Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera (2 page)

Meanwhile various friends of Dime’s and musicians from all kinds of other bands had already started to come in to town, and most of them were at the Wyndham Arlington South hotel and in a collective state of disbelief that Dime—the most fan-friendly of all dudes—could have been killed by a fan. The irony was just unfathomable. A lot of these people hadn’t been in the same room together for years, so while the reason for being there was truly awful, there did seem to be a collective sense of solidarity that was celebratory and almost uplifting, which is something that Dime would have appreciated.

Back at Rita’s house with Dime’s close family, the mood was considerably more tense. As if to add to the uneasiness, Philip called from New Orleans to offer Rita his condolences, but when I passed the phone to her—at his request—she grabbed it angrily from me.

“If you even come close to Texas, I’ll fucking shoot your ass,” Rita told Philip, letting him know that she felt he had a role in the whole chain of events. His unsavory comments in the music press earlier that month were a big issue: “Dime deserves to be severely beaten”—comments he suggested were taken out of context, but no matter what he claims, I have the tapes of the interview in question, so I know
exactly
what he said. Phil and I seemed to have been put in the same camp, the only difference being that he was completely unwanted and unwelcome, while I was just not the most popular guy around at that time. There was a difference.

The next day—still in a state of shock—Dime’s dad Jerry, Vinnie, Rita, and I went to the Moore Funeral Home on North Davis Drive in Arlington, and there we saw the body of Darrell Abbott lying in a casket. For me, this was just too much. I had been to way too many funerals here—my mom, my grandmother, my dad—all of them ended up in this same room, but this particular one just shook me down to the core.

“See what you did?!!!” Vinnie Paul said to me, making the strange accusation that I was somehow responsible for Dime’s death, which is obviously ridiculous. I had no idea how to reply to that, so I didn’t.

“Is it okay that I’m here?” I asked Vince at a later point, making it clear that I didn’t want to step on anyone’s shoes in such a traumatic situation. I needed to check with him that all was cool.

“Of course,” he said very definitively, making me wonder why he’d said what he did earlier. In my own head I couldn’t stop myself from analyzing why Vinnie felt the way he did, and I just couldn’t see why he would blame me for anything. Yes, the murderer who shot Dime was clearly mentally ill, but in my opinion the music press had been pushing all the wrong buttons with fans by constantly re-igniting the debate as to who was responsible for the break-up of Pantera. Since that point, I had talked to the police in Columbus and it was clear the incident wasn’t only about Dime, it was about the whole band; so if Down had been in Columbus that night and not Damageplan, it could have been Phil or me who’d been killed instead.

If the press had shut their fuckin’ mouths and let us—the band—resolve our differences, I believe that Darrell
would
still be alive today. The killer must not have been able to deal with the fact that Pantera had split up, so he decided to take his anger out on us, and he also had somehow in his delusion convinced himself that he had written our songs. He obviously had read the continuous press speculation and that, combined with his fragile state of mind, proved to be a fatal cocktail. After all, he had turned up at an earlier Damageplan show and torn up some gear before getting his ass kicked by security and thrown in jail, so he was already on the radar before that night in Columbus.

The following evening I got a phone call from Rita, and she asked me to be one of Dime’s pallbearers and of course I agreed. It would have seemed disrespectful not to, but even still I couldn’t help notice the glaring contradictions. Vinnie seemed to be blaming me in part for his brother’s death, while at the same time Rita was asking me to perform an official duty. It just didn’t make sense.

On the day of the funeral I didn’t know what I was doing, who I was, or where I was—and that’s no exaggeration. Unless you’ve ever been in a situation like this you can’t understand. I had a couple of shots of whiskey—I simply had to or else I just could not have gotten through the day—and headed over to Rita’s house again, very early, where there were more people than on the previous visit, guys like Zakk Wylde, Kat Brooks, and Pantera’s sound guy Aaron Barnes, with whom I later rode in the same car to the funeral home. Everyone was just hanging out and trying to offer Rita as much support as possible.

