Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal (50 page)

IAN HILL:
We used to call it the worst kept secret in heavy metal. We knew from day one that Rob was gay, and it was left up to him whether he wanted to come out or not.

ROB HALFORD:
Unless you’re a gay person, you can’t really explain why you need to [come out]. I let myself out of jail. For those people who live in that straight world, who have no connection with gay people or the culture, they were probably surprised. But I think many of those people went, “I don’t think it’s important. It’s the music that matters.”

KERRY KING:
I wanted to be in denial, but shit, you can only hear it so many times. He’s hanging out with a certain type of guy every show. Yeah, it just had to be made public. I personally don’t fucking care for fucking homos of either sex, but as long as they ain’t in my face, fine. It wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t so fucking petty about getting it in the public. If you want to go fucking suck a dick, go suck a dick, but I don’t need to know about it.

ROB HALFORD:
[Before I came out] they had their girls, and I had my right hand and a bottle of Dermalube and a porno mag [
laughs
]. It’s fucking sad, man. No one was willing to face the truth. I was scheduled to do a photo shoot with Cheryl Rixon, who was a
Penthouse
pet of the year, on the roof of a hotel near a swimming pool. Cheryl was in this skimpy little tits-and-ass bathing suit and I was in full-on leather S&M gear. I loved it. I never got a boner, but it was hysterical. Of course, the implications of the picture are enormous. It was a difficult time. It’s part of being in the closet. It’s difficult, but my music helped me survive all that.

CHERYL RIXON:
I did the shoot with Rob by the pool at the Parker Meridien in New York. We had a blast. We were really comfortable together because I knew he wasn’t sexually attracted to me.

While Halford was busy with Fight, 2wo, and his eponymous solo band, his former bandmates hired singer Tim “Ripper” Owens, from an Ohio cover band. The 2001 film
Rock Star
, which starred Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston, was based on an article about Owens that appeared in the
New York Times
. At first, Priest were consultants for the movie, but they backed out when they realized the screenplay didn’t accurately reflect their story. Owens sang on two Priest albums, the thrash metal–inspired
Jugulator
in 1997, and the slower, more straightforward
Demolition
in 2001.

TIM “RIPPER” OWENS (ex–Judas Priest):
At one point in high school my whole room was nothing but Judas Priest stuff. I wouldn’t allow any other band pictures on my wall. Then fifteen years later, I’m in the band. I [auditioned with] “Victim of Changes.” I sang the first line and Glenn Tipton said, “Okay, Owens, you got the gig.”

IAN HILL:
We went through thousands of tapes and videos trying to find someone to fill Rob’s very large shoes. We didn’t find anybody until [drummer] Scott [Travis] came along with a videotape of Tim singing with a cover band. We thought, “At last we have someone who can not only handle the notes that Rob hits, but he knows the songs. He’s singing them already.”

RIPPER:
At the time, there was never any intention of getting Rob back. Their intentions were, “Rob’s doing his thing, we’re gonna do ours.” But as time goes on, you see the wheels turning. You start thinking, “Uh-oh, here it comes.” [In the early 2000s] Judas Priest was starting to get a lot of good offers to reunite with Rob. I got an e-mail that read, “Listen, we decided to get Rob back.” Even though it was an e-mail, it was still handled in a good way.

Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell’s new band, Damageplan, featured ex-Halford guitarist Patrick Lachman on vocals along with bassist Bob Zilla (Hellyeah). They released their debut album
New Found Power
in 2004. The music was less abrasive and confrontational than Pantera’s, but it maintained the group’s trademark groove and blended midtempo thrash with some more accessible elements. It also featured some high-profile guest stars.

VINNIE PAUL:
We got some special appearances from Corey [Taylor] from Slipknot and Zakk Wylde. Dime fuckin’ loved Zakk, man. They had some of the best times together. One time, Dime and Zakk were doing a cover for
Guitar World
, and Zakk had only heard a little bit of the music from the Damageplan album. So Dime goes, “Zakk, man, come down to the studio and check this shit out.” He heard it and went, “Yo, bro! I wanna play lead on this motherfucker right there.” He had, like, ten minutes before he had to go to the airport. He said, “Go get my guitar out of the car.” He comes back and starts fucking shredding. He heard the song “Reborn” twice and he played it twice and he smoked.

