Megadeth Bassist Wants to Be a Lutheran Pastor

Megadeth bassist David Ellefson performs during the Jagermeister Fall Music Tour at the Pearl concert theater at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Megadeth's best-selling album is Countdown to Destruction, but in the meantime at least one of the band's members is making the most of life on earth. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, bassist Dave Ellefson is an online student in the Specific Ministry Program at Concordia Seminary. 

"Most people want to be a rock star," said Jon Bjorgaard, pastor of the Lutheran church in Scottsdale, AZ, where Ellefson and his family are congregants. "David's a rock star who wants to become a pastor."

Ellefson grew up attending Lutheran services in his native Minnesota, but when he moved to L.A. and joined Megadeth, he was lured into the rock & roll lifestyle. At 25, he entered a 12-step recovery program and reconnected with his faith. 

When Bjorgaard asked the rocker to start a contemporary worship service, he began performing for the church. "For a Christmas service, I remixed some classics, not quite in a Megadeth fashion, but in a pretty heavy rock fashion," he said.

Next week Megadeth kicks off a tour with Motorhead in New Jersey. During downtime on the road, Ellefson will hit his homework. "Some peolel want to morph things together into one," he said, "but I have a hand in both worlds. I love praise and worship music, and I love heavy metal."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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