During a conversation with ‘No Fuckin’ Regrets With Robb Flynn,’ Megadeath bassist and also the co-founder of the band, David Ellefson, has talked about lots of things from his years-long battle with heroin and how he managed to work as a fully functioning drug addict.

As you might already know, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has released a new oral-history book named ‘Rust in Peace: The Inside Story of the Megadeth Masterpiece’ at the end of 2020 and shared band member’s history with heroin.

As Dave shares the story of how they hid bags of heroin inside their distortion pedal and got high while they were in rehab, he also shared how did they compete with Metallica after the legendary band has released ‘Black Album’ back in 1991.

Black Album (also known as the ‘Metallica’) was Metallica’s fifth studio album and it became the band’s best-selling album in a really short time. Black Album has debuted at the first spot in many countries from day one and it stayed over four weeks on Billboard 200 list.

Here is what David Ellefson told Robb Flynn:

“I credit Ron [Laffitte, management]; he had good vision, he knew how to sell the band, he worked with Capitol Records, got the money, got the right people, and helped work with the vision.

And management is a big part of that, that just leaves musicians to their own devices. Ron was really helping us, again, get clean, get the record. And then the ‘Countdown to Extinction’ record in ’92.

And thrash metal reached its peak – Metallica has moved to pass us with their ‘Black Album’ [1991], Queensryche’s [1990] ‘Empire’ record was huge…

We knew that Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth are the three bands left – there were Testament and all that of course, Testament was doing well.

But we just felt in our band, especially with Marty’s [Friedman, guitar] capabilities and the cleverness of Dave’s [Mustaine, guitar/vocals] writing, just all that we had, everybody was contributing, writing, it just felt we have got to go to the next level – ‘We can do this.'”

He continued:

“It wasn’t a desire to go to the next level and be bigger and make more money, it was like – we can change our lives, we can change the scene, we can move this, we can really move the needle and take the metalheads with us, and yet expand the sound of the band.

And we did with ‘Countdown,’ we definitely hit it for sure. Of course, [1994’s] ‘Youthanasia’ moved it a little further. And that was a more challenging campaign because I think we made a great record and the right record, but Seattle had come in and changed the world with Pearl Jam.”

You can watch the interview below.

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