PATRICK LACHMAN (Damageplan, Halford):
We all started doing shots and next thing you know Dime says, “You want to hear the diversity in the record?” He puts on “Soul Bleed.” Zakk’s people are going, “Zakk, you gotta go, you’re gonna miss your plane.” And he says, “Yo, I gotta go and sing backups on that, real quick. Turn the microphone on.” He wound up missing his plane.

Damageplan’s album came out February 10, 2004, to mixed reactions. Some Pantera fans were stoked to hear the Abbott brothers rocking again, but many felt it wasn’t brutal enough and missed Phil Anselmo’s vocals. Anselmo, who was admittedly often under the influence at the time, took stabs at the Abbotts in the press. At first, Vinnie and Dime turned the other cheek; however, they soon started returning the jabs. Vinnie Paul remains convinced that Anselmo’s venomous tirades contributed to Dimebag Darrell’s murder on December 8, 2004, by schizophrenic ex-marine Nathan Gale, a Pantera fan who, it was alleged, blamed the Abbotts for Pantera’s breakup.

Dime, who was performing onstage with Damageplan at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, was shot three times in the head by Gale. Also shot and killed were Jeff “Mayhem” Thompson, the head of Damageplan’s security; Erin Halk, a club employee who tried to stop Gale while he was reloading; and Nathan Bray, a Damageplan fan who was administering CPR to Darrell. The band’s drum tech, John “Kat” Brooks, was shot, but survived; Damageplan tour manager Chris Paluska was injured, but also survived. The bloodbath ended when undercover police officer James D. Niggemeyer entered through the back of the club and killed Gale with a shotgun round to the face. In the aftermath of the shooting, accusations flew, and more than eight years after the tragedy, Anselmo and Vinnie Paul Abbott still hadn’t spoken to each other.

VINNIE PAUL:
We were two shows away from the end of the tour and we were really looking forward to going back for Christmas, blowing up New Year’s Eve, and getting to work on the next Damageplan record. We played the demos all the time on the bus. The night before all this shit happened, we played Buffalo, New York, and we always liked to go gambling. We finished the show, and we were like, “Man, we’re gonna run up to Niagara Falls and gamble. Let’s go.” Dime was like, “Man, I’m too smoked. We got two shows left. I wanna just take it easy and kick some ass and go out strong.” I’d never seen Dime turn down a night of gambling. So me and Mayhem went gambling and had a blast. About two-and-a-half hours later, we called the bus to come pick us up and as soon as we hopped on I figured everybody was gonna be asleep. But there was Dime sitting in the front lounge with half a dozen people, partying. I was like, “Dude, I thought you were smoked and going to sleep?” He was like, “Dude, I couldn’t let these people down, man. They wanted to fuckin’ party, so I brought them on the bus.”

RITA HANEY:
He really, really wanted to cancel those last four shows and come home. They were coming off of the Slayer run in Canada and he was like, “Man, do we really have to play these shows on the way down? Can’t we just keep going and get in the studio?” He was so fired up on the new stuff.

VINNIE PAUL:
We got to the gig the next day in Ohio and Dime gets up and goes, “Man, we gotta go and do a sound check. I was having a problem with my rig last night.” We only had two shows left in the tour, but that’s how much he cared about his shit. We had played the club back in the early Pantera days. Dime went around and found the club owner and said, “Thanks for having us back. We’re glad to be here.” There was this band playing in front of us that was doing Parliament songs heavy metal style, and they were all dressed up like G.I. Joes, and we were catching such a nut on them. We were back there doing shots and peeking out and cracking up. We were all in a good mood, and we had a full house. I went up on the deck and right before we went on, Dime was warming up his hand and putting his lip gloss on. The last thing I ever said to him was “Van Halen?” He gives me a high five and says, “Van fuckin’ Halen.” That was our code for letting it all hang out and having a good time. That’s the last thing he ever said to me, man. A minute, forty-five seconds later he was gone. It’s insane. . . . Insane.

