ANNIHILATOR guitarist/founder Jeff Waters attended the Musikmesse 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany last month, and while he was there he spoke with Hughes & Kettner about the new GrandMeister 36 amp:

Waters is featured in a new interview with Epiphone Guitars. An excerpt is available below:

Q: When you started on guitar, what kind of player did you want to be?

Waters: "When I was a teenager, all my friends in Ottawa, Canada were into JOE SATRIANI, STEVE VAI and VAN HALEN. I took the opposite view of that stuff and sat down and noticed that AC/DC and Van Halen wrote songs first--the rhythm guitar playing and the songs were more amazing to me. The lead guitar--the shredding--I was never listening to the solos. I was listening to the rhythm--which I still can't do. And lead guitar was a bonus. So at my clinics, I try to show that the leads are the icing on the cake. As MARTY FRIEDMAN says: screw the solos--go join a band write some good songs. When I do clinics, our popularity is mostly in Europe, South America, and Japan. Fans know that I'm not the guy to do the covers and the 20 minutes solos."

Q: When did you start doing clinics?

Waters: "I started doing clinics about 5 years ago. I was uncomfortable at first. I talked, I showed some licks, and I honestly was not into it. I had a bad attitude that music school teachers were failed musicians. Then, I saw hundreds of kids and a light bulb went off--it sure is a good feeling to have people of all ages really enjoying it and thinking, 'What can I learn from this guy?'--just like I did when I was a kid.

Then I met up with (Epiphone President) Jim Rosenberg, got endorsed by Epiphone, and now I have a blast doing these. I do get the reaction from some people who want the technical, more theory stuff, but I go there to just have fun. I think people like that compared to the standard kind of boring clinic.

Part of it is, I'm an immature kid at heart. I'm also Canadian and I have a weird sense of humor (laughs). Some people don't understand the humor in what I do but they do in the UK and Europe. I might write a song called 'Kraft Dinner' about the macaroni box and the next song might be environmentally conscious. I like that because that's my life. A lot of people in the United States didn't get that first. They wanted the 100% serious--PANTERA-cool heavy stuff. Which I love, of course, but I also have that other side. I think that's another reason why the Europeans really jumped on us for our first record in '89 and stuck with us the whole time."

Go to this location for the complete interview.