“Let’s do a shot for Dime!” someone shouted. This wouldn’t be the only time these words would be heard over the next few days and consequently most people, myself included, seeking to ease the pain of what had happened, were at some level of inebriation throughout the funeral and memorial.

There were a huge number of Dime’s musician friends there, and Eddie Van Halen and Zakk Wylde were asked to make speeches. I was sitting in the second row beside Eddie, who was just totally out of line, really disrespectful actually. I told Eddie on numerous occasions to shut the fuck up but there was no point. Zakk was always one of Dime’s best friends, as well as being, like Dime, a great guitar player, but on this occasion he was in the bizarre situation of having to keep Eddie Van Halen—who was coked out of his head and acting like a complete idiot—in line.

“Fuckin’ shut up,” Zakk told Eddie after he had rambled on for a while while he was giving his eulogy—something about his ex-wife if I remember it right—but that didn’t stop him, he just kept going. It was really disrespectful.

Despite the somber nature of the day, there was a danger of it becoming the “Eddie and Zakk Show” but thankfully it all calmed down. I was one of the last to go through and see Dime’s body (my second time), and on this occasion I simply kissed him on the forehead. He was just so cold.
Right then
I emotionally checked out. Of course I was physically there, but mentally I was gone. I was just a shell and couldn’t feel anything.

After the ceremony I went outside and lit a cigarette. I was shaking like a leaf. I wanted to get out of there and had a limousine waiting to do just that, but all I really wanted was my wife Belinda, who had come separately, to drive me home.

“Put me in the Hummer and just take me home,” I told her.

And when I got there, I fell into a coma-like sleep. I didn’t show up at the burial even though I was supposed to be a pallbearer. I just couldn’t face it. I’m not even sure if anyone ever said anything about me not being there, but I wouldn’t have cared if they had. Dime was the last person I wanted to put in the ground. I couldn’t bear the thought of doing that to my best friend.

I woke at seven that evening to find my house full of people. I was persuaded to get up, get dressed, and of course have a shot or two for Dime. Our next destination was the Arlington Convention Center for Dime’s public funeral service, and for some reason I was feeling uneasy, and up until the last minute wasn’t sure that I was even going to go.

My uneasiness was entirely justified. Almost as soon as I walked into the venue, which was jammed with almost five thousand people, someone handed me yet another shot as I walked up toward the stage where Jerry Cantrell and his band were still playing. I was standing at the side, intently watching what was going on, and suddenly I was put on the spot. It was totally unexpected. There was this DJ guy there who had been given the role of official emcee, and I knew this clown from the past. He’s one of those strip joint compere guys who introduces the girls in an overly dramatic way like, “Hey, on stage right now it’s Ciiiinammmooooooon!” or “Lusciousssssssssssss on stage three!” That’s fine at a strip club—I would know—but I remember thinking that this guy being here wasn’t just inappropriate, it was total fucking blasphemy and it seemed like the whole deal could turn into a fucking joke at any given second, if it hadn’t already. Everything seemed to be disorganized and running behind schedule, but somehow Dime would have liked it that way as he once said—a little ironically, it turns out—that he’d even be late for his own funeral.

So, I was standing, watching, and suddenly this fucking DJ idiot put a microphone in my hand and asked me to say a few words to these five thousand or so people who were in attendance. Like I said, I didn’t know I was going to be asked to say anything and I certainly didn’t have a speech planned, so when I was up there I was desperately trying to find the words—any words—and in the end, all I could muster was “He loved you all. We’ll miss him badly.”

While this was happening, I was aware that this DJ idiot was pressurizing me all the time. “C’mon, Rex, we’ve got to go, we’ve got to go,” is all I remember. Go where? Who the fuck knows, but after he said it, there were boos from the audience and in my numb state I wondered whether they were booing him or me. It was a really weird situation. In retrospect I think he was just trying to rush me off stage so they could get Vinnie up there. All I was trying to do was hold myself together that evening, and I wasn’t doing that very well.

