This is a piece written by local Edge Magazine writer Steve Elliott for the January 2005 edition of The Edge. He sent it to me with permission to post it on here. Thanks, Steve. Dimebag deserves it.
DIMEBAG DARRELL – Larger than life and remembered in death
Compiled and written by Steve Elliott
He was larger than life. He was an icon. He was the master of metal guitar. He was a real down-home hell-raiser. He was a Texan. He loved his fans. He loved his music.
From Boerne to Berlin, Luling to London, McAllen to Manhattan, from Paris, Texas, to Paris, France … the grief felt by fans of the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott has crossed the lines of age, gender, and international borders.
“Murdered onstage, it's scary to think about and leaves me feeling sick,” said Andrew, who wrote in on the KissRocks.com website guestbook especially created for fans to vent their grief and frustration. “Pantera was the reason I listen to metal and rock in general.”
On the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004, Dimebag and his band, Damageplan, which included his brother, drummer Vinnie Paul, took the stage at the Alrosa Villa nightclub, an unassuming place on the north side of Columbus, Ohio.
Moments after launching into their first song, a 25-year-old deranged and disillusioned fanatic of Dimebag’s former band, Pantera, leapt on stage, headed straight for the 38-year-old legendary guitarist and shot him in the head at least four times at point-blank range. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Three others were killed in the shooting: fan Nathan Bray, 23; club employee Erin Halk, 29; and Damageplan’s head of security, Jeff “Mayhem” Thompson, 40, of Texas.
In a truly tragic turn of events, Bray was shot while attempting to perform CPR on Dimebag. Injured were the band’s drum technician John “Kat”Brooks and tour manager Chris Paluska. According to police, Gale had a hostage in a headlock position and was firing into the crowd. When the hostage moved slightly, Columbus police officer James D. Niggemeyer shot and killed Gale with a 12-guage police-issued shotgun.
For Dimebag, it was an inglorious end for a man who found such glory in life, in his music, and in the people around him.
I scanned through dozens of websites and message boards researching this article, and they’ve been packed with hundreds of stories on how Dimebag touched people’s lives, whether on a personal level, or through his music with Pantera, Damageplan and various other side projects he worked on.
Dimebag Darrell Abbott presented a terrifying persona on stage, working his fans into a frenzy as he coaxed wild ear-splitting heavy-metal riffs from his guitar. But off-stage, the guitarist famed for his work with groundbreaking band Pantera was “a sweetheart to his fans,” according to Michael Molenda, Editor in Chief of Guitar Player magazine. “At conventions, Abbott would sign autographs for hours, and he would drink with fans after shows.”
He is remembered as a real human being, a fun-loving guy who loved being a rock star but had no grandiose pretensions. Many a person told tales of how Dimebag went out drinking with them after a show, or stopped to have a real conversation with them. They told how Dimebag and his fellow musicians would stay at a meet-and-greet for hours until every fan had the chance to say hello, get an autograph, or have Dimebag mug for a photo. They all share the grief, the sadness, … the loss that untold thousands around the world are feeling after losing a hero of the music world.
Dimebag was born Aug. 20, 1966 in Dallas, Texas. His father, country and western songwriter and producer Jerry Abbott, owned a recording studio and Abbott grew up watching many blues guitarists play there. Jerry Abbott was a successful country songwriter whose tunes were recorded by the likes of Emmylou Harris and Freddy Fender.
“I used to go down there as much as I could to see anybody play any kind of music,” Dimebag said in a 1999 interview with MTV’s Jon Wiederhorn. “I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace … all those great Texas blues players.”
That blues influence is recognizable in many of Pantera’s songs. He started listening to music by Merle Haggard and country maverick David Allen Coe. As he got older, Abbott found out about southern rock and ZZ Top and Skynyrd.
But it wasn’t those southern rock giants that made the biggest impression on the young Texas musician. No, it was the rock pyrotechnics of KISS and Van Halen that got his blood going. Like Eddie Van Halen, Dimebag originally started out playing drums, but it was evident that his older brother Vinnie showed more skill on the skins.
At the age of 12, he switched to guitar, and quickly learned Boston's “More Than a Feeling” and Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.” Abbott's first major influence was Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley. Like many kids, he applied KISS’ famous face make-up and jammed along to KISS records with a Les Paul guitar that looked like Frehley's. But once he discovered the heavier sounds of bands like Deep Purple, “the KISS records stopped, the make-up stopped, and I was on a mission,” he told Guitar Player magazine.
His dad taught him some scales and music theory, but Darrell said that his early mistakes served him best on his road to musical discovery. “When I tried to play something and screwed up, I'd hear some other note that would come into play,” he said. “And then I started moving it around and trying different things to find the beauty in it.”
Just three months after picking up a guitar, Abbott could already play better than most people who'd been doing it for years.
“I met Darrell when he was only a kid, not old enough to get into the clubs for which he would later grace the stages throughout his impressive career. This kid was great at 16 years old and destined to become the Idol we now know as Dimebag Darrell,” said Dean B. Zelinsky, founder of Dean Guitars, which Dimebag used for most of his career. “Darrell became the true persona of a rock star. He personified and exemplified the Rock life …he lived it 24/7. It is the Dimebag Darrells that make this industry we all are so emotionally attached to ‘bigger than life.’ He truly knew his role...after all; he was also rock's biggest fan. He grew up with the dream and had what it takes to put it all together.”
