Free My Life With Deth by David Ellefson Page A

most bass players was really amazing. He really kept it musical.
    We went up to Indigo Ranch Studio in Malibu to do the album and stayed at the guesthouse there, the bummer being that there was just one very narrow dirt road leading to it, and whenever we ran out of drugs we had to either drive back down the hill or call one of our Hollywood friends to bring some drugs up to us, which was a nuisance. I remember one night, when I was very high on cocaine, Scarface was on TV. It scared the living daylights out of me. That’s not a good film to see if you’re high on coke! I saw my future in that film and it looked pretty freaky.
    I was intensely aware of what I was doing to myself, even if I wasn’t honest about it with anyone else. In recovery we talk about rigorous honesty being required in order to get sober and stay that way, and I’d been honest with myself all along—just not with other people. I would call my parents and tell them what was going on with the band, without ever telling them about any drug use. I acted as if I was keeping it all together, even though I was essentially homeless and squatting in people’s houses.
    Chris Poland (ex-Megadeth):

    Ellefson would say, “I know a guy on the other side of town who has some tar, let’s go over there.” We would buy eighty dollars’ worth of heroin and do it right there. I think that was the first time he realized just how bad things had become. Once you’re there, it’s hard to walk away from it. It was tough. It never should have happened. A lot of that pain and anger came out in Megadeth’s music: the drugs really fueled the fire in the band.
    We made Killing Is My Business . . . in December 1984. All of us were strung out to some degree during the sessions—Chris completely so; Gar a little less because he had to keep it together for his job as a general manager at B.C. Rich Guitars. I was the fun, happy partier who was getting in way too deep.
    Making the album was pretty exhilarating, although the sound quality wasn’t great, because we had so little money for it. I liked Killing Is My Business . . .  , but I wish some of the tempos had been a bit less extreme. We’d originally rehearsed the songs significantly slower, but Megadeth’s music had suddenly gotten much faster back in the fall of 1983 when Dave received a letter from a fan, forwarded to him by our friend Brian Lew, who was helping us out, acting as a fan-club go-between. Metallica had just released their debut album, Kill ’Em All , and this fan had written, “Dave, I hope your songs are faster than Metallica’s.” The next day we sped up all the songs by about forty beats per minute. Extreme speed was deemed the cool factor in thrash metal back in those days, and that one fan letter changed Megadeth’s sound overnight.
    Our version of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ” was a comedy cover, for sure, but I think Jay Jones—whose idea it was—saw the storyteller, raconteur side of Dave and knew that he could do a real tongue-in-cheek version of it. It worked well and lightened the mood of the album a little bit.
    We turned in the record to Combat in January 1985. By then Chris was pretty much out of the band. His addiction had really taken over, and made it impossible for him to remain with Megadeth.
    In the spring of 1985, we were still short a guitarist. We were supposed to hit the road, and our backs were against the wall. Jay Jones introduced us to Mike Albert, a seasoned musician who had played guitar with Captain Beefheart. He became the fill-in guitar player for the Killing Is My Business . . . tour: five or six weeks across the U.S. as the support act to the Canadian band Exciter, who also had a new album out.
    Mike Albert was a seasoned touring musician. He was concerned about the tour income, which we knew was going to be very low from the start. He was in his early thirties, a decade older than Dave and me.
    I was the only guy in