David Ellefson (Megadeth) & Drew Fortier (ex Bang Tango)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chuck Shute (00:13):
Welcome to the chuck shoe podcast and thank you
for checking out this littleshow mine If you're a first time
listener, I'm sure you're nothere for me, you're probably
here for the man, the legendhimself, Dave Ellison from
Megadeth. Not only one of thebiggest metal bands ever, but I
would even say maybe one of thebiggest rock bands ever.
Megadeth sold over 38 millionrecords worldwide. Dave is

(00:37):
obviously most well known forbeing the bass player with
Megadeth. But he does have a lotof other projects going on, at
least three of which involve mysecond guest, Mr. Drew for ta
who was the guitarist and bangTango. And I have to say I've
been doing this podcast forabout 17 months. And I think
drew is probably the kindest,most selfless guest I've ever

(00:59):
had the pleasure of having on myshow, maybe one of the nicest
people I've just ever met in mywhole life. And so, Drew and
Dave, they have a new book thatcomes out on December 18. It's
called Rockstar hitmen. And theyhave also been found footage
horror movie coming out, calleddwellers and also an album
coming out with my past guests,Vinny Dombroski from sponge, and

(01:22):
Mike Heller from Fear Factory.
That project is called lucid.
And that should be coming outsoon as well. So we're gonna get
to all these projects. We'regonna talk about mega bang
Tango, and so much more. Lots ofgreat stuff here. Make sure to
check it out. Enjoy. Welcometrue 48 to the check shoe
podcast. So tell me about howyou got into music I think

(01:42):
because you're younger, but andyou're listening to like older
kind of bands like bang Tangoand stuff like that. You got
into it because of your olderbrother who's 11 years older. Is
that correct?

Drew Fortier (01:53):
It's absolutely correct. Yeah. My older brother
George. And we had growing up, Iwas just, I got older sister
too. Damn. She's seven yearsolder. And I just remember I was
born in 87. So like, early 90s.
They always had Headbangers ballon empty. Yeah. You know, so I
kind of like pretty much Rickyreact when was like, my
babysitter, you know? And soevery Saturday videos, you know,

(02:14):
yeah, exactly. Yeah. Bang Tangothey used to tape it to so I
used to watch the reruns. And Iwas just like, uh, you know, I
just had no choice but to likeit. Because you know, that's
what they watch.

Yeah. So you grew up with that music. And then
eventually, you ended up goingto a bank Tango concert. And
tell me the story. How you metthe singer. You had a camera in
your hand? Were you justrecording for fun? Are you
recording for the venue? But youhad a camera in your hand and
the singer came up to you? Andlet you tell the rest of the
story?

Yeah, yeah, it was a place I was bartending at the
Southside of Chicago calledMike's loving music. And it was
on my off day. And prior tothat, my boss was like, Hey,
we're gonna have band Tangoplayer. I think I remember being
Tango. Yeah. And he was like,yeah, you know, she's like, you
should bring a camera and shootsome video and all that, you
know, we could, you know,promote the venue and everything
and all that. So yeah. Cool. Soand I remember Joe from

(03:07):
beautiful creatures. Sure. Iknow, it was a big fan of that
band, too. And

you cut out.

And so I, I'm just by the door all timid. I was in
my early 20s. And still kind ofshy that he saw me had long
hair, and he just kind of soughtus over. And he's like, like, my
job to stay impression. Hey,man, you look cool. In order to
find some weed, I was like, Iwas like, No, no, no, man. I

(03:35):
don't sorry. What's that in yourhand? And it was a camera guy.
That's it's called a camera.
And, and he was like, Whoa,we're recording an album in
Chicago in two weeks, you shouldcome out and do like a studio
documentaries. And that's how Iended up here. But it's still
just everything unfolded fromthere. And it started off as
like a studio documentary fortheir album pistol whipped in

(03:57):
the bible

belt. And did you play on that album as well?
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I played a little bit on the song
live life. And I do like backingvocals on a song called boombox
fans.

Did you know Did you play guitar before doing
that? And you played you playedguitar before this? Or did you
just learn for that? Oh, yeah.
Okay.

Yeah, I've been I play guitar since I was like,
like, 12 or 13. Okay. But thisis like, this is probably like,
five years before I joined theband.

Sure. Sure. And,

and, but yeah, that was I was in the studio
every single day. Andironically, it was at Johnny
keys group masters in Chicago,and big studio and upstairs from
where we were, Johnny cave wasmixing the ven new Megadeth
album 13. So that all theseyears later, you're right in

(04:48):
with Dave doing all this stuff.
Yeah,

but you didn't see him at that time. Right. You
wouldn't meet him too late itright.

No, yeah. Right.
Right. Many years later, but,but it was it was thinking about
it now. It was kind of cool.
Yeah. So Yeah, then go ahead.

No, I just gotta say, so you ended up doing this
documentary, kind of withouthaving like a lot of training or
I'd never done anything likethat before, but they let you do
it. And they kind of gave youfree rein to do it how you
wanted to do it. And apparentlyWell, actually, I watched it a
few years ago when it came outon YouTube attack life is the
name. There's like some goodguest spots and a D Snyder's in

(05:22):
it. And some other Rickyrathmines, I believe is in as
well. Now, what is the stuffthough that? Is there anything
that that was on the cuttingroom floor that you couldn't put
in the movie that you couldgive? Maybe you could talk about
it now? You know, it's been afew years, like nobody cares
about it. Now? Is there any dirtor crazy wild times that you
couldn't show?

Absolutely.

So much so. So give me something Give me one thing
that was like, well, I couldn'tput this in. But you have to say
names if that makes it easier totell the story.

Okay, I'll go God.
I'll throw some random words outthere. Okay. Thank Tango. Okay.
The band recording in the firstband recording of the first
album. A first night at thestudio. college town. young
females.

Okay. And we did so far aisles. Ping Pong.

Broken plate glass window. Oh. I think this is a
story that Howard Benson toldthat I had I had to take out Oh,
really? Yeah, it's, uh,

it was incriminating, or was it just
too crude? Or is it

nothing that wasn't probably shown in the
dirt? You know? But yeah, whereit's yet where it said in the
movie, it was way early on.
Okay. And it just came up. It'slike with it being bad early and
to learn about that stuff. Youreally ended up like not liking
the original band that much offthe bat. So Oh, better to leave
it out all together. Sure. And

times were different in the 80s. You know,
this. I'm sure this was all Ihope it was all consensual and
stuff. But, you know, it's kindof it was a different time back
then. People were a little morefree and loose and

exactly, right.
Yeah. Every now everybody'sgetting Weinstein now. And I'm
really surprised the SunsetStrip fans haven't been, you
know,

caught up in that.
Well, yeah. And then, you know,some of it was, uh, was males
male on male Weinstein kind ofthing like Janie lane from
Warrens. There's a story abouthim being molested by an older
musician, like, basicallydrugged and raped and that's
kind of scary stuff. So I mean,I think that kind of thing. If
it's girl or boy, that's clearlyI think that's always been
wrong. I don't think there wasever a fine line there. It's
just one of those things wherepeople didn't talk about it. And

(07:45):
that's one thing I would say.
The me too is a good thing.
Because then these kind ofthings are people are getting
caught for this kind of crap. So

yeah, exactly. I mean, I mean, even with like the
actors to like Corey Feldman andall that and ground and
everything. It's it's it gets sodark and weird when you start
looking into that stuff, man.
Like, it's it's nuts.

Yeah. So, back to bang Tango, though. So now, you
know, you join in joining theband, obviously, and you're not
in the band anymore. Butassuming you're still friends
with those guys. Is thereanything happening in that camp?
I mean, I know that we're goingto do a tour. Obviously, that
was cut short because of theCoronavirus is there, like maybe
a new record with the originallineup in the works, or

I can't speak for him, but I do love every single
member of that band. And I had agreat time playing with them,
you know, and it's it's amazingthat I ended up joining the band
because I finished the movie andeverybody really like everybody,
like everybody in the bandapproved. Even Jolla stay at one
point. But then, you know,lately just to kind of looking

(08:44):
back on it and saying that itwas like a lapse of judgment
from his drinking days, but heshould keep you know, it was
kind of bummed me out, you know,because he really, really got it
and really, really enjoyed. It'sa very it's not a fluff piece
movie. You know, it's surelybrutally honest. And I screamed
at once in Chicago started goingoff on a tangent but it's been
at once in Chicago with the vencurrent lineup there this is

(09:06):
right before he joined the bandto those Jolla state lanterra
Kimmy Russell and Roland RolandRobertson you know in Chicago
big screaming first time Jollastay ever he wouldn't do so I
made sure to sit like near himso I could watch his reactions.
And as the movie is playing onthe big screen, and Joe is on
the screen talking saying youknow, things about other

(09:28):
original band members and allthat Jolla stays like you know,
watching it he stands up pointat the screen and goes it didn't
say that as he's saying

that is funny.

