David Ellefson - My Life With Deth: Discovering Meaning in a Life of Rock & Roll

Praise for My Life with Deth

David is a great guy: he and Dave Mustaine are unique characters. Guys like them are few and far between.

Jay Reynolds, Malice

David is one of the most genuine people you could ever meet. Ive become a Megadeth fan through David. MEGA Life! Ministries, which David founded, has been a great thing for our church. He brings in a new perspective.

Pastor Jon Bjorgaard, Shepherd of the Desert, Arizona

David is such a great bass player. You can tell when youre playing with a professional, and he was always a proa real musician.

Max Cavalera, Soulfly

David Ellefson is the epitome of the solid metal bassist. Hes also a great ambassador for sharing his style with so many.

Rex Brown, Pantera, Down, Kill Devil Hill

David Ellefson is not only a great bass player and songwriter, he is my friend. He is one of the good guys in music and has always been a great source of knowledge. Weve done a lot of touring together throughout the years, and Dave has always been and still is that good guy.

Frank Bello, Anthrax

David is one of our industrys good guys. I always love spending time with him. Need someone reliable, who will always show up, rain or shine, with a spring in his step? Thats David Ellefson.

Glenn Hughes, exDeep Purple, Black Country Communion

Whenever Ive met Ellefson, hes always been the nicest guy. Hes a sweetheart and a great bass player.

Scott Ian, Anthrax

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This book is dedicated to the Ellefson family, past, present, and future.

H ard rock can sometimes take people to many dark and unexpected places. David Ellefson has traveled down this rough road for many years: like many of us, he has been to hell and back.

There are sometimes immense outside expectations for rock stars to be dangerous, mysterious, and self-destructive. Some of us get through it sober, but unfortunately some of us burn out and die before our time: its a difficult thing to endure without help.

David was able to see what was happening to himself and to those around him. He accepted that he needed help, and he is now living his life the way he wants to. Ironically, sometimes the most rebellious and controversial thing a rocker can do is become a Christian.

Alice Cooper, 2013

A t first, I didnt want to write this book. Not because I didnt want to share my life with you, but because it seems that celebrity tell-all books are in vogue and a dime a dozen these days. In fact, most of the ones Ive skimmed at the bookstores begin with tragedy and go downhill from there!

Well, that is not my storyand that was not my life. Fortunately, my friend the journalist Joel McIver bugged me for more than two years to start recording my life with him via Skype while I traveled the world. I agreed to do at least this much and contacted my pastor in Scottsdale, Arizona, for some direction: he suggested that, rather than just write another tell-all tale of rock n roll woe, I should consider another angle for my bookone that was a bit more truthful about my journey as a man, not only as a rock star.

He suggested that I give a testimony of my life instead, and that this book could be more than just a fascinating read: it could also be a fantastic opportunity to share with you my struggles with faith and addiction. It hit me that people everywhere need to feel inspired, and to know that they can keep their dreams alive and their faith in tow, yet still prosper in a world that tells us to bend the rules and compromise ourselves in order to win. I learned these lessons the hard way, and theyalong with friendships, forgiveness, and reconciliationare the basis of this book.

I began having casual conversations with Joel, back in his office in England, from various locations around the world. As we talked, the stories unfolded and the manuscript was born. Those conversations led to the volume in your hands. A note before you begin the first chapter: this book is not solely about Megadeth, the band I cofounded in 1983 and which has been my home for the majority of my career. It is about the lessons I have learned while in Megadeth and beyond.

Ive been blessed with a good life. I have, for the most part, been spared the devastating elements of show business to which many of my contemporaries succumbed. In fact, my life is fairly normal when you consider the circus of rock n roll that enveloped me during my professional years in the music business and, indeed, as far back as the age of thirteen. But heyat least it was a fun circus!

Without further ado, lets pull back the curtains and let the show begin....

David Ellefson

Scottsdale, Arizona, 2013

W hats withdrawal from heroin like? Well, its like being very sick with the flu, while knowing that if you could just go and score, youd be better within three to five minutes. Your stomach is upset, youre aching everywhere, and its just plain horrible.

This was how I was feeling on August 20, 1988, as my band Megadeth was flying to England to play for 107,000 people at the renowned Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington. I should have been feeling on top of the world. Instead, I was in a hell of my own making.

We arrived in England and drove up to the show, about two hours north of London. I had to get rid of my smack on the plane before I arrived at Heathrow Airport immigration, and the inevitable withdrawal hit me like a punch to the stomach. I went to our hotel and became so sick that everybody found out about it. Everyone was shocked. Id been such a good addictso sneaky. You junkie American! said the doctor.

Once I got off the stage, I was so sick I just went to the bus.

It was all such a long way from where my story began....

If you dont build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs.

Tony Gaskins

I grew up on a farm about six miles north of Jackson, Minnesota, in a little town of about three thousand people. My very first memory, from when I was two years old or even younger, is of my grandmother holding me while I was looking out of the dining-room window, watching the cattle trucks come in and out of the yard.

Ellefson is a Norwegian name, though my combined ancestry encompasses Norway, Germany, England, Denmark, and Sweden. My paternal grandparents were Henry and Anna Ellefson. I didnt get to know them well as I was very young when they both passed away from congestive heart failure, the same illness that would claim their son, my father, many years later. I knew my mothers parents, Arthur and Isabel Jorgenson, much better and spent many weekends on their farm in Gillette Grove, Iowa, about twenty minutes southwest of Spencer.

Grandma Isabel was very strict, but Art was a funny little bald grandpa who liked the occasional girlie pinup magazine and firearms and was fascinated with the railroad. He had a terrific Winchester .22 Magnum rifle with which we would target-shoot in the pasture outside the front window of his old farmhouse. I always had great aim and good shooting technique and once even pegged a sparrow right off a telephone wire, although we were expressly forbidden to shoot in that direction because if we hit the wire itself, the house would be out of phone service for several days until the company could get out to repair the line. Once Grandpa Art saw that I was fascinated with guns, he eventually gave me that rifle as a present, which is at my brothers house to this day. In many ways, firearms were my first obsession, just before I discovered the bass guitar.