ANNIHILATOR's JEFF WATERS: 'I Am One Of The Luckiest Musicians I Know'

Epiphone.com recently conducted an interview with ANNIHILATOR guitarist/mainman Jeff Waters. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Epiphone.com: Tell us about your early days. When and how did you start playing guitar?

Jeff: I started playing guitar when I was around 7 years old. My mother was always noticing that I would stop everything and freeze, every time I saw a guitar on TV or in a shopping mall or at church. She knew that she had to put me in guitar lessons, as I was a very hyper-active child and she knew that if she found something I would stop and pay attention to, she better encourage it!

Epiphone.com: So you moved from classical to jazz… to rock and metal. Tell us about the technical progression. How did you develop what you learned from classical lessons into the ability to play so fast and so accurately in a Metal environment?

Jeff: The left hand for me was already "ready" for metal, after the classical and jazz lessons. But the right hand… or picking hand… was sloppy and not so good until I heard the first EXODUS, METALLICA and SLAYER records. Yes, the earlier heavy metal gods were god guitar pickers but Hetfield, Holt and Hanneman/King really stepped up the game for picking hangs worldwide! What I did is literally try to see what I liked about all of their picking styles and try to combine them all. I was lucky because I already had so much influence from the "left hand"… fretboard hand players like Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, Jabs, etc… that when I tried to combine it all, it really made me good at all areas of guitar playing. Van Halen was the king because he could play great rhythm guitar, write great songs and play great and innovative leads… an all-round player. He was the best ever and no one will probably ever have the influence like he had on players in the late '70s and '80s.

Epiphone.com: Any advice for younger players trying to find their way?

Jeff: Listen to LOTS of guitar players in lots of styles of music. For young musicians, practice the song "Chemical Warfare" by SLAYER, "Creeping Death" and anything off of "Puppets"/"Kill 'Em All". That will get your rhythm hand fast and tight. For solos, try to listen to as many metal guitar players as possible… listen to the '80s players to get more of an original influence. The '80s were the time when the greats were producing brilliance! Also, on a personal note, stay away from alcohol, drugs and cigarettes… if you want a long career… or a long life! These days, to have a career at all means that you need to learn the business and take care of your business; you cannot do this if you are cloudy in the mind or dying from lung disease.

Epiphone.com: You have had a very successful career so far and there are obviously great things ahead. Looking back at your career… are there any things you think you could have done better… maybe some more advice for up and coming artists?

Jeff: I would not have started smoking cigarettes… and I would have taken a part-time business course. I am one of the luckiest musicians I know. I have had many chances after being ripped off by managers and other companies in the biz and for some reason, I keep getting chances to rebuild and restart. The business side is crooked, criminal and the sad side of being an artist… but if you want a career in this biz, you need to watch out for everyone and everything and keep your head clean and clear. I have built ANNIHILATOR into a successful business that makes money and does well. However, most bands that sell 10 times what we do don't make money. So stay clean and take a business course. Oh yeah… another thing… write good songs and get better at songwriting. Many kids just want to "shred" but if you just "shred"… then all you are is a shredder and not a songwriter. Van Halen, Hetfield, Malcolm Young, Gary Holt, Tipton… all these guys WRITE GREAT SONGS FIRST… then they shred.

Epiphone.com: You are considered by many to be one of the most influential metal guitarists of all time. Joel McIver's 2009 book "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists" ranked you at number 3. How does it make you feel that a generation of players considers you an influence?

Jeff: Very cool. I have spent 20 years in interviews telling everyone about the 30 guitar players and bands that influenced my music with ANNIHILATOR... now the torch passes on. In the last 5 years or so, I have heard from so many well-known metal, rock and even pop bands, about the influence my playing and/or songs have had on their work. I remember my good friend Dave Ellefson, who plays bass in MEGADETH, telling me recently that back in the early days MEGADETH used to drive to the recording studio… when they were recording their classic "Rust In Peace"… while listening to "Alice In Hell"… the first ANNIHILATOR release. Now, to know that great young bands like LAMB OF GOD, CHILDREN OF BODOM, TRIVIUM, etc... grew up with my music and playing having an influence on what they are doing today… now that rocks!

Epiphone.com: And it's not just the heavier bands…

Jeff: ANNIHILATOR has been known to write heavy and thrashy songs but we also have had a lot of melodic songs, instrumentals, rock-style songs and even ballads. To have someone like Jesper from IN FLAMES tell you that you are one of his favorite guitar players and then the next day have members of NICKLEBACK and 3 DOORS DOWN saying similar things... well, you know you've had an impact, let's just say!

Epiphone.com: You are extremely popular and seem to focus a lot of your marketing efforts in Europe and Asia. Is this a conscious effort?

Jeff: We had some limited success from 1989 to 1993 in North America but then came NIRVANA, SMASHING PUMPKINS and grunge. That essentially killed off 98% of all metal bands. In fact, unless you were playing music similar to PANTERA or BIOHAZARD or SEPULTURA, you had no chance to survive in the biz at that time. Most that did survive had to change their image and music and I was not into that… and, quite frankly, my music would not have survived here anyway. It was traditional heavy metal with thrash influences so that was target number one to go in North America. Where I lucked out was that Europe and Asia still had large, faithful followers of this kind of music and while other bands were putting makeup on and changing their clothes and music to suit what was "hip", ANNIHILATOR kept throwing out it's "typical" metal music and it has given the band 20 years of popularity now overseas. Thankfully, things started changing here. I noticed that bands like SUM 41 and other pop and pop punk bands were starting to wear IRON MAIDEN, SLAYER, MOTÖRHEAD and JUDAS PRIEST shirts in their videos and live. I am pretty sure that their young fans started to question who these bands were and then went out and sought the music from these ancient dinosaurs… (Laughs) and BANG... metal was on the way back!

Read the entire interview from Epiphone.com.