And then then afterwards all that get the best
was toward the end. I was likeoh god Joe Joe hates this movie
so much. He's never going totalk to be again and toward the
end. He gets up watch Torbaylooks at me goes Okay, can I
swear on here?

Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Fuck yeah.

Okay, Fuck yes, though he toward the end of the
book. It starts to get heatedbetween him and Mark Knight.
Yes. And enough he walks towardme and he goes through. Are you
some kind of fucking asshole orsomething man and he storms out.
And I started chasing? He's likemy Oh no. And I'm like, hey,
wait, you gotta finish themovie. And he gets to the to the
exit. And he turns around itgoes, hi, gotcha is

that is a shitty move. That's, that's, that's
pretty funny, actually. But thenI would have been. Yeah, that's
hilarious. That's really funny.

Um, so yeah, after I after the movie, he took me
aside, he said, Drew, you know,I really needed to see that
sometimes the truth hurts. And Ireally appreciate you. And so I
could actually see my careerfrom a different point of view.
So yeah, that evening, he gotit. But since then, he just kind
of, he needs a bit selfconscious. I think about it,

(10:50):
because he doesn't drinkanymore, and that he was
drinking all the time they'vebeen made. So that's totally
understandable. Yeah. And I'mreally proud of then ended up
joining the band. And that's awhole nother story for sure.

But yeah, what is it? Yeah, a crunchy noise. Is
that you? What does it mean?
Like a crunching? Where's yourmic?

Oh, I got it right here.

Okay. All right. I don't know. I was just trying to
figure out what that was drivingme nuts. So anyway, so yeah, so
you're in bang Tango, and thenyou were the guitarist for Chuck
Mosley, who is the former singerfaith no more. And you are,
you're his guitarist, and nowyou're actually making a
documentary about him. Andthat's not out yet. That's
coming out in 2021. Right.
That's probably gonna come outlike 2024 to be honest with you.

(11:29):
Oh, really? Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I haven't talked about it much.
But we have, man. A lot ofpeople are still grieving over
Chuck, you know, he was a, it'ssuch a unfortunate situation. I
mean, the way he he passed awayand all that and everything
loved him very much and, and hisfamily still kind of on the
fence about being involved andall that and everything. And

(11:53):
I've been in touch with thefaith, no more guys. And
they're, they're into beinginvolved, you know, but it's
still, you know, they I thinksome more time needs to pass,
you know, because he left a lotof people in very awkward
situations, personally, andprofessionally, and all that and
everything but, but I think itwill see the light of day one

(12:14):
day, I've got the band throughthe I've got one interview so
far. And it's an amazinginterview with Matt Wallace,
their producer, and he did theinterview right after Chuck
passed, actually, it was a veryemotional interview. And it's
it's that good fight, release,and by itself, count as a movie.
It's a great interview. Butyeah, I love shrek very much
really was very fortunate toplay with him to get to know

(12:36):
him. And I know that. He saysthat's a great dude.

Yeah, so you got that project. And you you wrote
a book. I have not read yourbook yet. But it's called dark,
depressing and hilarious. Isthat mostly about your time with
bang Tango or also with ChuckMosley or?

Yeah, yeah, it's actually I wrote the book as
almost as like a goof, becausethat was like, everybody was
coming out with theseautobiographies. And I was like,
see if I could do one, you know,and I ended up writing three
days.

And how the hell do you have the energy to do you to
make books? Yeah. I mean, I lookat a guy like you. And so
there's a funny part. So I'mlooking at all the stuff you're
doing. I'm like, oh, he wrote abook. He made a movie. He plays
in a band. He's got he's gotanother book coming out. He's
got another Music Project. Ilook at all the stuff you do on
like, oh, he must have like,some sort of trust fund or his
wife works and you have a dayjob to How the hell do you do

(13:26):
all this stuff?

It's funny, I wrote the book at the day job.

And, okay,

but yeah, get a regular like nine to five day
job Monday through Friday, Irefurbished computers, okay for
living. And I love it.

So you're able to write books while you while you
do that?

Yeah, and that was that a previous job actually.
Okay. That job shocked that wasI get asked to read a book, but
does a job man now though Iabsolutely love. It's called
cascade asset management. Andit's a it's a wonderful place.
Very small kind of company, thatit's amazing. But yeah, so the
book has kind of just fell outof me. And I was, and it's got a

(14:05):
very fun kind of selfdeprecating sense of humor about
it. Okay. We have all peoplewriting an autobiography. I have
no business doing that. Butpeople seem to get a kick out of
it, though. Like, it's like,they get it. They get the whole
angle of it, you know? Sure.

For sure.

I never really I never really took myself too
seriously doing this stuff.
Because like, I mean, it's, butI end the book was actually a
way for me, like saying like,Okay, I'm done with this stuff.
Did the bank Tango thing playwith Chuck and all that that's
just walk away. And then, youknow, here I am two years later
with another movie, anotherbook. And another album. Yeah,
you

got a lot of projects. You know, this is
interesting to you were at youwere doing a movie, which I
forget which one it was. But onthe set of the movie and I saw
the clip that's on YouTube, youpropose to your wife, and it's
such an odd clip because you'retalking you're talking your
buddy about jerky. That's whatit was. Yeah, it was the the
crystal one and you're talkingto your buddy about like jerking
off or something. And then allof a sudden, you turn to Your

(15:00):
now wife and you propose to herand she must have thought like,
Is this like some sort of Adler?
Does she know that it was realright away of man?

Well that was a it was while we were shooting a
scene and the thing the directorbecame a good friend of mine
leading up to me being in themovie and I orchestrated the
whole thing for him to hire mygirlfriend at the time to be
like a featured extra thatinteracts with my character okay
movie and so that the first dayof shooting at the end of the
day, it's like 430 in themorning all she had to do was

(15:31):
sit there turn around and reactto my character talking about
that together. It's like youknow, even jerk off or something
like that except my charactersays

yeah, the other guy

and end of the plane was wants to turn around
and do it for the last take meto pop the question. And she had
she was totally caught off guardbecause I earned just Google and
and it was written to the clipsup on YouTube

right? Yes. That's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, the movie. I say check it out. It's
it's the most romanticnecrophilia story you'll ever

see. How do you you can watch it on Amazon Prime or?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Okay, Amazon Prime,
you could you could order theblu ray from diabolik DVD comm
you can order the Blu Ray Bluray from the director directly
as well. Okay. It's it's a coolmovie, the first like hour and a
half second regular movies andit goes straight to hell.

Hi, David. Welcome to the show. Horror brothers.
How are you? Yeah, so we're justusing a story about him
proposing to his wife on a movieset. I'm sure you know that
story.

Unknown (16:33):
I do. a horror movie.

Yeah,

yeah. Yeah, her name is Krista and the Yeah,
just totally caught her offguard at like the end of the day
of shooting 430 in the morning.
We're all miserable and tiredand

David Ellefson (16:45):
Carrie marriage indeed.

Yeah. So absolutely. So tell me the story
how you two met because I thinkwas 2016 rocklahoma. Now are a
lot of the bigger bands likeMegadeth aren't a lot of a lot
of times they're sequesteredfrom the smaller opening bands.
So how did how did you guys gethow did you drew How did you get
access to David I guess is myquestion.

I snuck in. No, no, no. Actually, I've actually
believe in out bang Tango wasone of the big bands that day we
opened up the mainstage Yeah.
Okay. So it was so we were allin the same backstage area. So
it's bang Tango Papi evil 6ammega death is disturbing the Rob
Zombie. Our trailer paying Daigotrailer is right next to disturb
streaming. I remember that wasjust kind of hanging out, you

(17:27):
know, in front of our trailer.
And just like I had no businessbeing here, all man. And then I
saw Dave coming out of the golf.
I always hear how nice of a guyis and I've always been a huge
mega fan. So went up and saidhey, and then we just hit it
off. And at that time, I wastalking to Tom he's got his
business partner. And, and sothere's a cool connection there
too. And so from there, we justkind of kept in touch.

Okay,

lots of did some work with the label or like
video stuff and everything andthe hit the road with Tom he
started a lot promoting thelabels and, and all that in
there.

