Megadeth’s lighting truck has flipped in Calgary. No serious injuries are being reported.
Megadeth’s lighting truck flipped in Calgary. No serious injuries reported. pic.twitter.com/YJ65MjteUJ
— Mitch Lafon (@mitchlafon) February 23, 2026
Former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson has spoken out about his split with the band and the decision to replace his performances on 2022’s The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!. In a new interview with César Fuentes Rodríguez, Ellefson described the fallout as unfair and said he still hasn’t spoken to frontman Dave Mustaine since his dismissal.
Ellefson said he faced “no legal trouble” from the explicit videos that surfaced online in 2021 and claimed Mustaine’s own lawyer advised against firing him.
“It was stupid. There was never any legal trouble [stemming from the explicit videos which were posted online]. There was never any — there was nothing,” Ellefson said.
“And I said that: this is nothing at all. Dave chose to make that decision — for whatever reason or whatever influences he had behind him that made him make that decision, that is entirely on him. His own lawyer on the phone said, ‘Don’t fire David. It doesn’t seem necessary.’ … So, for whatever reason, but it certainly wasn’t from anything on my side.”
Discussing the handling of the situation, Ellefson said he preferred to address the controversy directly rather than relying on publicists, and he called the band’s dismissal statement “not cool.” He also suggested he’d seen similar treatment directed at other former Megadeth members, adding that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever speak with Mustaine again.
“In fact, if anything, I felt like when someone tried to cause trouble for me, I stepped up at the handle and then I dealt with it. I don’t fucking back down from it. I fucking deal with it. I don’t wait or hire a publicist. No — you just f*cking deal with it. You deal with your stuff and you make it right. So, again, it was, to me, unwarranted, unfair and unnecessary,” he continued.
Ellefson also talked about the aftermath of his dismissal and drew parallels to other former band members.
“But with that said, Dave made his decision about it. I haven’t talked to him since. And to me, that was not a very friendly thing to do, and how it was handled afterwards, the statement that was made [by Mustaine announcing that I had been fired from Megadeth] — not cool. Again, I watched the same kind of things happen to [other former Megadeth members] Chris Poland, to Jeff Young, so why not me? So it seems to be a pattern, but whatever. So, no, I have not talked to Dave. Who knows if I’ll ever talk to him? And it’s sad, and it’s too bad.”
The latest comments revive a long-running, complicated relationship between the two musicians, and Mustaine has previously been vocal about tensions with former bandmates, including in moments when he criticised ex-Megadeth members publicly during past disputes.
Ellefson’s remarks underscore how sharply the 2021 scandal continues to reverberate through Megadeth’s legacy, even as the band moves forward without one of its most recognisable longtime members.
