ANNIHILATOR Mainman JEFF WATERS Says 'It's All About The Music'

Simon Lukic of Metal-Rules.com recently conducted an interview with ANNIHILATOR mainman Jeff Waters. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal-Rules.com: It would be fair to say that ANNIHILATOR's profile is on the up again which is a really positive thing. Your persistence and patience is starting to pay dividends.

Jeff Waters: Yeah, I hope so. I remember back when... way back in the Fourties. No. I remember back, I guess the Nineties, early Nineties and we were lucky enough to do a tour with JUDAS PRIEST and this small, unknown opener went on before us called PANTERA. It was something else because I got to hang out with K.K. Downing a lot. It was just one big party back then but the one thing that will always stand out for me from that big haze of crazy partying and having fun was as long as you're around long enough and you believe in what you do and enjoy and love what you do, some day it will all come back to you when you least expect it or when you're not looking. You know what I mean? I just do this because I love it and I'm not expecting anything out of it. I'm just grateful that I got the opportunity to keep putting these records out and have people buy them and do these tours. And yeah, it's nice to see something good happen for my band for a change. It's always an up-and-down life when you're doing this but when good things happen, it's like, "Yeah!" You almost feel like you deserve it, even if it's not the right way to say it.

Metal-Rules.com: Were there times where you felt like laying the band to rest and calling it a day?

Jeff Waters: Probably about three or four times. Usually it was over a divorce or money. As far as keeping things rolling, it's pretty expensive for a Canadian band to tour overseas and from about '97 to the year 2000, I was fighting not to give up on this thing. It would have been very easy to take a good, high-paying job doing something else in music but I just can't give it up. I've realized that I just like going to metal concerts and I like playing metal music. I like traveling and playing in a band and playing metal. In the end, I'll be either penniless or rich or in the middle and it won't matter to me. It's all about the music.

Metal-Rules.com: You were offered an audition with MEGADETH which you chose to by pass for ANNIHILATOR. Was that the most prestigious?

Jeff Waters: No. That's not the most famous one. But the other one is kind of private. (Laughs)

Metal-Rules.com: Okay, fair enough.

Jeff Waters: Because it's not a metal band. It's more of a pop band so I wouldn't even go there. With MEGADETH, it was a cool connection because in '89 we were touring with TESTAMENT and Chuck (Billy) storms into my hotel room and when he storms into your hotel room you stand up at attention and listen. And he's, like "Waters. Dave Mustaine's on the phone," and I remember telling him to fuck off. He goes, "No seriously, he's on the phone." He was looking for a guitar player and he was looking at Dime, myself and Marty Friedman, and he obviously made the right choice. He got the right guy for that one. Over the years, I've got a call from him or someone around him saying, "Yeah, Dave needs you or Dave wants to talk to you about...," you know, this kind of stuff. So I was always the guy that was sort of there but never really went past being the guy he was talking to. After joking about that for long enough, we finally became friends a couple of years ago. We started talking and hanging out a bit so my goal some day is to write a song with him.

Metal-Rules.com: Well, you might get an offer to do Gigantour in the future, which would be a good thing.

Jeff Waters: Yeah. That would be great. He's mentioned that to me and I said, "Yeah, if you want to take us, we're there, man."

Metal-Rules.com: When it comes to guitar playing, you're, of course, considered as one of the genre's best. How do you feel your playing's progressed over the years?

Jeff Waters: I think it's kind of weird for some people to fathom, but I used to practice a lot when I was a teenager. There was probably a ten-year run when I was a teenager and into my early twenties when I practiced, you know, ten hours a day and learned every Randy Rhoads and Van Halen lick, rhythm and solo. I really studied metal and played everything I could. Angus Young, Schenker… everyone you could think of. And then I think when I got to the "Set The World On Fire" album in '93, that's about the time when I stopped practicing. I actually did not practice guitar again until last month. So there was a time from about '93 to 2007 where the only time I ever touched a guitar was when I was warming up, going into the studio or getting ready to write. So I'd go down and I'd start writing right away and there was no practicing. It was warming up and then bang, you're writing songs and then it was warming up and bang you're recording. Then I'd literally, if you can imagine, since I'm doing all the production, engineering and mixing, once my guitar parts are finished in the studio, there's many months of work to do after that because those guitar parts are done. You've got vocals, the drums and then there's the editing and the engineering stuff that needs to be done near the end. Then there's the mixing process and the mastering. Then you deal with the album cover artwork — the business and the press trips, you know? The list goes on, setting up tours and all that stuff. It goes on and on where…I guess a good example is in October of 2006 when I finished the guitar parts for the "Metal" album and I didn't pick up the guitar until March, the first week of March of 2007. So that was five months straight that I had not even touched the guitar and a lot of kids when I say that are like, "Yeah right." But I practiced so much when I was younger and I didn't want to get arthritis or any of these tendonitis hand problems later on. I didn't want to become the guy that sat in my basement and life passed me by and I didn't enjoy life. I saw a lot of guitar players doing that back then and I thought screw it. I'm good enough to do what I want do and I learned enough about rhythm. I learned enough about solos. So I just went and learnt how to write songs. That's it you know, I just don't really need to practice. The downside is I don't come up with all these great new things as if I've been practicing six hours a day for ten, fifteen years. But the good side is, it just keeps me totally fresh and loving guitar, loving music, loving metal and physically I can play. Do you know what I mean? (chuckles)

Metal-Rules.com: Yeah.

Jeff Waters: I don't have to worry about, you know, hand problems because a lot of people do. You don't really hear about it but a lot of guitar players slowly fade away because they can't hold a pick anymore and it's from the ridiculous amount of practicing that a lot of people do. So that's it. I don't practice and I don't come up with a ton of new things. What I do is I just try to write songs.

Read the entire interview at Metal-Rules.com.