Megadeth’s David Ellefson Dishes on New Book ‘Unsung: Words and Images’

Megadeth bass player David Ellefson has a new book in toe, ‘Unsung: Words and Images,’ and this isn’t your typical metal read. The book features previously unpublished lyrics and images, showing the relationship between poetry and art.

As Ellefson describes it, the collection came together naturally and organically. “A friend of mine — Brent Nelson — had written a poetry book called ‘Out of Darkness’ and he had done a similar type of thing, putting some really dark, intriguing images next to poetry,” he told Metal Forces. “That’s what really spawned the idea for this book, so Brent actually helped me … I was actually working with Brent on co-writing a couple of pieces anyway, so the idea came together really quickly.

“I wanted to create this book using the photographs as a way to add depth and thought-provoking impact to the lyric, much in the same way music would do to the words if they were in a song. We got our editor Libby [Calaby] out of London and Raffaella, we used her photo images out of Italy. Very quickly everybody came onboard, and we hussled. Within the course of a couple of months we were able to compile all of the lyrics, find the appropriate images to go with it, and the book was born and done.”

The guys of Megadeth, Ellefson included, are pretty vocal about their Christian faith, and Ellefson says that belief strongly influences his lyrics and life. “Faith runs concurrently with life, and by and large it’s the seed of life. If you try to live without it, then life becomes empty, shallow, and meaningless … We find that the master plan is not always one that we’re supposed to know. That comes back to the fact that God doesn’t need our help running our lives; he’s asked us to do other things, helping other people and helping them enter his kingdom. Meanwhile, he takes care of our lives, so sometimes it’s a matter of getting ourselves out of our own way.”