it didn't change the story, that's the good news. [laughs] The story very much developed as I wanted it to, because I kept that end in mind.

Metal Assault: In the book you've also touched upon the religion aspect. As we know, heavy metal is such a rebellious thing in so many ways, and a lot of people don't really like religion. So, were you having any second thoughts or fears about bringing up the subject in the book?

Ellefson: I was, for sure, absolutely. And again, I wanted to be sensitive first of all to our fans, to the readers, and I really just wanted to talk about my journey and my experiences. At one point I even said that none of us are perfect and all of this stuff. The best I can claim to be is a work in progress. So I'm certainly not an expert on faith or religion or any of those things. I'm a middle-aged guy who's just had my life experiences with it, and that's really all I've talked about.

Read the entire interview at Metal Assault.