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Meegs Story (Circus Magazine... Jan. 2000) Coal Chamber's Miguel "Meegs" Rascon is a bit haggard when it comes time for him to dial up yours truly for this interview. The gregarious guitarist dials up just prior to the foursome's road departure with the floor-to-the floor Slipknot, Machine Head's aggro-muse and Amen's middle finger salute to convention. The headlining jaunt is in many ways a second shot at introducing their new album Chamber Music to the world after a failed headlining attempt with Insane Clown Posse this summer.Of the controversial situation Meegs says, "The whole thing was a bit ridiculous. They told us that it was production problems with our set or something like that. We've got pyro and all that but look what they do. I sort of don't want to get into it because there's a lot of bullshit surrounding the situation right now. But I will say that the whole thing was fucked up, and we got fucked over but we ended up headlining our own better fucking tour." As we talk, Meegs springs to life as he ponders his upcoming jaunt which will be in progress by the time this graces your hot little fingers. "Anyone that likes this type of music will realize that this is one of the best tours going out this year. I love all of the bands on the bill, so it should be really cool." "It's going to be really cool to sit on the side of the stage and watch everybody every night and then hang out. That's why I'm personally looking forward to this. Plus we'll get a chance to get out there and play these new songs for our fans." At this point, I've picked the brains of the entire outfit (minus Nadja, the band's fill in for Rayna Foss Rose who was on maternity leave) and the one word that rises to the surface continually is fans.Yeah, you guys who read this magazine and buy their records. While Coal Chamber settles for nothing than the very best that they can pull out of themselves, they seem to take you guys into consideration upon their every move."Dude, our fans are the best. They have stuck with us because I think we are true to ourselves.," says Meegs. "Like with this album we changed a lot andwe were never worried about whether or not they would appreciate it."They are with us for life because we are so into them. We hang out with our fans after shows but not in that fake let-me-sign-this-stuff-real-quick-so-we-can-get-out-of here kind of way. "Like before, when you asked me about how it felt to see so many kids dressed like us at shows. That's so cool because it gives them a chance to show their individuality. Especially in a lot of the smaller towns that we go to.A lot of them can't dress a certain way unless it's at a Coal Chamber show." Picking up steam he continues with "I don't want to sound all conceited or whatever because I'm not. It's just a really, really good feeling and I think that's where the connection comes in."Speaking of connections, the question of who he connected with at the early stages of his musical development come up. "Eddie Van Halen...yeah definitely him at first. I think at that time that was who every guitar player looked up to. Oh and there's Mick Mars...yeah definitely Mick. Motley Crue as a whole really inspired me but as a guitar player, Mick's solos are so humble. He did what was best for the song and nothing more. He was really overlooked because he wasn't doing that hotshot shit when every other guitar player was and I think that's what makes him so memorable.""For me, I don't like to do solos. On the new album there's only one song (My Mercy) that I do a solo in and that's pretty minimal."You know, I'm so anti solo. I just think for what we do it wouldn't work.Solos would ruin our songs because they are so reliant on grooves. We don't like to write songs that are longer than two or three minutes,, so if you stick a solo in the middle of that it would throw it way out of whack." Coming up for breath, Meegs jumps back to the root of the original question. "Ok, so you know who else I really admire as a player is Jerry Cantrell. I really like his dark, creepy tone. He was another guy who did really cool solos that fit the song."Laughing, he finishes off the round with "Shit...maybe I should do somes solos. I think I've just been lazy...nah." In the scope of two LPs they've got more touring under their belt than many a veteran band so the term lazy hardly does the trick. Later on, Meegs gets down on how he approached the studio experience."All of us were total team players and it shows in the songs. I think we really all surprised ourselves with this one. I don't want to sound all ego or whatever but we really didn't have many preconceived ideas about the record until we were done with it. "I know I really surprised myself. I used more effects this time but in a way that's not overbearing. You can still hear the natural tonality of the instrument."As the world prepares to absorb their cover of Peter Gabriel's Shock the Monkey, he points out that it's not about cashing in on the current trend of get rich quick remakes which have elevated the status of some acts and has flat out defined the short career of others."We've wanted to do that song for a long time. So when we did it, it was with the understanding that we were going to do it our way. We were lucky to have Ozzy (Osbourne) come in and sing on it and he and Dez changed the words and melodies around quite a bit. We retuned it and made it sound like one of our songs. I hate it when a band does a note for note cover, it makes nosense." Away from Coal Chamber, this self proclaimed "stay out all night guy" has interests other than his native band though they don't seem to venture outside of the music business. "I like working with my friends who have bands. I guess that's what I do. Maybe later I'll get way into that...you never know. I'm the one you always see out in bars in LA roaming around and making the scene, so I guess that describes the closest thing I have to hobbies."Based on the strength of Chamber Music's powerful yet eerie closer "Anything but You", "Tyler's Song's" steady groove and the out-of-the-gate power and cynicism of "Tragedy" there's no doubt that this album will do very well."I guess the bottom line is that we're so appreciative of everything that we've gotten. You know maybe because of how we've done things we'll get a chance to get a lot bigger on this record. But if that happens it's not