Story

• I ran into friends Rick Ward and Mike Toth at the last Pantera show in Houston and I ran into the kid that turned me on to Pantera in the first place who also turned me on to Dead Horse. This was the same kid who had no idea that Rock Lobster was originally done by the B-52s and the same kid that still owes me $500 on a $1,000 phone bill his ol' lady ran up in an apartment I subbed out to them. Yet I still feel like I owe him something....

I had a job with a cabling company back in 92-93 that took on a project that involved us driving down and back to Kingsville, Texas every week. We were rewiring the Hoescht-Celanese chemical plant in Bishop, Texas and I partnered up with this kid to ride with me down there each week. He'd bring a bunch of cassettes and, of course, I had a ton of cassettes that I had made so we listened to a lot of music on those long road trips to South Texas.

I was just starting to like heavier music mainly due to the influence of all the Metalheads that I worked with and from listening to ZRock. I had been stuck in Classic Rock-ville for the longest time prior to this and was finally looking for something new and different to listen to. At the same time a lot of bands that before I hadn't liked so much were starting to sound a whole lot better to me than they had before.

Megadeth had just released Countdown to Extinction, Pantera had just released Far Beyond Driven and the Seattle Boom was in full swing so I had a lot of new stuff to listen to that I was thoroughly enjoying. It was truly a musical Utopia for me back then and I was going through a musical rebirth and luckily, the music was all good.

We spent the better part of a year driving back and forth to Kingsville and although I wasn't digging his Dead Horse or Pantera tapes when the job started -- by the time the job was over I was alllll about Pantera. It had sunken in on me finally but mainly due to Far Beyond Driven being such an incredible album. It took a few years for the older stuff to start sounding good to my a discerning ears but at least it finally did.

Back then, Dead Horse NEVER sank in.

I actually attended a Dead Horse show with this same guy during a time when me and my first wife were separated. I got so drunk I don't even remember the show. I remember it being a very forgiving pit though. I could have been seriously hurt at that show if it weren't for some very nice people who caught me and kept me from falling down and crackin' my noggin open.

I even managed to work my way up front to the stage where a lot of the action was but I didn't hang there too long. I was getting the shit beat out of me and I was getting crushed to death and in turn, crushing other people to death too.

Back then I obviously had no idea that there was even a connection between Dead Horse and Pantera but over time it became apparent through my reading that Phil, Dimebag and Vinnie threw a lot of props to Dead Horse as far as influences go. Dime used to wear Dead Horse t-shirts onstage a lot in those days.

You have to remember, Darrell and Vinnie were still in high school when Pantera was born in the Glam world. When he was 20 yrs old Dead Horse's first tapes started circulating around so you can definitely say that influence helped shape what Pantera was still yet to become as a Metal band. Phil joining the band with those same influences guaranteed that Pantera wouldn't stay Glam for much longer.

Everybody pretty much laughs about it now. How could this heavy ass band have started out so typically Glam? It boggles the mind that they could go through such a drastic change in their music and end up one of the leaders of the music that they were so....NOT, in their humble beginnings.

I saw my first Pantera show in 1996 with White Zombie at The Summit(R.I.P.). It was The Great Southern Trendkill tour and me and my buddy Gene were seeing them both for the very first time. Gene grew up with guys who had seen Pantera at Backstage or Cardi's or whatever the hell that club was at that time. We both, more or less, knew what to expect but nothing could have prepared us for the full blown onslaught that we witnessed that summer night in 1996. We had a great time that night.

We went to see them again in 1997. It was the day after Thanksgiving at the Westpark Entertainment Center with Anthrax and EyeHateGod. It was about 20 or 30 degrees outside and we stood at the top of the bowl and looked down at all the violence, aggression and steam that was coming off the stage front crowd. It was awesome!

Phil and Dimebag popped their heads out from behind the curtain shortly before showtime and motioned for people to throw them joints from the crowd...which people did massively. I guess they wanted to see what the local flavor of the month was because you know they had to have weed of their own, right? This was the tour supporting the Official Live:101 Proof CD that had just been released.

I had the CD before the show happened and it was at this show that I realized that Phil basically said the same exact things between songs that he did at every other show. It was kind of disappointing to know that but....not really, I guess.

