Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera (26 page)

Because it felt like I’d gained a certain amount of his respect as a result of doing all those tours with him, I felt comfortable offering my support on a human level, so I simply said, “If there’s anything I can say or do to help, just let me know. My thoughts and prayers are with you.”

CHAPTER 15

SABBATH AND DOWN WITH THE GAMBLER

O
fficial Live
was also released in ’97 and was composed of a bunch of live recordings from previous tours, recorded from the soundboard on DAT machines that we took on the road. We were known as a live band, so it was time that we made a live record. We played so many shows and the whole bit so we had all this material already on tape; it was just a case of someone going through it all, going through the process of finding the best versions of the songs we wanted on there. We also added a couple of new studio tracks that we recorded on our own, without the help of a producer, back at Dime’s house.

I was working on Cantrell’s stuff most of the time anyway and only flew back to Dallas once to do the bass tracks for the new songs. I don’t remember overdubbing anything else on the live album; it was just a case of getting the mix right. Maybe we upped the crowd noise a little bit or fixed a couple of Phil’s vocals here and there, but everybody does that. There’s no true live record that I know of out there.

WALTER O’BRIEN

We were getting so many problems of “Phil said this onstage, Phil said that,” that I said, “Listen, I want every show recorded on tape” because I was sick of people saying anything they want, like, “Well, Phil said ‘come onstage and beat up a security guard,’ etc.” The problem was that Phil often did say these kinds of things. Anyway I had given the sound guy instructions, saying, “Record the show and anytime he says something like that, burn the tape immediately.” So that way we’d have a bunch of live shows with nothing incriminating on them. We also kept getting offered to do live shows on the radio, live broadcasts, and these guys just would not agree to anything. I kept saying, “You’re the best live act I have ever seen. We have to take advantage of that.” The networks were begging us to do live shows nationally but the guys said, “No, we want to mix it, we want to record it,” and I said, “You can’t, it’s live, that’s the whole point.” But they wouldn’t do it. Finally we convinced them to use DAT to make high-quality, multi-track recordings for the cost of a couple of tapes and so we recorded the shows. Also, everyone was starting to run out of money anyway so we said, “Time for the live record!” Just like everyone else in the world.

At some point in ’98 I went down to New Orleans, just to get out of Dallas for a while. I needed a boy’s weekend out but it turned into something completely different. Phil said, “Hey man, do you want to come and write some songs?” and of course I was like “Sure, cool.” So I got to Phil’s old house that’s in the middle of New Orleans proper—Colbert Street in fact—and it was just this little-bitty small place that was the first place he ever bought when Pantera first started making money.

So when I walk in there, here’s Kirk Windstein, here’s Jimmy Bower, and here’s Pepper Keenan, so I just thought, “Cool man! This is happening!” And they said, “Do you wanna come and jam downstairs?” I was still unaware I was being auditioned to be the Down bass player. Phil had a jam room in the downstairs garage area and he also had himself a real haunted house. There was foam, skeletons, cobwebs, and all kinds of crazy shit that you walked through. The house was built on stilts, so the garage was underneath and he had a fucking pentagram painted red on the bottom of his swimming pool.

I said, “I don’t have a fucking bass with me,” because I hadn’t planned on playing when I was in town. Anyway, Phil had this bass for me to use and an old, fried amp, and we started jamming and all this stuff just started coming out of us in the most organic way. There were so many memorable moments during those sessions, but the one that sticks out most is the song “Lies.”

Pepper came in with this jazz thing and I pitched in instinctively with a killer jazz bass line, something totally different from all the heavy metal stuff we were used to. I felt we’d touched on not only new territory for the band, but also a style of music that resonated with me from my childhood days playing in jazz bands. It really was inspiring.

Down was rooted in New Orleans, which is a hugely diverse cultural melting pot. You therefore have jazz, rhythm and blues, rock, metal, and sludge all merged together in one big gumbo. I’m from Texas and I’ve known those other New Orleans guys for as long as I’ve known Philip, and when we get in the same room together, we just sit there and put all of our individual influences and all our tastes together and see what comes out at the end.

As it happens, we wrote a lot of that second Down record there and then—at least six or seven tracks—and for me the diversification into new territory was (a) what I needed and (b) something I wanted to see through to the point of making a record, but only when a suitable gap in the Pantera schedule opened up.

In ’98 or ’99, after a short tour to promote
Official Live
, we also went out on the Black Sabbath reunion tour for nine months. It was great and they paid us a fucking lot of money to do it, and when cash like that comes, you do not turn it down. It also felt like we were taking part in a significant event, too, because it was the first time they’d played together since Ozzy had left the band in 1979. It was primarily in large arenas—a domain that we knew we ruled—and we tore it up every fucking night.

