I remember back in ’87 when Pantera and King’s X did a double in-store together in Dallas. Both our bands pretty much kept to ourselves, but all I remember was that Dime was in the corner shredding through a very loud amp practically the whole time, with a bunch of wide-open metalheads going nuts. He was simply fucking amazing!

Fast-forward two years. Pantera played the Backstage Club in Houston (a real cool club that everyone played), and me and my buds Galactic Cowboys went to check them out. Well, I wish everyone could have been there to see them that night doing
Power Metal.
It was the tightest, most brutal metal I had ever heard in my entire life. Phil, Vinnie, and Dime were mesmerizing, but me being a bass player, I completely focused on Rex. In my opinion, Rex is not only the coolest looking bass player ever, but he could execute every song with the kind of brutality and groove that was rocking me like only a bass player can, and holding down the fort.

Oh, and also they did some amazing Metallica covers. Pantera executed every song with a power on a level I had never experienced before. We hung out back stage drinking and having fun. This became the norm, but on one particular night they came to play, everyone was there, ready to experience this sound we had so gotten addicted to and loved so much. To our surprise, they did a whole set of new songs. It was the entire
Cowboys from Hell
album. All I can remember is that there was an amazing vibe that we all had just experienced the future of Metal. The rest is history.

—dUg Pinnick, Kings X

PROLOGUE

“DIME, I CAN’ T HANDLE YOUR FUCKING BROTHER.”

Those were some of the first words that came out of my mouth when communication between Dime and me resumed sometime in late 2003. Any previous contact we’d had had been strained for sure, and this was hardly a friendly greeting, I know, but I was tired of all of Vinnie’s bullshit, tired of trying to coordinate tours around his titty-bar escapades, and I definitely didn’t like the fact that Dime’s brother was drawing all kinds of negative attention on the rest of the band with his childish actions. It was all just fucking mindless horseshit, and after years of keeping quiet—although the fact that I switched buses on one of the last tours to escape all the nonsense should have been an obvious indication of my unhappiness—I needed Dime to know how I felt, and that we should all do some serious thinking before we even considered continuing to be a band.

From where Dime was sitting, I’m sure he felt that Phil and I had walked away from Pantera because we had taken 2002 off from the band to do the second Down record. We planned to go and tour the Down record for a bit, sure, and then the offer came to take part in Ozzfest 2002 as main headliners on the second stage—something we obviously couldn’t turn down. So those are the facts as to why things turned out like they did. The bottom line is this: Vinnie and Dime had a problem with Phil and me being in Down, and I was the one they went through to bitch about it.

All through 2003 relations were very strained because of Philip’s inability to answer the fucking phone—not for the first time or the last—to discuss what the future held for Pantera. Neither management nor I could even talk to him, far less the brothers, who were scared to death to even dial his number. So when we eventually got confirmation that Phil was doing his Superjoint Ritual project that year, we were all left in limbo.

Dime and I talked again on July 27, 2004, my fortieth birthday. My wife had made an effort and asked Dime to come along to a surprise party for me, but unfortunately he was out of town at the time so couldn’t make it. It seemed like a phone call was the best I was going to get. “Don’t expect me take you out and treat you to a steak dinner or anything like that,” he told me, as if to say that he owed me nothing.

AS 2004 PASSED,
our contact drifted to the point that, by the time we spoke again in November, it felt like Dime had become some kind of estranged brother. Again, we discussed all aspects of the band and the reasons why communication had broken down, and we both acknowledged that we needed some time apart from each other. It was a very emotional conversation, and when I hung up the phone I cried my eyeballs out because I missed him so much. But despite my sadness I always truly believed that all our differences would be worked out in time and that Pantera would continue. It just felt like when brothers fight and don’t talk for a while, that’s what brothers do. Despite how upsetting the awkwardness was, I never saw it as a permanent communication breakdown.

At this stage, Philip was completely out of the picture. He was still doped out of his mind and I had decided that there was no possibility of working with him again until his addiction situation changed. It is one thing trying to reason with someone who simply drinks and has a good time, but it’s an entirely different matter when you’re trying to reason with someone who’s using—they’re on a different fucking planet. Thank God he’s got his life together now.

But as soon as he got his shit together—which I knew he eventually would—we could at least sit in the same room again and work out our differences. But I also understood that any reunion that could occur would require a great deal of structure, and there was no doubt in my mind that the task of putting it all in place would eventually fall on my plate. I felt caught in the middle fucking big time. Worse than that, it really pissed me off that I was the one getting emails from Vinnie every day—every single fucking day, saying, “Philip said this, Philip said that” and then having to listen to Vinnie whining about everything; on top of all that, reading Blabbermouth—a metal gossip site with a particularly vicious asshole group of commenters who put their own dramatic spin on every word spoken. Eventually I just got to the point where I simply didn’t give a fuck anymore.

On the night of the shooting—December 8, 2004, as if I could forget—I was at home. I was originally intending on heading to Dallas to a Marilyn Manson show because our tour manager, Guy Sykes, was working for him by this time, and I planned to hang out with him for the night. I’d been saucing all day long, playing golf and the whole bit, and a few friends unrelated to the band ended up back at my house.

Then the phone rang.

It was around 10:00 p.m. and it was Kate Richardson, Phil Anselmo’s girlfriend, on the line. We were chatting for a while when suddenly she got a phone call on another line, and then, when she returned to me, her tone had changed. She told me to put the television on, which I immediately did.

I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. Police sirens. Ambulances. Panic in Columbus, Ohio. Dime—our brother—murdered
on stage
? Dead? Dime? The images on the screen just fucking floored me. On the tiles. Straight up.

Although I had been drinking, I sobered up real fast. It was the only way I could hope to process what I was seeing. By now the news was all over CNN and every other news channel. Friends and family, who were also catching the news, began calling before I could even come to terms with the devastation that I felt, all wanting to know that I was okay. Guy Sykes left the Manson show in town and immediately made a beeline for my house. I was so shocked that I didn’t even know what to think, let alone say, and phone calls just kept coming on the two landlines and four separate cell phones we had in the house, until I eventually fell asleep, probably as the sun was coming up.

“RITA WANTS YOU
over at the house.”

The following day, Guy Sykes’s phone call confirmed that Dime’s wife wanted to see me, so I headed over to her place only to find a bunch of fucking assholes hanging around. These were some of the parasitic hangers-on that Dime had accumulated over years of partying with fans and there were a few venomous looks and snide remarks aimed in my direction, but I ignored them all. I can only assume that some of these people saw my alliance with Philip as being disloyal to Dime and wanted to make me feel guilty for what had happened. Because these assholes had been following the whole thing in the press, it felt like there was already tension in the air, as if there had been an imaginary line drawn in the sand as to who was taking what side.

One of the security guys even squared up to me and tried to block my path from entering. I had some previous history with this particular guy, too, and had actually knocked the goon’s teeth out accidentally on an earlier occasion. He’d even tried to sue me, unsuccessfully, so I certainly wasn’t afraid of his posturing now and walked by him like he wasn’t there.

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