Yeah. So I know you guys have a lot of projects, you
have a book and an album comingout. I want to get to that. But
if we could just go back in timea little bit. Obviously, I'm a
huge Megadeth fan is probablyevery kid that grew up in the
90s was and so I have a few megaquestions if we could go that
route for a little bit and thenwe'll get back to the new stuff
that you guys are working on.
Cool. Is that okay? So yeah, soI'm just curious, like, David,

(18:22):
David, you move to LA and yourwas your mission to go there to
be like a rock star cuz you camefrom Minnesota. And you just
happen to live at the sameapartment complex as Dave
Mustaine

Yeah. 100% on both questions. Okay. Yeah, I
mean, and again, but Dave, youknow, Metallica was not a Komal
was not recorded back there. Imet Dave about six weeks after
he was let go out of Metallica.
And he had moved to thisapartment there on Sycamore
Avenue in Hollywood. And thatwas the address that I had would

(18:57):
move to in fact, I was thinkingabout, you know, it didn't until
I could get sort of landedplugged in and and kind of learn
LA, I was thinking I wasconsidering going to Musicians
Institute, the base Institute ofTechnology. So a, they'd sent
like a list of apartments, youknow, to kind of choose from in
the area. So back when I wasstill living in Minnesota, I

(19:19):
picked that one on on Sycamore.
And it turns out there was awoman who managed the apartment.
She's from a little town calledMountain Lake, Minnesota about
30 minutes from where I grew up.
So you know, kind of made thehometown connection. Okay, we
kind of know someone fromMinnesota, maybe we can trust
her. You know, so, it's funnybecause I've read the Ellison

(19:40):
family history. In fact, I'veamended it, it was actually sort
of a download that we offered asthe VIP presale purchases on the
book that Tom and I wrote lastyear called more life with that.
And as I read through it, youknow, over the years, you know,
most of the elephants went toCalifornia at some point you
came over from way to Minnesotawhere they landed in the 1800s.

(20:02):
The farm it's still in ourfamily was was founded there.
And and many of the aunts,uncles, even my dad's all made
some journey and or lived inCalifornia at some point in time
during the 20th century. So Inever quite got my dad, he
really wanted me to go outthere. He liked it. He was not a

(20:24):
musician. He didn't get themusic business, but he saw that
I was serious about what I did.
And, you know, he, he let mefollow my path. And you know, he
supported me in doing that. And,yeah, so I move in, I meet Dave
lives upstairs. And I could tellright away Dave was definitely
meant to be a rock star. It'sthe way he carried himself and

(20:44):
his very ballsy attitude, youknow, basically willing to fight
anyone at any over you know, ifyou stood in the way of his of
his path of what he wanted todo.

That's awesome.

And I'm lucky because you know, I was not that
guy. I was very much again amild mannered guy from soda and
we were taught very differentlyright grew up you know, the if
you don't have something nice tosay, don't say anything at all
that kind of thing. Well, Daveshowed me a very different path
and rock and roll you know thatrock and roll was you know, with
real rock stars, you know, withwhether you're Lemmy Nikki Sixx,

(21:20):
Gene Simmons, Axl Rose, DaveMustaine, you know, those are
this is a different era, youknow, a different time When,
when, you know, when when, youknow, you said a lot with and
through your music and and Davehad a very different life than
me growing up. And so it waskind of interesting. The Yin to
the Yang, have two guys namedDave, who would meet an

(21:42):
apartment on Sycamore andHollywood and start this band
called mega death and yeah, ourdiff our differences brought
about how special the thingreally was, you know? Yeah, we
didn't have to be the same. Itwas our differences that that
that created the interest stillto this day. The fans love this,
this kind of absolutely dynamicbetween the two of us,

right? So in those early days, I know Megadeth
would go through a lot of lineupchanges. But even before the
first album, you guys auditionlike 15 drummers and you spent
six months looking for a singerbefore you settled on having
Dave Mustaine just be the singerkind of reminds me of your
Seinfeld fan. But like on theshow Seinfeld, he's always
dating all these differentgirls.... And then later in the

(22:22):
season, he decides that hefinally meets the girl the girl
has been looking for. He's inlove with himself and so it's
kinda like Dave Mustaine he'slike it's me. I've been what
I've been looking for but butfor those six months, was there
any names that that would standout that would go on to those
drummers or singers that youguys audition that would go on
to other bands that were thatwere no

no, not really.
And I love your Seinfeldanalogy, and I'm a big Seinfeld
fan. Yes. And actually, it wasnot Dave's idea to be the
singer. It was actually my idea.

Chuck Shut (22:51):
Okay....interesting.

It's funny how it happened because so we didn't
we didn't originally have adrummer named Dijon Carruthers,
and he was our drummer. As I metDave, he had a set a singer
named Laura Kane that he wasworking with, Dave was writing
everything and he had anotherkid he was kind of trying to

(23:14):
teach how to play the bass, thisguy named Matt Kissel-Steen, but
that he was intention was thisband would be called Fallen
Angel. And so when me and myMinnesota brood showed up, me
and my friend Greg Hanovitz andmy buddy, Brad Schmidt and his
friend Brent. They lived in anapartment right next door to
Dave me, Greg lived in theapartment right underneath Dave.

(23:34):
And in fact, it's funny Iremember in reading "More Life
with Death", Brad, I had Bradchime in on the book and he
reminded me that like Dave's BCRich that he had from Metallica
was actually out of BC Richgetting some work done on it. So
he didn't have a guitar. So hewas borrowing his roommate Tracy
had, I think, a Gibson anEpiphone or something that he
would write stuff on. And hewould actually ask Brad next

(23:58):
door if he could borrow hisGibson Explorer from time to
time to to write So Dave didn'teven have a guitar. He was....
David... Metallica, I mean, hewas, really kind of down to
nothing rebuilding and but therewas again, we rally around
Dave, obviously, there wassomething very special there,
and the first lyric he had was asong called Megadeth, which

(24:20):
later got retitled "Set theWorld A Fire". And, Greg and I
were in bands together growingup in the Midwest. I mean, we
we've known each other sincelike, fifth grade or something.
And we're always in bandstogether. So Greg, he goes,
dude, we got an F. We met Davethat first night. He goes, dude,
we got to we got to play withthat guy. That guy's awesome.

(24:40):
And I said, Yeah, I know. And soGreg started playing with him
first kind of as the secondguitar player. And then once
Greg was in there he goes, hetold Dave, he goes, dude, get a
ditch Matt, the bass guitar...
Get Ellefson in here. Like he'sa real bass player. He knows
what he's doing. And so I we sataround and jammed a little bit
one day and Dave's like yeah,okay, he's good player and I
think the main thing with Daveis being willing to do what Dave
wants you to do. I mean, thatreally is the marching orders in

(25:03):
and I got that right away sovery clearly and Dave clearly
had a path he had a soundobviously he had success with
this yet to be known bandMetallica Of course, people knew
of them on there, they had arecord, they just signed their
deal with Megaforce. And we'recutting "Kill 'Em All" at that
time. But they weren't the bigsensation we know them to be now

(25:25):
but they definitely everybodyloved them. And they were cool.
And Dave was playing me that "NoLife to Leather" demo, and I
loved it. I thought it wasgreat. And so I got it. I mean,
I got that, I signed on to thevision right away from the
beginning. And I guess that'sprobably the reason I'm here all
these years later is is I waswilling to put in the work I was

(25:47):
willing to put in the time, suitup, show up, dress up, speak up,
and just get on board with it.
So it's been that journey.

Yeah. Because how did you stick with him through
all those times when there wasall these lineup changes in the
80s? And 90s? I mean, you stuckwith him for so why he never
tried to fire you? Or do youjust knew how to

No, no,I don't know. No. I mean, like, we'd
certainly had somedisagreements, and but we never
came to blows. That happens insome bands, that usually that's
the end, but we never did. AndI'm sure there's times you
wanted to punch me and things inthere. But I was like, because
again, we're not only were weforming this band, we were

(26:32):
basically growing, I was 18, hewas 21, we're growing up
together. So in a lot of ways,he was an older brother. And of
course, he had street smarts, heknew the ins and outs of LA. And
yet my sort of softerdisposition often kind of
brought common sense andreasonableness to Dave at times
you know what I mean? So we bothbrought something to the table.

