BLABBERMOUTH.NET
David Ellefson says that
MEGADETH and other thrash and extreme metal bands "owe everything to
METALLICA."
Dave Mustaine, who was the original lead guitarist of
METALLICA, was dismissed from the band by drummer
Lars Ulrich in 1983. He was replaced by
Kirk Hammett and went on to form
MEGADETH and achieve worldwide success on his own.
Asked in a new interview with
Detroit's WRIF radio station if he and
Mustaine paid close attention to what
METALLICA was doing in the early years of
MEGADETH's existence,
Ellefson said: "Oh, of course. I mean, look, we are all just a branch off the
METALLICA family tree. I mean, let's face it. Especially
MEGADETH, with
Dave being there, and then me being a branch off of
Dave with
MEGADETH. So, I mean, look, we owe everything to
METALLICA. Those guys broke down the doors for every one of us —
ANTHRAX,
SLAYER. Bands today —
LAMB OF GOD,
PANTERA — none of this would have happened without
METALLICA being up there as the 800-pound gorilla just carving the path through the jungle that would have
never let heavy metal in. The stuff that they able to do and the size and the scope of which they were able to break those doors down, it changed all of our lives — as musicians, as fans, as everything. That's why I think when they did the 'Big Four' [shows] with us in 2010 and '11, that was just such a great olive branch."
The
MEGADETH bassist continued: "As
Scott Ian [
ANTHRAX] said, it's like we're all brothers of the same family, it's just that one of our brothers went off and became
Microsoft [
laughs], and that was
METALLICA. It's, like, how the hell did you do that? That's amazing. You changed the world. But the fact that they came back and, again, offered that olive branch to us and just said, 'Hey, we were all in this together. Let's celebrate what we did together so many years ago.' And I think that speaks volumes to just how cool
METALLICA is."
Last year,
Ellefson said that he got
Mustaine's "blessing" to audition for the bassist position in
METALLICA after
Jason Newsted left the band more than 19 years ago.
David went on to say that he learned how to play some of
METALLICA's songs in preparation for what he thought would be an audition but that the opportunity to play with the group never materialized.
Back in 2011,
Mustaine said that he was relieved that
Ellefson wasn't invited to join
METALLICA after the tragic death of
Cliff Burton.
Burton died on tour in 1986 in a tour bus crash, three years after
Mustaine was kicked out of
METALLICA and went on to form
MEGADETH.
The so-called "Big Four" of 1980s thrash metal —
METALLICA,
MEGADETH,
SLAYER and
ANTHRAX — played together for the first time in history on June 16, 2010 in front of 81,000 fans at the
Sonisphere festival at Bemowo Airport in Warsaw, Poland and shared a bill again for six more shows as part of the
Sonisphere series that same year. They reunited again for several dates in 2011, including the last "Big Four" concert, which was held on September 14, 2011 at Yankee Stadium in New York City. Since then,
METALLICA,
SLAYER and
ANTHRAX have played a number of shows together, including the 2013
Soundwave festival in Australia. They also performed at the 2014
Heavy MTL festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.