“I don’t know what I’d be if it wasn’t for Sharon Osbourne”: The Life Less Ordinary of DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara

“I’m very well,” responds Dez Fafara to an inquiry about how he’s feeling. It’s a question that would be remiss not to ask about in light of the recent news about the DevilDriver frontman's health.

He has some important points of correction, though. Contrary to some of the stories that have appeared since his appearance on The Garza Podcast, presented by Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza, Dez doesn’t have brain cancer. Nor is the non-cancerous tumour actually located in his brain. It is, in fact, on his salivary gland, and while he has no symptoms now, he’d initially sought medical attention after experiencing vertigo.

“I got sent in an ambulance to an emergency room and into an MRI machine,” explains Dez of his diagnosis. “[The tumour] has to grow in order to operate because it’s a very sensitive area, so I could lose the ability to smile, blink, or speak properly.”

For a guy who’s all about emoting and communicating with others, such impediments would be a tragedy. In the meantime, as ever, Dez is keeping himself busy by running, skateboarding and boxing. The recently-turned-60-year-old recently asked his coach in the latter to find him a fight for next year with one specific stipulation.

“My coach asked me who I wanted to fight and I said I wanted to fight a dude half my age,” reveals Dez. “My coach said, ‘Mate, you’re 60?!’ And I asked, ‘Do I look 60?’ He replied no. So I said, ‘Do I fight like I’m 60?’ And he replied no again, so I said, ‘Well then I want to fight!’”

Dez is similarly dogged in touring DevilDriver’s latest record, their eleventh, Strike And Kill, released last month, which he describes as “everything that’s good about what we do and makes DevilDriver different. We are the square peg in the fucking round hole.” The band recently returned from a co-headline jaunt in Australia with Cradle Of Filth, who he manages through his company, The Oracle, which he started a decade ago and which his wife, Anahstasia, is CEO of.

With so much going on, you might forgive Dez for being a little late to a conversation with K!, though he won’t forgive himself, apologising profusely for arriving one minute after the agreed time to discuss a life in music. That means chatting DevilDriver and Coal Chamber, his unwavering respect for Sharon Osbourne, his faith, the Freemasons, and what he thinks the best record he’s ever made is…

“You’ve got to be hospitable and meet people on the level. Nobody is above anyone else. Just because I’m an artist and you’re an interviewer, am I above you? It’s not a case of get done with the interview and get the fuck out of here. You’re doing an interview with me, which you’re benefitting from and I’m benefitting from, so let’s hang out and have a drink. I’ve never looked down or talked down to anyone. I mean, if anybody’s ever caught me on a bad day and been like, ‘Oh man, he's got an ego, he didn't talk to me’, then maybe I was running to the bathroom, or something like that.”

“Just learn when to take it on and off like a fucking raincoat. If you want to hand me the microphone, it’s on. I don’t care if you're 20 years old, I'm coming after you. If you’re going on stage before me or after me, I’m going to make you pay. Every singer should have that. But five or 10 minutes after the show, take that shit off, man! You certainly don’t carry that coat on you all day long, like some kind of badge of honour. You're just a fucking singer, man!”

“I think everybody is competitive, wanting to be the best at what you do, and I want to be the best at what I do. You always have to try to be the better you for everyone around you and in your business and in your relationships. Plus, I didn't grow up with much, so I fought for everything that I have. I’ve read about Julius Caesar, and about Genghis Khan, guys that had a competitive drive that drove them to go the distance. With everything in the last five, six years with my family, my wife going through cancer [Anahstasia was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2019], and me going through these health problems, I think that competitive aspect drove me to get through it.”

“I was raised by my mom and my four sisters. Most of the people I work with in my multiple businesses are women. I respect their work ethic, their tenacity. Sharon is a force to be reckoned with. She is incredibly sweet, but she knows her business. And if you fuck with her, you're in big trouble. I’ve never got on the wrong side of her myself. If I hadn't had her in the beginning of my career, I don’t know where I would have been. She helped greatly. Obviously, doing a song with Ozzy was a massive thing [a cover of Peter Gabriel's Shock The Monkey]. He didn’t really collaborate with a lot of people in his lifetime. I still look at him as The King. But Sharon is the epitome of business – she watches her clients, she watches her family. My wife and I have been together almost 29 years now, and we’ve said to ourselves multiple times and in multiple situations, ‘What would Sharon do?’”

“Al is a great guy. I have a video arcade machine with the Ministry logo on it. He sent it home with me one night from his house. He just told his assistant to load it up in the truck and give it to us, and he signed it for me. He was at my house while we were still drinking, and I remember he got down on his knees and started eating my dog’s food out of the fucking bowl. I just looked at my wife and neither of us could believe what was happening, because we both grew up listening to Ministry.”

“[The rest of the band] weren't addicted to what I was addicted to. I was drinking whiskey and smoking weed – so, going down – and they were going up. Then they fired Sharon and that was one of the last straws. And so while we were making the third Coal Chamber record, [2002’s Dark Days], I would leave the studio, drive two hours to Santa Barbara, meet with DevilDriver and record demos.”

“I didn’t stop drinking because I said the wrong thing or fought somebody or whatever. I just realised that if I’m playing 250, 280 shows a year, then having a cognac and a bottle of wine before the show, and a couple more cognacs afterwards, that’s a lot of bottles on a tour. And you have to take care of your organs. Plus, at a certain age, I don’t think it looks good on a man, stumbling out of the bar, or being unable to form a fucking sentence. I love cannabis, though. I have ADHD, and as a kid my parents had me on Ritalin, which is like legal fucking speed. When I found cannabis, my grades got better, my relationships got better, life got better. So I'm an old school hippie when it comes to marijuana.”

“I was raised around religion. I graduated from a Baptist school. But organised religion, per se, doesn’t fit with me. I believe in being enlightened, and I believe there is a higher power, for sure. I’ve read about all of the avatars, from Buddha to Jesus, and what they’ve tried to bring to humanity. So I just try to carry those positive aspects of that into my life. I do believe in prayer, but in a sense of telling the universe what the fuck I want. Because if you don't script it, you're gonna get the unscripted version of your life. So I go in and go like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna be healthy. My kids are gonna be healthy. I’m gonna live till 95. I'm gonna die holding my wife's hand in bed’.”

“I’ve been a Mason for six or seven years, and I haven’t seen any of the conspiracy stuff. Was that how it was in the 1500s or what have you? I don’t have any clue about that. When you walk into a [Masonic] Lodge, you see two stones called ashlars. One of them is a real rough cut stone, while the one next to it is polished, beautiful and leveled-out. That’s what you're supposed to do with yourself through masonry: make yourself a better man, give to your community, your family, and be upstanding.”

“You certainly shouldn’t overstay your welcome in music. Right now, I’m about as healthy as it fucking gets. I ran five-and-a-half miles this morning, so I think I could kick the shit out of my younger self. I’d whoop the shit out of him in the ring. But when I stop feeling like that, it’s time to take a hike.”

DevilDriver's album Strike And Kill is out now via Napalm.

Read this next:

• Devildriver's Dez Fafara: The 10 Songs That Changed My Life
  
• Corey Taylor: “You either take advantage of what you’ve got going on now, embrace it and live in that moment, or you watch it fade away”
• Machine Head: Robb Flynn’s track-by-track guide to Burn My Eyes