(26:53):
But again, this was definitelyDave's vision. And again, I knew
like get on board with this,like, Don't fight this, you can
offer your, you know, your inputon it, but you know, follow the
the narrative, if you will andI think that's the main thing
is, is that's what it's like inMegadeth. And if and I think the

(27:14):
people that either I never usedit as a stepping stone for a
solo career or any of that kindof crap. And there were some
people over the years that havedone that, and they're no longer
here. And I very much believedin what we were creating. I to
me, a band is a gang, it's yourfamily, it's your tribe, it's
who you are as a as an as aperson. It's, your home base,

(27:37):
I left my family of origin backin Minnesota to start a new
family out in LA and that becamenegative. And, you have each
other's backs financiallycreatively, as you're dating
chicks getting screwed over bychicks, signing leases, breaking
lease, getting thrown out ofapartments, getting on drugs,

(27:58):
getting strung out on drugs,going Hurry up, getting clean. I
mean, everything that goes intothat, I mean, we know Dave and I
grew up together, I mean, wereally did and now here we are,
all these years later, we'vewe've grown up together we've
gone through the good times abunch of bad times, we raised
our families around each other,so there's there's a lot to the
story. It absolutely no one's ina band who play some songs.

Absolutely. Yeah.
And it's interesting during theresearch, I didn't realize
dimebag Darrell almost joinedMegadeth and slash at the at the
peak of Guns and Roses career Iyou know, this is just recently
I'm hearing learning about this,but he was jamming with you
guys. And he was a big fan ofMegadeth. And he was you guys
are smoking crack because itsounds like a crack that idea
that he was gonna leave Guns andRoses. Not that Megadeth isn't

(28:41):
amazing, too. But he wasactually considering leaving
that band for Megadeth as

As a friend of Slash I would never let him
leave Guns and Roses. And infact, I think we even talked
about that as like, there's nofucking way you're leaving Guns
n Roses. Yeah, it was funny.
They had just come home fromAustralia. And so it was late
88. Dave, we're off the roadfrom the "So Far, So Good, So
What" tour. We were writing thenew material that would become
Rust In Peace. Jeff Young wasasked to leave the band. So we

(29:09):
were down to me, Dave and ChuckBehler. And yeah, I mean, look,
the discussion started aboutguitar players. I told Dave I
just hung out with the guys inPanthera. And we knew it wasn't
called Dimebag. It was calledDiamond Darrell.

Right, Glam...

He was in all the guitar magazines. He was
definitely heralded as a risingstar. So we reached over to him
but he said he goes look with mecomes my brother Vinnie. And of
course we didn't need a drummer.
And you know, thank God itdidn't happen because the world
got Pantera.

Yeah, amazing.

The generation behind Megadeth and Metallica
and the Big Four was was thePanthera movement. And we
reached out to Jeff waters ofAnnihilator Jeff you know now
that it was really starting toblow up pretty big and now Jeff
and I are dear friends and wehave many chats and fun laughs
about hey, what what that wouldhave been like, Yeah, but a lot
of my friends I tell him I said,Look, I love you, dude, you're a

(30:01):
great musician, but you wouldn'tlast and mega death for more
than one chorus production trustme, you know, and especially
even as the recent drummer thingwent around a couple years ago,
I was like, Look, dude, you're agreat drummer, you know, you
know, you're not meant to be inthis band, you know? Yeah, cuz I
just know my friends and I knowhow the dynamic is, you know,
and like I say, friends, don'tlet friends join mega def. It's

(30:24):
just not, you know, it's, it'syou because you've really got
you've really got to put theprofessional foot forward, you
know, and like, like Kiko, I didnot know Kiko, I had just played
with him in November of 2014. ByJanuary 2015, it was just back

(30:45):
down to me and Dave again,rebuilding the band management
and he Dave called me one daysaid, Man, I saw this guy Kiko
online, I think he'd be a goodfit. I said, Hey, I know, I just
jammed with him. I literallyjust got his phone number and
his email. So I hit him. And Isaid, hey, guess what your
numbers up. You want to joinMegadeth? You know, and, you
know, and and so that's howthings happen. Usually, you

(31:06):
know, usually you're sort ofchosen, you know, it's, it's
never like, Hey, can I put myname in the hat? That's not
usually how these gigs happen.
Okay, metal allegiance. We woulddo that, too. We would, you
know, me and Maggie and PortlandSkolnick. We would choose the
people that we felt were rightfor it. It was never sort of
blind submissions. as famous asour friends are. Hey, man, can I
sing on your record to be like,Yeah, I don't know that. I don't

(31:28):
know if there's the right placefor you. You know what I mean?
So you know, usually when you'recreating it, it usually the call
comes from this way out thatway. And, you know, same with
dirt, dirt revere and ChrisAdler had had recommended him
when the transition need tohappen, and we did not know
Dirk. So bringing Dirk in therewas no, again, there was no kind

(31:50):
of past friendship. It was abrand new relationship starting
with First of all, you got to befucking badass and nail the gig.
And if you can nail the gig,then we'll see if we can hang
and if we can hang Hey, then youcan then you can be a full time
member the man Yeah, there'skind of a process for sure. The
news that talked about that whenyou joined Metallica, you know,
he got the gig and they got tosort of hazing him for a year.

(32:12):
Right?

Yeah.

Hey, let's let your your like sort of in the
trial phase for a while to makesure we can hang with you.
Because that's the other part ofbeing in a band is you know, can
we hang with you on the road?
Or, you know, are you going tobe that guy where your your
socks stink and your breathsmells? And you know, you leave
your frickin pizza on the couchto the bus every night like,

yeah, now how does that work with hanging with a
band now? Because you're 30years sober. Congratulations on
that. But like, how does thatwork? You know, like, if you're
hanging out with Drew or Vinniewith your new band, would you do
you require them to not havebooze around you or

the alcoholic I'm the one that reacts
strangely to alcohol and cocaineand heroin and drugs. Right? So
it's me, it when it's when itgoes in my body that the problem
happens in my life. So if youwant to put it in your body rock
on, by all means,

but that doesn't tempt you if it's backstage or
anything,

it's not a temptation. I mean, look, I take
the daily measures needed tomake sure that I you know, am in
spiritually fit and mentally andphysically fit to not have that,
you know, come into my bodyanymore. Mm hmm. Look, we're in
the entertainment business.
Anybody who are in theentertainment business, you
could be a frickin lawyer or aplumber or, you know, roofing

(33:29):
houses, there's going to bebooze around, you know, yeah, so
it's about being your own mentaldefense has to be there. It's
funny because you know,everything that will kill you is
literally within an arm's reachof view by your own hand. Like
no one ever dumped booze andnarrow and in me, right that's
true by my own hand so it's it'snever you that got me loaded it

(33:54):
was me that got me loaded. Okay.
I think coming to understandthat is like okay, my my
addiction is not conditional.
It's not or it's not sort ofoutwardly conditional. It's in
really condition so make surethe inner the inner self is
right and and, you know, again,for three decades I've been debt
problem seems to have beenremoved from That's awesome.

I had a question. I always wonder this like, in 92
when you guys did Countdown toExtinction, such a great album,
probably the most the one thatsold the most

One of my favorites.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think a lot of people's But was
there a conscious decision todump the mascot Vic for the
cover? I know he was on the backwith the countdown thing, but
you know, what was the theorybehind that? Were you kind of
trying to do a different kind oflook for the band at that point?

There you know, again, that was a major
intentional step into themainstream. Now again, the
mainstream was heavy metal wasnow in the mainstream and very
popular of course, you know,Headbangers Ball, Metallica was
blowing up, Queensryche, I mean,.... It was our moment for
sure.... to step into thatspotlight. And we didn't want to

Yeah, the abacus, that was cool...
get rid of Vic at all because hewas the mascot. But we also we
hired Hugh Sign out of Canadato do the artwork for that
record and also forYouthanasia... And so he
presented an idea of thelevitating old man and the, you
know, in the jail cell andeverything. So he presented that

(35:19):
idea. We didn't go to him andsay, Hey, we need you to
incorporate our mascot intohis... at least not tha
I remember. So that's why I thnk on the back, we talked ab
ut Vic, but the abacus doinghe count. Ye

So there was a narrative there with Vic, but it
wasn't going to be the presenceon the cover. And you know, with
with the rest in peace campaign,we did not only the cover of
that, but we did the Hanger 18stuff we did the Nuclear Vic, we
had all these Yeah, prettypowerful graphic images, you
know?

Absolutely.

Rather than just try to keep one upping that.
Let's turn a corner and trysomething a little bit
different.

Yeah. And then the euthanasia album, another great
album, so many good. I couldspend an entire episode on each
one of these albums, but I juststart to get one question on
some of them. But the song TheKilling road, is that's one of
my favorite Megadeth songs. Itwasn't ever talk of releasing
that as a single or trying tolicense it for movie or TV
shows. I feel like it'd be greatfor like a movie or so or TV

(36:20):
show.