because we've sold out and picked up a bunch of acoustic guitars or something. It's because we have the best fans in the world that bought our first record and gave us the opportunity to do another one." Circus Magazine May 2000 A RARE PEEK INTO COAL CHAMBER SINGER DEZ FAFARA'S TORTURED CHILDHOOD By: Corey Levitan "After this interview, it's probably the last time I'm gonna talk about these things, because you never know how they're gonna come out in the press." So declares Dez Fafara, frontman for hard-rock warriors Coal Chamber,after opening up wide to Circus Magazine during an hour-long probe that blurred the lines between rock-star interview and therapy session. Few fans know this, but Fafara was seriously abused by his peers at school and stepfather at home. And his pain from those memories is the key to understanding the singer's prolific creativity. "I don't want to come off as whining about my life," Fafara says, phoning from a tour stop in San Antonio, Texas. "But you're asking me personally what my life is really about, and you told me to be honest, so I'm gonna do it. Alot of times people want to get real personal and I'll say, 'You know what? I don't feel like it.' But today is fine, I feel like it." Bradley Fafara grew up in a divorced home with the succession ofstepfathers. (The nickname "Dez" was conferred in his teens, after he was thrown on stage during a Black Flag show, landing by guitarist Dez Cadena.) "My real father was gone by the time I was two and I didn't meet him again until I was about 13," Fafara says. (Although young Dez didn't know his biological father, much of America did. Tiger Fafara, of Sicilian ancestry,was the actor who played Tooey on TV's "Leave It to Beaver" in the 1950s.) Dez says he and his mom were always close, but he fought viciously with most of his stepfathers. One briefly kicked him out of the house at age 14. "I was smoking in his house and he didn't appreciate that," Fafara says."Now that I look back, I was extremely rude for doing that. I could have just snuck it outside. I was just waiting for something to happen." Fafara expresses no such regret about his failed relations with an earlier stepfather, however. "Me and my mom left him because of alcohol and other abuses," Fafara says, declining to get into the gruesome specifics. "He ended up committing suicide," Fafara continues. Enough said. Fafara lived in a blur of Los Angeles suburbs because one of his stepfathers built houses, living with his family in them until they were sold. Being the perpetual new kid in class did not bode well for our young hero, who seemed genetically engineered for popularity impairment to begin with. "I was tiny, TINY!" says the 5'7" musician. "And I was the kid who loved art class." Compounding his feelings of isolation and inadequacy, Fafara was on Ritalin, the medication prescribed for kids with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). His lowest years were spent ant Nigel Junior High school in Laguna Beach,Calif. "I was kind of to myself really," Fafara recalls. "I only had a couple of friends -- one girl and one other guy, and that was it." Fafara says his choice of cafeteria table during lunch period was based solely on "where Iwouldn't get fucked with." The strategy wasn't always successful. One day, bullies slam-dunked Dez into a trash bin, then poured milk over his head. "I don't remember what it was about," Fafara says. "It could have been anything -- standing in the lunch line with long hair, or who knows? It was horrible." But Fafara says he believes that karma, the Eastern spiritual idea of reaping what you sow, paid his attackers a visit later in life. "I know those people who did that to me are probably working at 9-to-5s,hating their lives--those non-artistic, living pieces of shit," he says. This was all a decade before "revenge of the nerds" posed a danger of becoming a miliatry operation. "I was never a violent person, so I couldn't have done something like that," Fafara says, referring to the Columbine tragedy. "But maybe that woke up counselors at school to really take a look at these kids that are wearing black, because that was me. All I wanted was to be left alone to do art andlet my mind grow. I was into literature. My best subject was English. That's why I write so much now." Music was a natural refuge for Fafara, who formed the band that became Coal Chamber in 1994 with his friend, guitarist Miguel "Meegs" Rascon.(Bassist Rayna Foss-Rose and drummer MIke "Bug" Cox were added later.) "Since my earliest childhood memory, I've always had a radio in my room ,and I could sing any song on the radio," he says. "Then I got into my parents albums -- the Doors, Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival." But Fafara's creativity was always too rampant to be contained by one artistic outlet. A former hairdresser, Dez is also a fashion designer -- with his own line of Goth clothes on the way -- an amateur painter and an author of children's books. "It's just artistic nature," he says. "It's always driven me." He's also a father. Fafara is helping raise the two young children of his current girlfriend, Anahstasia. And a source of more recent pain is how he can't fully be there for Tyler, the nine-year-old son of a failed marriage. "I'm missing out on his life," Fafara says, an agony made worse by thefact that Tyler is currently up against the same peer-group abuse his fatheronce faced.It's the subject of "Tyler's Song," from the band's second and most recent album, 1999's "Chamber Music." "Raise your guard again" Fafara sings his words of encouragement. "They don't give a damn. Go son." Tyler, whom Fafara says has already expressed a serious interest in music, is currently enrolled in karate classes to defend himself in school. "For the artistic ones, for the intelligent ones, for the really passionate people in life, they are always condemned and persecuted for beingthat way -- because they're different," Fafara says. " The reason is that these people can move mountains, and they're persecuted in life only when they can be. But later on in life, they become the people everyone aspires tobe -- the musicians, the artists, the writers, That's one of the things that made me want to succeed. "What about the kid who hit me in the face when I didn't see it coming? Maybe he's listening to Coal Chamber and he's going, 'Oh my God, where do I recognize this person from?" "It's me, buddy."