Former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson looked back on the time when his assault scandal broke the internet during a recent interview with Joshua Toomey of the ‘Talk Toomey’ podcast. According to the musician, he now accepts how things turned out since it’s a part of rock and roll.
As many of you recall, David Ellefson made the headlines a couple of months ago when the bassist’s masturbation video and screenshots of explicit conversations of him were leaked. Moreover, the woman involved was not his wife.
Following the incident, the musician received a great deal of criticism especially after the rumors that the woman he was talking to was actually an underage girl. From that on, Ellefson faced accusations of pedophilia and child grooming.
In addition to this, the bassist has been married to Julie Foley since 1993 which makes this entire incident cheating. Not only that, but he also received major backlash from the Christian community due to being a Lutheran pastor who had an affair with an underage girl and committed adultery.
It was later revealed that the woman he had these conversations with was an adult who had her consent for the whole incident. Although the musician expressed his regrets via a statement on his official Instagram page, it wasn’t enough for him to stay in his band.
Following the scandal, Ellefson was fired from Megadeth, and he went on to form his own band named ‘The Lucid.’ Furthermore, he made it perfectly clear that he has no regrets after being fired from his band and is determined to look forward.
During a recent interview, David Ellefson looked back on those times and stated that he was extremely nervous when the posts were first uploaded on social media. It got to a point where the musician was even anxious to go to Starbucks, but he eventually sought help and made it through.
According to what Ellefson said, this is what rock and roll is. Being a well-known rockstar has its ups pretty exciting, but also lows very depressing. Since he was aware of this situation, he seems to have prepared himself for the whole scenario from the beginning.
When asked if he was nervous at the time, Ellefson said:
“A hundred percent. Back in May, I was nervous to go to Starbucks. I went way off the radar and I just shut everything down. And I sought some counseling and therapy. I’m in the recovery community, and thank God they were very supportive, of course, ’cause that’s what we do.
But, you know, look, it’s rock and roll, man. You wanted to be a rock star, you wanted to be a musician, you wanted to be out there doing it… When you’re in our line of work, if you’re at all in the spotlight, be ready for the dark shades of the spotlight to swoop over you at times too ’cause it does, and that’s the reality of it.”
You can watch the entire interview down below.