Look, you're probably right. I mean, it's
funny because now, I mean, lookat the iPhone commercial this
last year last year, you know,they use last rites loved to
death off site, you know, trackone album, one, you know, so who
knew that? Obviously, somebodyinside of Apple was a fan of
that one.

That's awesome,

though, you know, who knows these? You know,
these these people that that? Doyou know, the musical direction
for these productions? I mean,who knows? If there's a fan in
there, hey, maybe it'll be youone day, you'll get a gig
working for Sony picture andyou'll

want to put killing? Oh, I would definitely
put mega songs on a lot ofdifferent things. So awesome.

I don't think it was ever talked about as a
single we did play it. And infact, we we've have played it
even more recently. Oh, good.
Yeah. added in the set. Whenwe've kind of reached for a deep
cut. It's fun song to play. It'scool. The riff is fun.

Yeah, so what Sorry, I want to go through each
album, but we don't have time.
So I'll just move forward in2002, you left Megadeth or
Megadeth, disbanded, whatever,however you want to say it, you
wouldn't work for PVS. And sowhat does it talk about the
transition of going from planein a metal band to working in
the corporate world I didn'teven know until I did the
research that you left Magda forlike eight or nine years or

(37:31):
whatever

they had called up. There was a situation that
was kind of transpiring in 2001and saw it kind of common and
Dave, Dave called me up one dayin February of 2002, and said,
Hey, I quit Megadeth. And, youknow, which essentially means
the band is over, you know, andwe didn't dissolve our business
interest for a couple yearslater, but you know, which is

(37:55):
what the legal stuff was around.
And but it Yeah, it's thatmoment where you go, like,
you're pedaling around, gone.
Now, this is really big. It'scool. It's working well, and it
squares for me had been almost20 years of my life. And then
one day, that's it, it's overand followed by Oh shit, how am

(38:16):
I gonna raise my family? How amI gonna pay my mortgage, you
know, all the realities thatcome with that. And I think on
one point, we we needed thebrake, you know, we've been
pushing and pushing, we've gonethrough so many transitions,
bandmember managers, people inour ear about, you know, if you
just change the logo, then youwon't be so metal. And if you
just change your songs, then theradio will accept you, you know,

(38:37):
so all these things, you know,and every great artist has gone
through that your kiss or PeterFrampton, Judas Priest, I don't
care who you are, you've gonethrough that those transitions
and, and part of it is becauseof the things outside of you.
And the culture outside of youis also changing. You know, not
only are you sort of changing asyou grow up, but Seattle music,

(38:59):
new metal, you know, FM, youknow, the disturbed Godsmack
kind of FM, heavy metal guyswere coming onto the scene there
is there's a lot of changesgoing down, you know, so how do
you sort of stay competitive?
How do you stay in that realmyet, you know, you change too
much. And then your fans whoactually made you who you are
now their past, and they hateyou, you know what I mean? So
there's all these differentlittle calculated decisions you

(39:22):
have to make when you're sort ofrunning your, your band, the
creative, the business, allthat. So on one hand, it was it
was kind of a breath of freshair. I never felt like my time
and Megadeth was done. I waskind of felt like it was a
little bit of just maybe alittle internal brawl between
us. And you know, we would comearound and again, it did, of
course in 2010. But in thoseeight years, and Megadeth only

(39:47):
work, I think maybe five ofthose years. I think Dave
started in 2004 and put out arecord in 2005. So we put out
three records in that time thatI didn't perform But during that
time, you know i i did i calledeverybody as a money Connor
O'Brien. We got connected atRoadrunner Records. Talk to the
people at Ben, actually, thepeople at Fender here, reached

(40:10):
out to me about a position thereand I called a friend of mine
who used to work for St. Louismusic who had ampeg crates and
Alvarez brands. And he had hiredKen Hensley. God rest his soul
who just passed away. He hadhired Ken Hensley from Uriah

(40:32):
heep, who was a very famousmusician and an EP band did very
well. He hired Ken to run hisartist relations for ampeg back
in the 80s and 90s. So I said,Tony, I, you're not gonna
believe it. But Megadeth isovery. Everybody. everybody's
like, what they'll happen, youknow, he's like, Well, you know,
it's that moment. So he, hesaid, he goes, listen, I got

(40:55):
something I'm doing with PDM.
I'm consulting with them on somestuff. And I might actually have
an artist relations position foryou kind of like I did with
Hensley. I said, Dude, I'd begreat. And I was actually using
PV products, I was using PV bassamps and stuff. And so that's
how that happened. And I watchedKen Hensley, I watched how he
had done it with ampeg. And hewas my role model, quite

(41:17):
honestly. And so I just got inthe trenches and and, you know,
change my shirt that said,Megadeth, to the one that said,
PV, and you know, and I just, Igot on board with it. And I went
to college, I got my businessdegree, which always wanted to
do. And I and I just, you know,I changed some years of my life.

(41:37):
But what's funny is a littleband called f5 developed around
me, and that to me, was a clearevidence that my playing days
were not over.

Gotcha,

bass player, right, according Rs, that that
was not done that this that thisthing with PV is great school.
But it's it's a, it's a season.
Sure. And I did I did for sevenyears, I ran the whole global
artist relations. I think we dida lot of great stuff, great
artists, you know, broughtpeople like Kid Rock Band and
slipknot. Nickelback, and youknow, big, the big players at

(42:09):
that time. Absolutely. Yeah. Andit was kind of cool, because
they were all big Megadeth fans,you know, them, even big
Christian artists, I got to seemen Megadeth really impacted a
lot more people than I guess Iprobably had realized, you know,
so it was, it was a lot of fun.
I learned a lot, I learned a lotabout just kind of servanthood

(42:30):
you know, we're in a businesswhere we stand in the spotlight
and everybody Anders does,right. And on the other side of
it, I learned this is probablyworth being from Minnesota
helped was Hey, you know, thisis about serving them, you know,
and I got to, you know, be ableto help them and oftentimes even
offer some of my own experienceand absolutely about, you know,

(42:53):
the path to and in rock stardom.
And so, yeah, it was it wasgreat. I really appreciated
that. Well, I learned a lotabout business manufacturing.
And it's funny, it was right ata time 2002 when I started
working on PBS right aseverything was moving to China,
you know, to watch that wholeChina's in them all the shit
that we're bitching about now,don't make anything in America.
I was there at the downbeat ofwhen it was happening. And the

(43:16):
music industry is a microcosm ofyou know, in automotive and
Boeing sure stuff but no, PV isa big player was a big player in
that day so I got to watch in aHartley PV oh my gosh, you know,
I have such respect for him. Andhere's his company he had built
by himself in Mississippi, thisbig monolith organization and
just watching it just fragmentsaway because things he had in

(43:40):
order to stay competitive. Hehad to move stuff to China. And
it just it changed how our howour biz our new instruments are
made. Now most of them are madeoverseas a lot of them and so it
was a really interesting timeEddie Van Halen of course was at
at PB at that time and the firsttrade show I worked at Nam
Eddie. I met Danny at that timeand so yeah, it was very cool.

(44:02):
Yeah. made a lot of Yeah,

see had that kind of break. And then you guys get
back together. You made somemore albums. You won a Grammy.
That's pretty exciting. And thennow I hear that you are working
on a new Megadeth album. Can youtell us anything about the album
when it's coming out a songtitle a lyric, a theme and
artwork, special guests.
Anything? Give me something?

Unknown (44:27):
No.
There's nothing I can tell you.

It's all secret.
It's locked down.

