JASON MCMASTER On Turning Down Chance To Audition For PANTERA: 'Obviously I Was Not The Right' Singer For The Band

In a new interview with Ralph Rasmussen of Radio Bypass, DANGEROUS TOYS and WATCHTOWER frontman Jason McMaster once again spoke about the time he was approached by PANTERA about possibly singing for the group before Philip Anselmo connected with the fellow Texas metal act. He said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Yeah. To be fully correct, I was… This probably was in around '86, maybe early '87, but I know I have that timeframe almost spot-on. Mr. Abbott, ['Dimebag'] Darrell [Abbott, PANTERA guitarist] and Vinnie's [Paul Abbott, PANTERA drummer] father, called me on the phone and said, 'Hey, those are my boys, and I'm kind of managing them.' And I'm, like, 'Oh, I know who you are.' He was already kind of a legend in Texas, and PANTERA was already known. And I was in a band called WATCHTOWER, which is this progressive… Before you could put the words 'math' and 'metal' together, we were 'math metal'. We were this technical thrash band, this progressive thrash metal band, which is not… I mean, now it's commonplace for you to talk about extreme metal and have it be completely math rock and math metal, and there's so many different genres of what I'm kind of talking about. But anyway, WATCHTOWER is arguably the pioneer of that genre. But I digress. The point is I was in this really weird metal band. And that's how those guys knew me, and I knew them to be this kind of glam rock. They didn't have Philip [in the band yet]; they had [previous PANTERA singer] Terry Glaze, and they were a little bit more — I don't know — [like] DEF LEPPARD [or] BON JOVI. And that's fine. And they were kicking ass. They were a touring [band]. They would run around Texas and roll up through Oklahoma, go all the way to Nashville and play their way all the way back. And they were killing it. And they were young. And, everyone, I don't have to say it — they had Darrell. But Vinnie and Rex [Brown, PANTERA bassist] are these bad motherfuckers too. So as a band, [they were] unstoppable, no matter what. All my friends, we knew who they were, of course. So, Mr. Abbott calls me and I respectfully decline, because I'm about to have to replace a guitar player in WATCHTOWER, which was no easy feat because of the style of music it is. It's like you can't just call up, 'Hey, Joe, across the street, come and play a guitar.' 'Oh, I got five strings.' You have to have third eye wide open and be into MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA and RUSH in a blender on crush to understand what it is. And, anyway, I explained that to him and he was fine. Two weeks later, Vinnie calls me to basically say, 'Are you sure?' And this was an invitation to only audition."

Asked by Rasmussen if PANTERA was "kind of the biggest band in the area at that point in time", Jason clarified: "No. I didn't know them to be as far as what you would call the 'biggest' band. I mean, they had footprint and they had buzz. Years later I was blessed enough to get into a little conversation about what we're talking about with Darrell. And I'm, like, 'Why me?' Because, obviously, it's funny because they got Philip and ended up being this giant monster that defies genre of… They were thrash. For a minute, they were the heaviest thing on the radio. They were thrash and they were power metal and they were doom. Oh my God — the riffs and just Philip's voice and they were this conglomerate of everything. They were monstrous, and they were obviously breaking down walls, kicking ass and taking names with Philip. Whatever decisions they made, they made right ones. Obviously I was not the right guy, and I knew it prophetically somehow. And here's the thing, too — I got asked to audition for SKID ROW too, and it was verbatim the same storyline. [SKID ROW guitarist] Snake calls me one day, he calls me two weeks later: 'Are you sure?' Same answer I had."

Circling back to why he turned down an opportunity to audition for PANTERA, McMaster said: "Here's my real answer. When I'm leaving WATCHTOWER and I'm joining DANGEROUS TOYS, there's something that a lot of people don't realize. It was really hard to make that decision to leave something I was in almost a decade, and then go with these guys I knew for six months and go make a brand new record. In less than a year, I'm in arenas and on MTV, not in that order. But what's missing in this conversation, and this sounds selfish, maybe not, but this was something in that I had stuck to my shoe, I'll just call it, 'cause it wasn't something that I wore like a badge. I had a chance to sing my songs because in WATCHTOWER, they wrote the lyrics. I wrote the melodies. They may have had compositions that told me where they expected me to sing and what would resemble a verse, and a chorus, and a bridge, et cetera. But that's my voice and it's my melodies, and that's the way the song goes. And I had a lot to do with that. But I didn't write the lyrics, so that part was missing in my skillset, and I needed to sharpen that knife, and this was a chance for me to do it. So by the time the SKID ROW offer to audition — to be a hundred thousand percent clear — obviously they're doing the right thing too, and I have mad respect for them as well and their decisions that they've made too. And it's probably tough in the shoes that they are wearing right now. They stuck to their guns. It must be hard to have a different singer every few years. But they're still a badass band and they're obviously unstoppable and respect to that. But the point: I had a chance to be a songwriter, so when I'm saying this to these guys, I'm still working on this right here, and I don't need to tell you that in so many words. And to give you a little bit of introspect, if that's even a word, into where I am. And so, now that I have my own songs to sing, I feel a lot better, maybe even about being a replacement singer. And I have pretty much been a replacement singer since I got it all figured out."