Even if you’re Black Sabbath, you don’t go
after
Pantera. You’d be stupid to even try. Even with Phil in a drunken state—and that was hit or miss in those days—you still don’t do it because the three of us were so fucking tight. That Sabbath tour was probably the best we ever were live. It was really game on. We had toned our stage stuff down a lot—just put up some barbed wire to try to get away from that whole big Marshall stack look—so we really didn’t use a bunch of cabinets on that tour, we just got up there and played the music instead of relying on special effects.

WALTER O’BRIEN

The band was really back in the game on the Sabbath reunion tour. As good as they always played in the small clubs, they were one of those bands that really kicked butt when they got in front of that many people.

Then when we were done I’d sit there and watch Sabbath every single night, and it was fucking unbelievable. Of course I met Geezer and got to know him pretty well, and near the end of the tour he invited me over to his dressing room, where we just sat and went through about three bottles of red wine, almost like a wine tasting, while we sat and just talked shit together. Geezer has a very dry sense of humor, too, and now that we’re more familiar, he likes to call me “Rox.” Funny.

We’ve done tons of promotional stuff together since then. I’ve interviewed him for bass magazines and it’s just great to even be in the same room with him and for him to even recognize who I am. As well as being what I’d now call a friend, he’s also an extremely influential bass player. It’s all in the way he attacks the string with his fingers that makes him so great, I reckon. He kind of slaps the string with his right hand and instead of picking down and keeping his hand straight; he kind of moves his hand around and does all this crazy shit … while hitting every single note with his left hand. There’s just nobody like him.

WHILE THERE WERE
good aspects to that Sabbath trip—lots of them, even—there was also some bad personal shit going down among us. The tension among the band members was as high as it’s ever been, and I was getting to the point of not wanting to deal with any of it.

Vinnie was the biggest problem.

On countless nights, Dime and I would be sitting on the bus trying to have a hot meal when Vinnie would invite all these young-looking chicks back to the bus hoping he could get a piece of ass. The crew had already had their pick of these girls anyway, and it was just so awkward sitting there watching Vinnie’s pathetic attempts to get laid. Half the time he’d pass out drunk, and that just left Dime and I to deal with all his bullshit and pick up all the pieces.

You need to understand that Vinnie is just a strange person—that’s all there is to it—and it’s either his way or the highway. I think he got most of that asshole-ishness from his old man, because in many ways they are very much alike. Vinnie’s was always all about the “party, party, party!” and “eat that pussy!” type of shit—to the extent that he thought he was fucking David Lee Roth. And him a
drummer,
can you imagine? But the truth is that he only got laid maybe one out of ten times and that’s if he was lucky. Being in a platinum-selling band is meant to be a head start when you’re trying to score with chicks, but he negated that by having no idea whatsoever how to treat or approach a woman. He’d just walk up and immediately start
groping
them, so it was no surprise that his strike rate was so pitiful. He acted like meeting him was a sexual audition and that just turned them off straightaway.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, when he didn’t get laid (ninety percent of the time, I’d estimate) he was the most miserable fucking guy on the planet. I just couldn’t live with him. He’d walk in the room in the morning and I’d just
know
. He’d be all snappy and pissed off with everyone and there was nothing anyone could do to change his mood. That became really boring.

PHIL HAD MOVED
off the main bus back in ’95 and travelled with his assistant, trainer, and the whole bit, so I eventually confided in him.

“I’ve got to get off their bus, man, all Vinnie’s shit is driving me fucking crazy.”

He said, “Dude, you can have the front lounge of my bus, I never use it.”

Thank fuck he agreed to that. So I made the decision to move off Vinnie and Darrell’s bus to Phil’s place, and that apparently seemed to cause a whole load of bitching and resentment. Dime particularly took it really personally, which at that time did not even register with me. I was too concerned with extracting myself. I didn’t give a fuck either, and if anything was ever said about it, it wasn’t said to me. I was so worn down anyway that all I cared about was that I got some peace and because the atmosphere on Phil’s bus was a bit more serene and adult, it was a world away from Vinnie’s immature bullshit. Dime was probably just jealous because he knew he now had to fend for himself.

RITA HANEY

Darrell felt really unhappy about Rex riding on the bus with Phil. He also thought it was really out of character because Phil and Rex never really used to hang out. They just didn’t have things in common. When Phil came to town, he would stay with us because he and Darrell had a relationship that had been formed since day one. So it all seemed bizarre that Phil and Rex were buddies all of a sudden.