It's not even that it's a secret. It's not
done yet. So I can't tell youyou know, like when something's
done is when it's best to talkabout it. Okay, and you're
talking about evidence, hardfacts as opposed to Well, I

think it might Yeah, fair enough. Well, let's
let's move into the since I knowwe're getting short on time.
Let's talk about the projectsthat you do have done because
you got the two of you have afew different things going on.
So the first thing is the book,Rockstar Hitman, which it's a
it's an interesting Sina idea.
It's about these right here.
There we go. So yeah, it's aboutspies traveling the world in the

(45:06):
rock band who are also hittingit right this and it's called
the characters sledge. The sledsChronicles what

the character actually actually drew came,
Drake came up with that. It'sfunny, the idea came to me when
I was on tour last year inNovember, like literally a year
ago in South America is inBrazil. And the idea came to me,
I hit drew right away, I thoughtI need an accomplice on this
one. And, and so we startedlining out the characters and
getting the story. And I thinkprobably it's interesting, cuz

(45:33):
I've written several books, nonnonfiction, how to books,
memoirs, and stuff. And I thinkprobably the, a couple of things
with this, writing fiction. AndI always wanted to write
fiction, I'm a fan of it. Andand I know, Drew is a horror
thriller kind of writer, so Iknew he'd be good to pull in,
you know, to be a partner onthis. But I think a couple

(45:53):
things. One, as you develop acharacter, you ask yourself, Is
this character going to be herejust for a moment? Or are they
going to be in this for a longtime, and knowing that this is
going to be a book series thatthere's going to be several in a
series, it's like this thecharacter stay in the series
that they read? Did theydisappear for a bit and appear
back later? So I think those aresome of the fun things me and

(46:15):
drew get to work on. Becauseit's kind of like an album. You
make the album, it's done.
Unless it's a concept album, youknow, you know, Pink Floyd the
wall, part two, you know, youkind of create it and it's done.
And you move on Well, with thebook, and especially with this
particular one, we intentionallyset out to make it a series.
That's why it's called thesledge Chronicles. Sure, because
chronicling his journey as hegoes through this Rockstar

(46:37):
lifestyle, and drew and I both,you know, being in bands, and
having experienced, you know,the rock star lifestyle, we can
write a little bit from our own,you know, personal history, yet,
it's clearly fictional. And Ithink the other thing about it,
too, is sort of the point ofview that we wrote it from,
because most books are usuallywritten sort of by a third

(46:58):
person. And then the charactersway in in quotations, you know,
sledge said, come over here andSally data, you know, End of
quote, you know, what we decidedto do with this was to write it
actually from sledgesperspective, like it's him
talking. So it's almost like himwriting his own memoir, his own
autobiographical memoir, and andthat really opened up a

(47:19):
different some very cleverangles that I've not seen, quite
honestly, it's in a lot of otherbooks.

Do you think that you would try to make it into a
movie at some point?

Well, we could drink Drew's the filmmaker. So I
mean, he, we, you know, wedidn't talk about that we said,
you know, right, you know, westarted the lesson book company.
Okay, um, and as a way, kind of,like we started off in films to
put out dwellers and thenanything else comes after that,
you know, we started the lessonbook company, because we also
have some, some memoirs, Ithink, the Chris Paul memoir,

(47:49):
we're gonna put out that, andI'm actually quite a handful of
our Rockstar buddies are nowhitting us up to, oh, I have an
outlet to put these books out.
So we're going to do that aswell. But you know, but to also
be able to put out fictional andall kinds of different stuff, it
doesn't even have to be musicrelated stuff. And by having the
book company, obviously wouldfeed very easily over into the

(48:09):
film company. And of course, EMPrecord label we can do
soundtracks and all kinds ofperfect

Yeah. And so the other movie you have coming out
is called dwellers and it's likea found footage horror movie.
And you guys are you guys directdrew directs edits, right stars
in it, and you're doing a lot ofthose things as well.

Yeah, that's Yeah, that's Drew's thing. Mad
monster convention in February20. in Charlotte, North Carolina
is where we're gonna premierethe film. Okay. So yeah, so
it's, it's, it's, it's cool. Meand Tom Hayes are making a
couple little cameos in it. Butyeah, that's Drew's baby, man.
And I loved it. I thought theidea of it was was very hip and
cool. And

So and then that's all drew Yeah. And then then the
other thing you guys havetogether is the band Lucid,
which I just had Vinnie on myshow last week from Sponge, but
it's also got the Mike Heller,who's the drummer from Fear
Factory, so I heard one song,but how would you guys describe
the music? Like how would youdescribe it to people?

Well, it's interesting we writing the book.
This Let's face it, 2020 was ayear of Hey, fuck it, why not?
Anything Goes what what to writeon the song? Sure. You want to
plan a song? Sure. You know whatI mean? It's why not?

Well, yeah, you want to do the Chuck Shute
podcast here when

Drew sent me a track and said hey, can you
throw a bass in here and then ofcourse I was writing a new
Ellefson solo record at thetime. So my studio ears were on
I was plugged in ready to gosend it over played on it was
like yeah, this is freakingcool, man. I wasn't really I've
seen Drew play. I know his BangTango history and the other
stuff he's done but this wasreally cool stuff that spoke to

(49:50):
me and and then he called me upand he said, Hey, Vinn is going
to come in and lay it and writesome vocals and lyrics and lay
some tracks and it turned intoa thing and then we thought, you
know what? Why don't have likesort of a soundtrack to the
book? And quite honestly, thisthis actually is a photo of
Vinnie, perfect name and Niklaslikeness to sled. So he is, I

(50:10):
mean, we've kind of, tweaked ita little bit. But it's, uh,
yeah. So Vin is part of the partof the book. We maybe should
just call it the VinnyChronicles, I don't know,
Chronicle, okay.

And a couple a couple of the songs tie into the
book too.

They do and they did an awesome job. Like, I'll
hear these clever little waysthat Vinnie writes I love him. I
mean, I love sponge great...
he's such a rockstar. He's justa cool guy. And he writes such
great lyrics, very trippylyrics. He's a type of lyricist
I've never worked with before.
So it's fun with that... andDrew is a great guitar player. I

(50:47):
mean really great there.. andMike Keller he's good friends
with Dirk Vermeeren and soDirk's like awww dude, Mike's
awesome they're good friends andso to work with Mike and just
walk in and we all met in LA thesongs we get the songs together
we all met in LA mid July Iplugged in and banged out 10
songs in two days and and and itwas fun I just like hey produce

(51:10):
me let me know I got ideas letme know what you want and Mike
was very good in the studioreally knows his way around as
he says these tracks been comingtogether they it's it's it's
cool stuff and it's verydifferent. It's obviously not
thrash metal. Hence the namelucid has this... kind of feels
like what the music sounds like.

W got the one thrashy song remember the one
you were like I don't want to dothis.

Guys. What do you guys writing shit from "And
Justice for All" here...
...one song like that.

Okay.

We have to..
yeah...

what is that one called? Can you say

It's kind of this Stone Temple Pilot-y kind
of grungy thing a little bit,but it's... I don't want people
to just get it.... that's whatit sounds like.

That song... That sounds called... am I able to
say what it's called? It'scalled "Damned".

Okay, now would you guys tour for this band?

What's that?

Would you tour with this band? or do any live shows?

I think look, once we all get out of
quarantine. Yeah, hope you're Ithink we're just going to be
running like wild rabbits justgoing and doing anything we can
I mean, a lot of 2021, of courseis a reschedule of 2020 there'll
be new Megadeth stuff next year,sponges a new record coming out
next year. So there's sometraffic copying that needs to

(52:25):
happen there to kind of, youknow, for you know, have the
flow, but I think everybody'salso pretty reasonable. It's
like, Look, you know, there'sthere's, you know, there's
there's new music coming up. Youknow, it's I always say it's
kind of like, quarantine recordsare kind of like Superbowl
babies, you know, nine monthsafter the Superbowl suddenly. I
mean, I'm born in November,maybe I'm a Super Bowl, baby. I
don't know. But it's like, youknow, months after the Super

(52:46):
Bowl, you know, they always saythat there's this influx of
births. Interesting. People areall holed up on the couch
watching the Super Bowl, andwhatever else they're doing.
That's interesting. So I think Ithink 2021 is gonna be the same
way with with music. I mean, Ithink it is for me for sure. I
mean, there's no cover record.

Yeah. How do you record how do you do all these
problems asking Drew about thatearlier? How and Drews got a day
job. But how can you guys giveme some tips on work ethic? I
think if I do like two or threepodcasts a week, I feel like
I've put in a full work week,but you guys are doing movies,
books, coffee companies, bands,how do you how do you do that I
don't understand what's thesecret???

Got to find your zone got to find that Mojo. Once
you lock onto something and youstart going for you just go for
it hard and you just kind of,got to find your right pace. And
this kind of, hit on somethinguntil to the point where you're
not sick of it and you just keepon going with it. Sometimes you
got to take a break and go on tosomething else for a little bit.

(53:43):
So I that's what I do so manythings because I get bored of
one not bored, but I get to apoint with one thing to like,
Okay, I need to step away andwork on something else for a
little bit. And then just kindof bounce back and forth. And
that's that's that's always beenmy thing.

You echo that Dave?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, again, it's every
day. I mean, me and Tom Hazerttalk several times a day and
we'll kind of Hey, let's dothis, he how about this covers,
How about we do this and then sothere's always that way, Drew
and I once I think we kind ofstarted to find our creative
Mojo together back in probablyApril or so when he sent me that

(54:17):
first track. Again, this bookwas already well on its way and
again, the book kind of got to apoint and then all of a sudden,
out of nowhere, I see theseemails and Drew, send me these
chapters. I'm like, Holy smokes,dude, you're like killing it
here. This is awesome. And thenthat inspires me to get back
into the book. The music stuffkind of went up, and then it

(54:38):
sort of disappeared for a bit.
And next thing you know, it'slike, hey, let's meet in July.
And hey, the songs are prettywell lined out now. And it's
like, Wow, great. So yeah,things go through seasons. I
think that's the thing withcreativity. You can't force it,
but when it's there, and it'sand the floodgates are open,
man, you got to go with it. Imean, honestly, look, I just got
home from tour Monday morning.

