Interviews

 

DEVILDRIVER

 

Words: Rod Yates

 

“There are six things that break a band up,” explains Dez Fafara. “Drugs; alcohol; money; women; ego and lack of communication. Once all the girlfriends start talking – ‘We hate him’, ‘he hates her’, ‘we hate each other’ – that can do it, and ego can do it for sure. So I make sure I keep all those things in check with DevilDriver, I’ve never been a person to let those things ruin my life.”

 

That much is clear by virtue of the fact that Dez Fafara even has a career to talk of in 2007. After all, when his previous band Coal Chamber split in 2003 in a haze of drugs, ego and onstage fighting, few mourned the loss of an outfit that to many had come to epitomise everything that was wrong with nu metal. But while most assumed the vocalist would return to the front of the unemployment line, only to be seen in Where Are They Now? reports in 10 years’ time, Fafara had different ideas.

 

“With that band, the lifestyle, the choice of drugs, the fame, the ego, the money all tore us apart,” he sighs. “And I knew these guys were ruining their lives, their business and everything, and I’m a person who sees ahead, and I just said their lifestyle is not going to work with me now. Not many people get a second chance in the music industry and it humbles me every day that I actually have a chance to do something that I love and at the same time support my family on a level where we can exist as a family. By no means am I a rich man, but I’m rich in memory and in soul and rich with family and friends.”

 

When was the last time you spoke with a member of Coal Chamber?

 

“I talked to the guitar player [Meegs] two days ago for the first time in six years, because he called to say he’d been sober for a year and a half, and part of his sobriety is to call all those he hurt along the way and he wanted to call and apologise. So it’s good that at least I can put that behind me and know that he’s in a good place in his life.”

 

At the age of 42, Fafara is in a similarly good place. Riding high on the success of his post-Chamber outfit DevilDriver, he claims to be in the shape of his life – “I could kick the fuck out of any 20-year-old kid onstage or off,” he chuckles – while the quintet’s recently released third album, The Last Kind Words, is garnering the kind of critical and commercial kudos that eluded his previous band. For Fafara, the success vindicates his vision for both DevilDriver, which he formed in 2002, and their latest album.

 

“When we first turned the record into Roadrunner Records, [A&R head] Monte Connor’s first call back to me was, it’s maybe too hard for DevilDriver and could we recut some stuff?” recalls Fafara. “Which means to soften it up. And I got a call back three or four days later saying, ‘Hey, I’m wrong, I love the record.’ So looking back I’m glad we stuck to our guns and made the record that we wanted to make, and it was very important for us to define our sound and who we are right now in the midst of a lot of metal that is either softer or more sing-songy, clean vocal kind of thing. It’s good to see that we can make our heaviest effort yet and chart at number 48 in the States, to chart in Germany and in the UK with a record with 62 profanities on it!”

 

Considering the nature of Connor’s initial phone call – essentially telling the vocalist that this album he’d poured his heart and soul into wasn’t suitable – Fafara seems remarkably level-headed about the whole situation.

 

“Well, you have to understand Monte’s coming from an A&R perspective,” he reasons. “He had to think, Well, we have to sell records in order for you to keep your record deal. So I understood his thinking and he understood mine, which was, Hey, man, I’m going out with my boots on. I’m doing something really against the grain right now, especially with what’s popular in the United States right now.”

 

Would you have left the label if it had come down to it?

 

“Absolutely, 100 per cent. In fact my words were, ‘If you don’t like it, drop me.’ And what’s happening now is that everyone’s taking to it and it’s starting to shine on its own merits, purely organically, and that is where art truly exists for me, in that space and time right there.”

 

 

[BACK TO INTERVIEWS]