The very last time that I saw Pantera was March 5th, 2001 at the Astro Hall with Morbid Angel and Soul Fly. This was the Reinventing the Steel tour and I went with my long time Partner in Crime Ray DeLeon. It's the closest I've ever been to the stage while they played live. It's not that I had great seats or anything -- I wasn't on the floor, I actually had a seat but I was just closer to the stage than usual. I could see the stage and everyone on it very clearly and the show was incredible.

Those guys work their asses off while performing and Dime is running back and forth from one side of the stage to the other almost constantly. Truly a great showman and the most incredible Metal guitar player that I have ever seen play live. He's even better than in the studio and that says something about his talent.

There are a lot of guitar players who pretty much play slop onstage -- the studio is definitely their friend, but Darrell "Dimebag" Abbott was the exception to that rule. He played the solos basically the same as the record but just a little bit differently than the final take. He played them faster, tighter, and cleaner and with a lot more flare than what ended up on the records.

Everything you've read about this man the last few days is absolutely true. I didn't know him but I know now a lot of people who have known him in their lives at one stage or another in his career. Maybe they've just met him somewhere or maybe they actually partied with him in a hotel somewhere or on the tour bus or some shit but they all have said the same thing.

He was a super nice guy who treated his fans like friends and he never put on heirs or anything about being a Rock star. He was genuine, he was talented and he never got so big headed that he forgot his friends or forgot who his own heroes and influences were.

It's sort of funny....The first time Melissa came down here to visit me from Kentucky, I had just flown in from Dallas myself the day before and she flew into Hobby by way of a layover in Dallas. She flew into Hobby on the same piece of shit prop engine plane that I flew in on where you actually had to get out of the plane and walk on the tarmac to get inside the airport.

Anyway, they had lost my luggage the day before when I flew in and so when I picked up Melissa the next day I reported my luggage lost before we left and the guy asked me what the contents were so they could easily identify it when they found it. Underwear, socks, bathroom items etc. -- Harley Davidson belt, Pantera t-shirts(2).....(Melissa started giggling at this point)

She's always identified me with Pantera because if that very moment. When I latch onto a band like that I latch onto them for life. Pantera struck a chord within a lot of us for one reason or another and whatever that reason was, it made our experience with the band a personal one regardless if we had ever met them in person or not.

We didn't have to know them personally in order to know what they were about. They were about Metal. They were about being true to one's self. They were about musical honesty and they never conformed to fit in anybody's mold of what a Metal band should be about. Even when other Heavy Metal legends were changing their styles in order to stay on the radio and on MTV, Pantera kept on playing that aggressive heavy shit that, even though got no airplay or video play, would still debut at #1 with virtually no support what so ever.

They were some heavy ass motherfuckers who in the beginning were almost laughable as musical trend followers -- but went on to created their own musical trend that has lasted almost 2 decades now and has influenced more musicians than we'll ever know.

Hopefully things will change in the future so that when more of those influenced by Phil, Dimebag, Vinnie or Rex -- Superjoint Ritual, Down, Damage Plan -- come around with their own bands and their own styles of Pantera influenced Metal, radio and TV will pick up on it and actually be free enough to support it again like they did before Clear Channel owned every fucking radio station under the sun.

I miss Pantera like everyone else does, now I miss Dimebag more than that. I don't know what this fucking shit bag thought he was doing or what point he thought he was making by shooting Dime like that onstage. This guy didn't just murder him, he assassinated him in front of a capacity crowd. All because he was disgruntled over Pantera breaking up or Dime not partying with him on the bus before the show or whatever, and that's just fucked up.

John Lomax and I were talking yesterday about this and he asked what had stopped this sort of thing from ever happening before now and what we both fear is that the answer is because it hadn't happened yet. Now that it has, I fear that it may start happening more and more.

It's ironic that after the Pantera split and Phil committed full time to Superjoint and Vinnie and Dime formed Damage plan, both camps started playing 500-1500 seater bars and clubs in order to reconnect with their fan base. After years of playing for 35,000 to 100's of thousands of people worldwide, they stripped themselves down and stripped down their stadium shows in order to get back face to face with their audience.

Security for the band is really at a minimum, although it is still taken seriously. It's a shame though that in that attempt to reconnect with their fans, it was one crazy fucking fan that was just crazy enough to run onstage and put 5 bullets in Darrell's head in front of a crowded club full of fans not crazy enough to kill their own idols.

It's the way it's supposed to be, ya know? We can't be what our idols are and most of us are happy with that. We need to keep an eye out for those who aren't satisfied with that and maybe screw a bullet in their ear before they kill someone else just because they can't be them.