(54:59):
As a little shout out, I mean,we hit it pretty hard to the
Midwest. And honestly, I waskind of thinking I'd come home
and just sort of glide down intoThanksgiving. And I've been
working harder this week than Iwas last week. You know what I
mean? And it's, but that's whatit is. It's sort of like, I've
learned over the years, nothingfeeds momentum, like momentum.
And when you've got momentum,you've got to go with it, man.

(55:19):
You've just got to keep on thephones ring. And is there you go
back to 2002? When Megadethended, dude, it got dark real
quick, and, and I was callingpeople and I mean, my phone was
ringing that way,I was goingHey, can I sing on it's gonna
hurt me that sing what can I dothis and wow, get a real job
like, so I've been there I'vebeen it's crickets and

(55:43):
scarecrows, and the Ravens outin the corn. So you

like being busy?
Like say like, how many hours aweek? Do you work that you say
that?

That's because again, Megadeth... from the
inute I met Dave, it was were rckin so for 20 years, and the
I just stopped. And I was lie, this sucks, man. I do not
ike I'm way too motivated. Anagain, being a clear mind, I
ve hive minds work and so to havthings going, I've been used

(56:10):
o doing this, you know, as fn as it was, again, I had to b
solely dedicated to Megadeh those first 20 years y
u know, absolutely there's thre's no option you have to be
united. But then there comes aoint in life like now where it'
fun to have a handful of othethings as well as mega death
because Megadeth You know, weve shut down now for a couple

(56:31):
f years we've done a littlbit of stuff, but we've been
working behind the scenes onn album and so got obviously CO
ID shut things down this year.
So it's fun to have a bunchf other horses in the race you k
ow, and kind of get them get thm up to the starting line. So w
'll get with cut when COVID hapened I was I feel like I was p
epared. It's kind of like that'that's cool. We're shutting
down no problem. Let's get towork on some other stuff. You k

(56:53):
ow, and not freak out. Becase I've learned never to put all
my eggs in one basket and I havn't for the last 20 years and i
's it's paid off

Absolutely and yeah, you have a new album and
people should check out EllisEllison no cover it's all
covered songs no cover meanslike there's no cover to get
into the bar Yeah, yeah.

Perfect ally altered by alter ego of drew fun
frontier performed on that.

Are they misspell your name or something?

Yeah, well, there was a thing there's a
thing on Apple Music when itcame out last week. Yeah, we had
to do a retake. Well, it's funnybecause there's a hidden track.
It ends with the track 18 byfast way save what you will but
if you leave the CD and there'sa bonus hidden track on there.
Oh, is actually chips enough. Meand drew and Vin actually sings

(57:40):
right back maybe we even putthat sign up. We're gonna put
that song on the loose.

Okay, perfect.
Yeah, well, I

know which we get last Olmert mixing the looser
the album and I think we mayhave him do a remix of a of
Downton Abbey and he sees Lhasais amazing. He's done like Al
storm and the world Dane andsanctuary. Okay,

cool. Well, I know.
I know you guys got to getgoing. So I do like to end each
episode with a highlight in acharity. And so Dave, I know you
work with the you have a useyouth music foundation. Where
you you set up all these likeonline tutoring with all these
rock stars helping kids, right?

Yeah, yeah.
David Ellison youth musicfoundation. Our link is Ellison
youth music foundation.org witha little button up there to to
donate. I mean, foundations,nonprofits are always doing some
kind of fundraising stuff. Yeah,our initiative earlier this year
was a School's Out initiativewhere we did we gave free music
lessons to students all aroundthe world. And yeah, so that's
my, that's my my highlight andmy charity equipment. So that

(58:42):
was really a great way as thingswere shutting down in the world.
It was great to have thatplatform there because I called
everybody up and I just said,Hey, listen, why don't we give
some free music lessons toeverybody. It'll get us out of
our own head. It'll keep us outof fear and freaking out that
the sky is falling and our livesare over you know, as much as

(59:03):
our tours are going away andstuffs gonna change this year.
Let's get into action helpingother people because that's a
sure way to get you out ofyourself for sure. Do

you ever get people reaching out to you like that
are depressed or suicidal orgoing through a rough time? And
do you look at those messages orI mean, because I'm assuming you
get a lot of message you can'tgo through every message on
Instagram and Facebook andemail.

Yeah, I don't I don't Yeah, I have people that
kind of handle the social mediastuff and look over that. But
yeah, I hear about him you know,and sometimes on live streams
and people post little commentsand stuff and I picked up on it,
you know, and and i know looksome of its alcoholism and
addiction. So I know I've beenthere. Sometimes it's you know,
people growing they're teenagersare going through that whole

(59:47):
thing, kind of misunderstood byparents and I get that that's
what rock and roll largely is,Hey, this is my voice. This is
my tribe. And so I yeah, I mean,look, I've lived all that
myself, you know, so if Yeah,look at Anytime I can try to be
helpful, and even through thefoundation, we've done some
stuff like that, you know, with,with people that have
depression. You know, and it's,it's, it's an interesting

(01:00:09):
society we live in, because inAmerica, there's sort of this
mindset that if we, if we haveour basic needs met, we won't
want anymore. But we know in acapitalist society that once you
get a little, you want a littlemore. Sure. And that was that's
a sure way to lead to adepressing lifestyle. And it's
not to say that you can't beblessed with abundance and have
nice things and be comfortable.
That's not what I'm saying. WhatI'm saying is, is the propensity

(01:00:31):
in in human nature, and in someof our own personal natures, and
I know that about myself aswell, that, you know, that can't
be the end game, that can't bethe pursuit. And I think all the
stuff that what I see those kindof people, I kind of try to
focus it back, like what is yourinterest? What gets you excited?
What wakes you up in the morningand get you? Mine has always

(01:00:53):
been music, I mean, done doingthe same thing at age 56. Today
in November that I did back whenI was 10 years, 11 years old.
You know, it's amazing, youknow, getting excited about
music, you know, and talkingabout this, all the stuff we
just talked about, you know,

Chuck Shute (01:01:07):
yeah. Well, yeah.
If

Unknown (01:01:08):
I follow your path,

yeah, no, I'll let you go, Dave, because I know you
got stuff. Do I have one lastquestion, though? Before you
before I let you go? Because Idid some research. I watched a
lot of interviews that you did,I noticed that you're a total
pro in interviews, like you, youare the same person if you're
talking to Eddie trunk. Or ifyou're talking to like a 10 year
old kid. Is that something youjust learned over being in the
music business for so manyyears? Or did managers like kind

(01:01:32):
of coach you on how to act ininterviews? Well,

David Ellefson (01:01:35):
I remember the very first interview that I did
with Megadeth, it was probablyat 1985, or 86. And I remember I
read it back and I sat with Daveand he pointed some things out
he goes now see how you talkedabout this here? And then and he
and he did because he was he wasbeing critical because it was as
we called it Rock School tryingto be first of all, we wanted a
consistent narrative in theband. Yeah. Okay, that one guy

(01:01:57):
over you're talking about jazzand other guy we're talking
about, you know, we let's get aconsistent narrative. And that's
sort of creating that. And, andthen, of course, as I did
interviews, over the years, Imean, I remember I think was
went into euthanasia. Weactually hired an interview
coach, and I remember sitting inLondon and going through some
interviews, and you start tokind of notice things like, are
you picking your nose orfluffing your hair? You know, I

(01:02:18):
see people today on the zoommeetings, they get distracted.
And next thing you know, they'reyou can tell they're looking at
their phone. Hey, wow, would bewhere you are. Yeah, you're on
point. You know, and it's easyfor, you know, technology and
things to distract us, you know,but it's, you know, I think the
big thing is, is just just beyourself, man, you know, and

(01:02:40):
then if you just meet yourself,you don't have to kind of try to
retrace your steps and go well,who was I? When I was talking to
that guy? You know, I mean, itjust, it just just be who you
are, you know, and, and becausepeople, truth always comes out.
Yeah, you can, you can seetruth, you can hear truth. I'm
talking truth with the capitalT. You know, like, the real
truth that always comes out. Sojust just be that and no, I find

(01:03:04):
that then you never have toretrace your steps.