He and Vinnie started out playing cover versions of songs by Van Halen and Iron Maiden. But their father advised them to write their own material. The Abbott brothers and bassist Rex Rocker formed Pantera in 1983. Back then, Abbott went by the name “Diamond Darrell,” but later took the nickname “Dimebag” and was often referred to as “Dime” by fans and friends.
That early incarnation of the band had nothing in common with the band that created heavy metal masterpieces like Cowboys From Hell and A Vulgar Display of Power. After achieving heavy metal success, the band distanced themselves from their first four albums, which were all released when Abbott was still in his mid-teens.
The band began to develop a heavier sound after singer Phil Anselmo joined in 1987. It was also the period when Abbott came into his own as a guitar player, developing his heavy, frenetic sound.
With Anselmo’s abrasive, hardcore vocal style, Vinnie and Dimebag were encouraged to play a more aggressive form of music. In 1990, Pantera were signed to major label Atlantic's Atco Records imprint and released the breakthrough Cowboys From Hell. Pantera toured exhaustively and quickly built a reputation as one of the most exciting and badass live acts in heavy metal.
Pantera’s fast, aggressive sound attracted a massive cult following in the early 1990s, and its third release, “Far Beyond Driven,” debuted at No. 1 in 1994, surprising chart-watchers and critics alike, also picking up a Grammy nomination. Other hit albums were “The Great Southern Trendkill” and “Reinventing The Steel,” and a song by the band became the Dallas Stars hockey team’s signature tune in 1999.
Pantera's music was uncompromising and uncommercial; for many years the band received hardly any airplay on mainstream radio or MTV, because, explained Abbott, “we were just that one notch too heavy.” Nevertheless, Pantera attracted a huge fan base with their intense and brutal sound.
Dimebag’s incredible guitar playing and love of partying endeared him to friends and fans, and the band was known for post-concert backstage parties spiked with Crown Royal whiskey, said Paul Gargano, executive editor of Metal Edge magazine.
“He was just a huge fan of rock music and heavy metal and the lifestyle,” said Gargano, who considered the guitarist a good friend. Despite Dimebag’s nickname, Gargono said, “It was funny because I never saw him smoke pot all the time I knew him.”
Pantera’s manager Kim Zide-Davis, who worked with Abbott from 1994 to 2003, called him larger than life, and said she often told the guitarist he was a living cartoon character. “He would do things that you wouldn’t believe a real person was capable of,” she said.
She said there was a sweet and caring side of Abbott that many people never saw.
“Everything you saw from him was real. That was who he was,” Zide-Davis said. “He lived and unfortunately died by his guitar. What you saw on stage was his enjoyment.”
“Not only do most people agree that he is perhaps the best metal guitarist ever, most people agree that he may very well the most influential guitarist to come along since Eddie Van Halen. Dropped D tuning, whammy bar antics, energetic blues playing all mixed into one of the most powerful guitar tones ever heard,” said a statement on VinnieAndDime.com. “Dime was doing this long before it became popular. His style has persevered through hair metal, grunge, alternative, rapcore ... no other guitarist has been this captivating or has lasted through such diverse musical trends.”
In all, Pantera sold more than 6 million records. But the brothers remained good ol' boys. They never moved away from their Dallas, Texas, hometown, where they owned a strip bar and were fans of the Dallas Cowboys football team.
Pantera was nominated for Grammies for best metal performance in 1995 for “I’m Broken” and in 2001 for “Revolution Is My Name.” The video “The Best of Pantera: Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits” hit the top 10 for music-video sales earlier this year; another video, “3-Watch It Go,” went top-10 in 1998.
But by 2000, a rift had grown up between the Abbott brothers and Anselmo, who was attempting to modify his behavior after a near-fatal heroin overdose in 1996. “There was never a point,” Anselmo said of Abbott, “when he would not get drunk. Which was pretty much every day.”
After several years of inaction on the part of the band to put out a new release, and with Anselmo deciding to take on side projects like Down and Superjoint Ritual, Pantera finally split in a rather messy and acrimonious way, and two years later Abbott and his brother formed Damageplan
Dimebag and Vinnie decide to go in another direction and formed Damageplan. They were joined by ex-Halford guitarist Pat Lachman on vocals, and Bob Zilla, playing bass. Their sound mixed both Pantera and Halford, with elements of Slipknot, Alice in Chains, and many other bands. Their debut album, New Found Power, was released in February 2004 to cheers from critics and fans alike.
It had been created in Abbott's home studio, amid typical high jinks. “I had to replace six doors and eight feet of Sheetrock in the bathroom because we were partying nonstop and raising fucking hell,” Abbott confessed. “Plenty of my guitars went down in flames. We smashed “em and taped fireworks to ‘em and lit them up!”
Unfortunately, the world will never know what heights Damageplan could have soared to. According to one of Dimebag’s last interviews, a new album was in the works for release in 2005.
“Anyone who ever met Dimebag Darrell will tell you, they were touched for life. He treated his fans like royalty, as he knew what it was like to be a kid at a concert and seeing your idol onstage…he wanted to give it all back,” Zelinsky added. “When Darrell was off stage, he was always aware of whom he was and the effect he had on his fans. People who knew him will tell you that behind the persona of Dimebag Darrell was a guy who was kind, loyal, sentimental, full of emotion, full of life, charismatic and extremely talented.”
“Darrell was a living legend. He lived every day of his life to the fullest. I will always remember his smile onstage. He loved what he did and it showed. No matter how big the crowd, he could always find you and fling a guitar pick your way,” Dean continued. “We have lost a great artist but more importantly, a true friend. The world has lost a great human being.”
Covering San Antonio's music scene since 2005