Four and a half years ago, McMaster told Waste Some Time With Jason Green about being approached by PANTERA about auditioning for the band: "I like talking about this, only because it clears up some things. I was offered an audition. I never auditioned. I didn't accept the offer to audition.

"[Darrell and Vinnie's] father called me first, which was interesting, that someone who could have been my dad is calling me, 'Hey, I'm Mister… And I'm looking…', kind of management style, and I'm just a dude, and I'm going, 'Woah, this is trippy.' And I turned him down. And then Vinnie calls me, like, two weeks later, and the same kind of a thing happened.

"But we — as in my scene in Austin — we had heard about people talking, 'Man, I saw this band PANTERA, and they played this, and they played METALLICA,'" he continued. "But they were saying they would play DEF LEPPARD — they would play the popular hard rock and heavy metal songs. It didn't matter if it was this new thing called thrash or whatever. I don't think that they were covering DESTRUCTION or SODOM or CELTIC FROST or VENOM, like me and my friends kind of wanted to, but they were [playing] the popular stuff. They were doing club circuits. They were wearing pink and purple and green and yellow on stage. They had big hair. And so it was kind of, like, the whole, 'Well, do you call them posers?' Well, you're not a poser if you believe what you do. And they were good. And everyone said how good they were. Darrell was always a guitar legend in Texas. The guy probably never had any lessons and he just learned from slowing down VAN HALEN songs. [He was] an incredible talent, and everyone knew it, even though there was never a citing of any of that, because in my circle, it was a little more hardcore.

"So, '86 comes around. WATCHTOWER's first record is out, 'Energetic Disassembly'. It's getting attention globally — still on an underground level, of course… We helped… I know it's a big crown to wear for me to say this, but I will insert the word 'arguably' WATCHTOWER, and if not myself, had a giant hand in kickstarting the thrash, the metal thing in Austin, Texas in '82.

"So, yes, the PANTERA camp calls me. [WATCHTOWER] was losing [guitarist] Billy White [at the time]. He was ready to jump ship from WATCHTOWER and start playing different styles of music and just rock guitar… So the last two shows we played with Billy White were the only two shows that WATCHTOWER ever played out of the state of Texas, and they were in the Bay Area in the first of October of 1986. I believe it was right before that that the PANTERA camp had called me to see where my head was.

"Years and years later — I think it was '95 — I'm standing behind the backline with Darrell and some of his party boys. It was PANTERA, of course, with TYPE O NEGATIVE in San Antonio, at Sunken Gardens… And I had a chance to just basically get right in Darrell's head and go, 'Dude, why me? 'Cause you hooked up with Philip, and this is working. This is some brutal, really awesome, I'll just call it rock music. This is exactly where you guys needed to be.' And he's, like, 'Man, Jason, you just had a good buzz. Everyone that we knew in the Dallas/Fort Worth area' — I'm paraphrasing — 'knew your name and was a fan of WATCHTOWER. And you were on a list. That's it.' It was a simple answer, and I was, like, 'Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense.' I realized how big of an honor it was by the time they blew up. And I was, like, 'Wow. These guys are cool.'"

According to McMaster, he had no idea at the time he was approached to audition for PANTERA that they would one day turn out to be such an influential metal act.

"I'll put my hands on the table and show you all my cards and everything by saying the riffs from 'Cowboys From Hell', who knows if they were even written at that point?" Jason said. "Who knew that they were going into this completely hardcore and/or arguably creating their own style of 'groove' metal. I don't really like the term, but it became a thing. As well as that they could thrash too. Who knew? 'Cause I didn't. I just thought they were this kind of glam rock band that did the cover band circuit, and that's all I knew about 'em… But I was really kind of blinded by my own worries with WATCHTOWER."