Okay. All right.
Well, thank you so much, Drew.
If you want to stick around, wecan keep chatting. But I know
Dave's got to get going. He'sgot to have a good one. All
right. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Soand I know your charity is a
Toys for Tots. You told me soyour dad is like the president
of that.

Drew Fortier (01:03:22):
Yeah. He's been the president for probably about
a decade now. And in Chicago,huge. parade in Chicago. There's
like, like, 80,000 motorcycles.
That's going from like, thenorth side of the south side. Or
south side of the north side.
Yeah. Every year. I gotcancelled this year,
unfortunately. Oh, yeah. Butit's usually a really big
attraction and all that. Sothat's something I've always

(01:03:43):
been around since as a littlekid. I appearance for all these
bikers. Okay. Yeah, they'relike, cooler than I am.

Yeah, another question I was gonna ask. We
didn't have time to because Daveinterrupted us. Now he joined in
of course, we wanted to talkthat was amazing. Talking. Yes.
Oh, there you go. That's it. Iwas gonna ask him. I had so many
more questions. I skipped overcuz I was like, well, he told me
it goes well, probably like 20minutes or 30 minutes. If it's

(01:04:12):
going well. I think he gave melike, 40 minutes. I feel bad.
So, but I was gonna ask you.
He's great. He's amazing. I wasgonna ask you about this Zen
from Mars project. You told methat. Um, so first of all, it's
the singer from kick Tracy. Whoelse is in it? chips.

Oh, yeah, she's Steven Shroff and kick Tracy
chips enough in the nuts enoughKate Catalina who's actually
chips wife and a very, verytalented piano player singer.
Okay, and we got Bryn Ahrensfrom the band split, and my
color from your Patreon, Ravenand lucid.

So why explain to me You said there's gonna be two
versions of the album coming outwith different remastering is
that because they couldn't agreeon how to do it or what was the
story though?

The thing all started off with all these
instrumental demos wasn't beingTango, and I intended a lot of
them to be bank Tango songs,okay? But at that point like
that they were just moreconservative playing shows no
instead of like recording newmaterial and everything so so I
just randomly shut the StevenSharon from keep tracing me now

(01:05:16):
much like I did Ben from spongeI just had, I'd never met him
before this year, I just foundan email and sent him an email
with a track and he, you know,he did it, he's now got the ban.
Same thing with Stephen Sharon.
And that was about six yearsago, and sent him a couple tunes
and he was like, dude, I'm allover this. And then then we
ended up with Explorer. Whilewe're 13 songs. And, man, that

(01:05:40):
was such a learning experience,you know, is that thing It
started off as, like, my baby,then it turned into me and
Stephens, baby. And, and on mybehalf I Oh, and with the rest
of the guys in the band, Ialways wanted to make sure we
had their their say, like, youknow, everybody has, you know,
say a word should go out anddictate where it should sound

(01:06:01):
musically and all that, butthere's so many moving parts and
really when it came down to whatit is. To be perfectly truthful.
It's between me Steven and Mike.
And, I mean, Mike. Sure more ofthe same vision instead of
Stephen. Okay, you know, andboth visions were great, you
know, they're awesome. I totallygot it. That was always the guy

(01:06:22):
in the middle. You know, I neversaid this out loud before. So
you this is well, whoever wantsno buds in for Mars. I guess
this would be good for him.
Yeah, but and so Stephen wantedto do. He ended up with doing
his version of the album and hedid that get finished about a
year ago. Okay, and then, and meand Mike, we hired a different
mixture because RichardEasterling makes dance version

(01:06:42):
Richard did an incredible job.
He's a wonderful mixer. And butyou know, me and Michael like,
let's get a different sound moreof like the way that we were,
we're hoping to get and so wehired last alum, Merck who's
also mixing volution stuff. Andand that's really just about
done with that to think we'rejust gonna get two more tracks

(01:07:03):
going, then that sets finished.
Okay, finally, after all thistime, it's like the most highly
anticipated album that nobodyever cared about.

Oh, I can't write.
I'm excited. I likes kick Tracy.
I like bang Tango. I'm justsending some of the tracks.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no,

I think it'd be very ethereal. It's like It's
like heavy metal for weeks.

Well, yeah. When I'm, when do you think that will
come out?

You have it by 2026? Okay, let's realistically
probably hoping by thesummertime, okay. I mean, right
now, I think what it comes downto is just artwork and
sequencing. Okay. Stephens readyto get his sequencing worked
out. tracklisting and all thateverything we're gonna have. A
lot of it's gonna be the sametunes, but but, but different

(01:07:49):
tracks. Looks like we're gonnaleave a couple songs off of one
version and Steve have a couplemore versions on his. And it's,
yeah, I'll send you the tracksthough, man. Very cool.

So we got that album and then the the rock star
hitmen book is out December 18.
So people can get it a weekbefore Christmas, right?
Probably preorder now, right,December 18. And

you can pre order right now on Barnes and Noble.
You could get the hardcover thepaperback and the ebook. And you
can also pre order it on Amazonas a Kindle. Okay, and then
there will be a paperback onAmazon. It's just if they don't
allow pre orders for paperbackfor whatever reason. So I'll
turn that live when you get arelease date and everything but
and that'll be availableworldwide and all that. And

(01:08:37):
everybody I know everybody'sgonna ask me you guys do an
autographed copies.

New. Oh, okay.

It's so many logistics involved with Sure.
You know,

Unknown (01:08:46):
and it's

so and also mean they've spoken like we were
gonna be doing a lot ofconvention appearances for like
Weller's and all that andeverything and you think it'd be
a good way to get people to comeout and see us and there you go
sign that way. Yeah, I

know. He's doing so Ellison. He's got there's no
cover albums out now. Hiselephant. It's great.

Yeah, that's such a great covers.

The ellefson Coffee is out. I think he's
autographing bags of that. Andthen your guys's movie dwellers
will be out soon and the bandluces record will be out soon
and also a new mega so a lot ofstuff coming out in the works
for both of you. Very coolHonestly,

this coping stuff gets wrapped up it's like a like
2021 is gonna be ridiculous in adifferent sense than this year.

Yeah, be busy for sure a lot of promotions so very
cool. Well, is there anythingelse that I missed anything? I
feel like that's a lot of stuffto

man. Nicely definitely check out her name is
Krista and I got another movie Iacademics coming out too from
the same director writer of hername is Krista club brimstone
incorporated that's coming outand I think Valentine's Day and
it's like a horror movieanthology.

Okay, that's good.
It's where do you shoot thesemovies in Chicago are

actually those those were in Ohio actually had
the groceries not giving gettingdrunk. Ohio Chuck Mosley lived
in Ohio. Okay, we shot in Ohio,I shot dwellers in Ohio. Oh, for
some reason I keep getting drawnto Ohio.

Interesting. All right. Well, very cool. Thank
you for doing this. Thanks toDavid. Get Tom. Thank you for
me. Okay. So thank you. I hope Isaid thank you but very grateful
for both of you. Come on and,and for you to help setting this
up as well. So appreciate it. Mypleasure, man. Let's Let's do it
again soon. Yeah. Keep in touchwhatever you want. Absolutely.
All right. Sounds good, man.
Thanks.

Unknown (01:10:29):
I think he's ready to talk to you. Bye.

So that was David ellefson and drew for ta the
book is called rock star hitmen?
It's available on December 18.
Everywhere. Look for the bandlucid new album coming out soon.
Look for a new Megadeth album.
The new movie The horror moviefound footage thing is called
dwellers that should be comingout as well. Zen from Mars is
going to be the album from drewand ellefson Coffee Company

(01:10:54):
autographed coffee bags. You canget those on Ellison's website
david Ellison website. Ellison'ssolo album, no cover. That's a
collection of cover songs.
That's out now you can listen toit on Spotify for free. Lots of
cool stuff to check out. Makesure you follow drew and Dave on
social media to keep up with allthis stuff. You can follow me on

(01:11:15):
there as well. And if you likethis episode, you can let me
know by sharing it on yourInstagram or Facebook. You can
write me an iTunes review orleave a nice comment on YouTube.
Also, if you enjoyed thisepisode, check out some of my
past interviews. I've had somegreat guests like Glasgow from
Ozzy and Rob Zombie's ban. WileyArnett from sacred right, Rachel
bowling from Skid Row, DonJamison from that metal show.

(01:11:38):
Jason McMaster singer dangeroustoys he sings on Dave's new
record, and many, many more. Sothank you all for listening.
Thanks so much to Dave and drewfor coming on. It really was
like a dream come true for me.
So just remember, shoot for themoon.

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