The whole place was a huge clusterfuck of security that night, with all kinds of barricades in place to keep certain people in certain designated areas. In my dazed headspace I decided I wanted to go down front-of-house, and on the way down the stairs I literally fell into the arms of Snake Sabo and Terry Date, who somehow managed to prop me up. They chaperoned me to the area I wanted to be in and put me in a seat between our manager Kim Zide and Charlie Benante. By then I was an emotional wreck and all Charlie could do was hold me like a baby.

One person obviously absent that day was Philip, although by this time he had flown into town—despite Rita’s earlier warning—and was staying in a hotel, so I was phoning back and forth with him all day. I even went to see him for a while and kept him informed as to what was happening. I’m sure there was a part of him that wanted to be there—or at least be close to what was going on—but at the same time I’m certain he wanted to respect the family’s wishes. Either way, it was a tough position for him, and one that would offer no closure whatsoever. The concept of him showing up unannounced would not have been well received given Rita’s total insistence that he stay away. So, frustrated by being excluded from all the events surrounding Dime’s death, and cheated out of any closure on the death of one of his best friends and musical soul mates, Philip later wrote Vinnie a letter, but my suspicion is that it may not have been read or certainly not acknowledged in any way. It was suggested that Vinnie never even got it, but I’d bet that he did.

The days following the funeral were no less stressful. Every day my wife and me were harassed by reporters at our door—they even went through our trash and threw it all over the yard—trying to get any kind of comment from me about what had happened. I simply didn’t want to get involved in any of that discussion because what else was there to say? So I just had my wife say to them, “He’s not talking to anyone so you might as well fucking leave.”

I went to the cemetery a few days later, alone. I wanted to say my own goodbyes to Darrell, but the public wouldn’t even allow me this privacy with my friend, as I was continually harassed for comments and even autographs, all while I tried to spend a little private time at Dime’s graveside. I remember this as one of the worst days of my life.

From that day on, I went into the “why?” loop, and I’m still asking the question. Maybe I always will be. I live with a constant combination of anger at the fucker who did this to my dear friend, and complete shock that the existence of the band with whom I’d spent my entire adult life has been ended by a series of events that were far beyond anyone’s control. What you need to remember is that only four guys ever really knew what went on in Pantera, and one of us isn’t around anymore to tell his side of the story.

CHAPTER 1

HEADS UP

If you put your head up above the fence often enough, eventually some fucker is going to throw a rock at you.

B
ut when they stop throwing rocks,
that’s
when you’ve really got a problem, because you’re obviously not important any more. I have no clue whose quote that one up there in bold was—it might even be a combination of things a few people have said, but the message in there is that fame and fortune is truly a fucked-up concept. I mean, obviously it changes the way you dress and the way you present yourself in front of people, that’s a given. But I found myself treating people differently, and not because of their personality or how they were to me. That didn’t matter at all.

No, the reason was because I was in a higher tax bracket. Fuck, I’d sit there and say stupid shit like, “Dude, I’ve got more money than God.” That must have sounded so arrogant and I’m embarrassed I ever said things like that. Sure, I liked the fame or, rather, aspects of the social acceptance that comes with it, but I liked the fortune better and I attribute that to having been brought up in a household where everything had been a struggle, particularly from a financial point of view. My conclusion, and I’m far from the first to say so, is that everything changes when money gets involved.

When you’ve been broke and solitary like I was as a teenager, barely cutting it, trying to make a two-hundred-buck-a-week salary cover the rent and still leave room to get a twelve-pack for the week or something like that, it’s no surprise things get a little screwed when the checks start flying in, and then all you can say is, “What the fuck am I going to do with all this?!”

Well, what we did with it was spend it—too freely at times—but because we toured so much and accepted every good offer that was thrown our way, there always seemed to be a healthy cash flow to keep it all going. It felt great to finally have some money when I’d been poor all my life, I can’t deny that. Do I wish I’d had a little more help at times, some wise and trustworthy financial advice? Of course I do, because I didn’t really know how to go out there and invest, although I did do bonds but wished I hadn’t once the stock market crashed on me. Eventually I learned how to save the money I was making, but there was a long learning curve.