Megadeth’s David Ellefson recalls the first album he ever bought

Megadeth bassist David Ellefson recalled in an interview with Metal Journal the first album he ever had and bought. The musician also reflected on how music can transport people to the past instantly.

Megadeth’s David Ellefson recalls the first album he ever bought:

“Well, it’s funny, B.T.O.’s ‘Not Fragile’ [1974] was the very first album I had. I grew up on a farm, and my dad had a farm-hand that he hired, and he had the Bachmann-Turner Overdrive ‘Not Fragile’ on eight-track. So we’d listen to it in the John Deere tractor. I would literally go ride with him all afternoon plowing the field, so I could hear that record.”

“I think the first one that I bought… I took my brother and we took a trip to see our cousins out in Seattle, WA. And I remember we went to a record shop and I bought KISS‘ ‘Destroyer’ [1976] on cassette, and that thing didn’t leave the cassette player for years.”

“Even today when I’m traveling, I’ve got some certain travel CDs, and ‘Destroyer’ is one of them. I put everything on my iPhone, of course, and I’ll just listen to it, I’ll pop it on, and I’ll hear ‘Flaming Youth’ and ‘Sweet Pain,’ and ‘Do You Love Me’… And it’s just, ‘Oh, man!’ It just takes me back to Seattle when I was 11 years old, the summer of, I guess, ’76 when that record came out. Music can do that – it can transport you in time.”

Destroyer

Destroyer is the fourth studio album by Kiss, released on March 15, 1976 by Casablanca Records in the US. It was the third successive Kiss album to reach the top 40 in the US, as well as the first to chart in Germany and New Zealand. The album was certified gold by the RIAA on April 22, 1976, and platinum on November 11 of the same year, the first Kiss album to achieve platinum. The album marked a departure from the raw sound of the band’s first three albums.