Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine sat down with Loudwire Nights for a new interview and reflected on firing their former bassist David Ellefson in the middle of recording their 2022 album, ‘The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!’
“I don’t like getting into the details about it because Dave was my friend for many, many years and even still, in a matter of faith, we’re still brothers, but this was something we needed to change, and I painfully did so,” he said. “And we had Steve DiGiorgio come in from Testament [to play on the album], and he really delivered. He was a great guy and just masterful player. I really liked him a lot. We talked a lot about his availability to play with us if we had tour dates come up until we found a permanent player.”
“And I thought about that, and I just thought, ‘No, I don’t wanna do that to Eric [Peterson, Testament guitarist] and the guys in Testament,’ ’cause Eric and I and Alex [Skolnick, Testament guitarist], we’re guitar players, so we’re close with one another. And poaching somebody’s player I don’t think is cool. Plus, Steve had integrity, where he was there to play on the record and everything. And any talk of anything other than that, it just never germinated. And just to be clear for the record, we never tried to steal Steve. I think he would tell you that. We were talking about situations where if we had a concert, we needed him to come in and do a one-off,” Mustaine added.
DiGiorgio said in another interview that it was great working with Mustaine on the new album. “It was brutal. But the cool thing was [Dave] treated me awesomely,” the bassist said in an interview with ‘Into The Combine’ podcast. “He gave me absolutely all the room to learn the stuff. I can’t say I didn’t hear the songs before I got [to the studio], because he did send me a folder and I could listen to the songs. Even just asking me to do it, they were already at that point, so it wasn’t, like, ‘Yeah, four months later we’ll…’ No. It was, like, ‘As soon as you say ‘Yeah’, get here.’ So I didn’t have any time to sit down and work out anything.”
“My experience, I can’t validate any of that, because I was in the studio for, like, 13 days and gone. And for every single day I was there, he was an awesome human being. We got along great. We played great. He pushed me and he pulled me, but when it was done, he let me know it was done. It was a big high five and a hug, and we had a celebratory meal,” the rocker shared his experience.
Though Steve DiGiorgio played in the rest of the album, James LoMenzo later stepped in as the new bassist.
When Mustaine confirmed in March 2022 that DiGiorgio recorded the bass tracks for ‘The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!,’ he said it threw off their timing. The album eventually came out on September 2, 2022, and features guest names such as Sammy Hagar and Ice-T.