David Ellefson was born on November 12, 1964, in Jackson, Minnesota. His bass performance opens Megadeth’s “Peace Sells,” putting the instrument in the foreground before the rest of the band joins in. It was one of several ways he found space for bass within the group’s intricate arrangements.
Ellefson grew up on a farm outside Jackson, taking lessons on his mother’s Wurlitzer organ and playing tenor saxophone in the school band before picking up bass at 11. Hard rock on the radio helped him choose his instrument, but playing with other people gave him a direction. “I was not the stay-at-home practice guy,” he told For Bass Players Only in 2010. He formed bands with friends and regional musicians, treating practice as preparation for performing. Within five days of graduating from high school in 1983, he moved to Los Angeles. Music school was his backup plan; finding a metal band was the goal. He moved into an apartment beneath guitarist Dave Mustaine, and their meeting led to Megadeth.
Their early partnership produced the 1986 album Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying?. Mustaine wrote the title song’s opening bass line and showed it to Ellefson. In a 2021 interview with the Recording Academy, Ellefson recalled that the band finished the song during a two-hour rehearsal in the Los Angeles room where he and Mustaine sometimes slept. Its opening eventually reached listeners outside metal when MTV used it for its news broadcasts. Ellefson remembered hearing the familiar bass part on television while a bandmate was doing the dishes; they recognized their recording.
Ellefson brought his own ideas into the writing, too. For 1990’s Rust in Peace, a borrowed eight-string Yamaha bass prompted the riff that became “Dawn Patrol.” In a 2021 Bass Player interview published by Guitar World, he described learning that “an instrument can have a song in it.” The unfamiliar instrument had suggested something he didn’t think he would have written on another bass. When the band was asked for an additional song during the sessions, he recorded the line with drummer Nick Menza.
After his first stretch in Megadeth ended in 2002, Ellefson returned in February 2010 for the tour celebrating Rust in Peace. The reunion brought him back to those demanding arrangements, then into another run of studio work. On 2016’s Dystopia, the recording process gave his instrument an unusually prominent starting role.
Ellefson explained in Premier Guitar’s 2016 interview that he and Mustaine recorded the bass parts first, working to a click track. Usually, the drums and Mustaine’s rhythm guitar had supplied the structure and details that helped him place his own notes. This time, he had to establish his parts without those recorded guides. Their familiarity with each other’s playing helped them settle the phrasing, tone and picking. Ellefson connected the experience to their earliest writing sessions, when guitar and bass through small amplifiers had been enough to develop the songs. He singled out “Dystopia” and “Poisonous Shadows” as tracks where the bass could provide a broad, supportive sound without needing a complicated part.
In 2017, the title track “Dystopia” won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance. It was Megadeth’s first Grammy win, earned with Ellefson playing bass.