RITA HANEY:
I can’t help but think things about Phil—like Darrell wouldn’t have even been playing this shit hole if you hadn’t done what you did before the demise [of Pantera] or put him where he was. All kinds of things run through your head. I even think stuff like, if I hadn’t gone home, I would have been in the front videotaping right in front of him. Would I have seen this guy coming? Could I have jumped on him and stopped him? I’ve had time to think about it to where there’s only one person to blame for what happened, and that’s the person who did it. I do have resentment toward [Philip] for hurting Darrell. But if I blamed Philip for Darrell being in that shit hole I could easily turn around and say, “Vinnie, why didn’t you cancel the show like he asked?” It just doesn’t get you anywhere.

VINNIE PAUL:
There’s no doubt the guy who did this was out of his fuckin’ mind. He’s somebody that should have been incarcerated. When you’ve got somebody with obvious mental problems, it’s not a great idea for him [to own] a gun that’s used for killing people in the military. And obviously, he knew how to use it. He wasn’t just some ragtime dude who grabbed a gun. I saw what happened, and I knew exactly that the dude was on a mission, man, for whatever reason.

Some of the lingering animosities between Vinnie Paul Abbott and Phil Anselmo stem from an antagonistic interview Anselmo did with the UK magazine
Metal Hammer
, which came out shortly before Dime was killed.

PHIL ANSELMO [2004 interview]:
There was never a point when [Dime] could not get drunk, which was pretty much every day. Now I’m hearing it’s worse than ever. He would attack me, vocally. And just knowing that he was so much smaller than me I could kill him like a fuckin’ piece of vapor, you know, he would turn into vapor—his chin would, at least, if I fuckin’ smacked it. And he knows that. The world should know that. So physically, of course, he deserves to be beaten severely. . . . But of course, that’s criminal and I won’t do such a thing. . . . Really, I just let him prattle on. I grew very tired of it very quickly, and in all honesty I really wish that [the Abbotts] would be men, which is very hard for them, figuring that they were living in their mother’s house until they’re thirty years old. In comparison, I was on the street by choice at the age of fifteen, living anywhere I could.

VINNIE PAUL:
He said it word for fucking word. He was not coerced into saying it by the interviewer. And the kind of shit he said in there is the kind of shit that might incite [Nathan Gale] to do the kind of things he did. Phil called me when he was trying to get into the funeral and left me a message that said, “I can prove to you I didn’t do that interview.” I got the fucking audiotapes, man. Anyone that wants to hear them, I’ll be happy to play them for you. Him sitting there and talking in a calm voice, saying the shit that he said. So he ought to feel really fuckin’ guilty, any way you slice it.

PHIL ANSELMO:
The press did wind us up. We were both guilty of taking the bait. Very guilty. There was the unfortunate article, there was Dimebag’s death, and, in my view, if there’s anyone that does not know any of us, nor was in the fucking band, if they’re going to take a stand, I say “Who are you, motherfucker? You don’t know me. Therefore you do not affect me.” That’s how I see it. I am not bothered by it. I’ve moved on. I’ve found my peace. Do I understand it all? Fuck no. Will I? Fuck no. I’m sure I won’t. Who can fully understand the acts of a maniac who murdered someone close to you? You can’t understand that. You accept it. It’s a done deal. Do you wear it on your heart? Yeah, probably forever.

Anselmo, who says he quit heroin in 2002, was lying in bed in New Orleans when he heard that Dimebag had been shot and killed. Devastated that Vinnie Paul and Rita Haney did not want him at the funeral, he made a raw, emotional video speech to his fans, during which he struggled to hold back tears.

PHIL ANSELMO [from Internet video]:
This isn’t about me or some motherfucking psycho that happened to destroy the most beautiful fucking person, one of my best friends in the world. It was the heavy metal goddamn media that destroyed Pantera. This is about Darrell, my brother of seventeen years, whose music changed people’s lives, man. We weren’t just some band. He was not just some guitar player. I wanna say bless his family and all his close friends and I never got a chance to say goodbye in the right way and it kills me. And I’m so sorry. I wish to God I could have gone to his funeral, but I have to respect his family’s wishes. And they do not want me there. I believe I belong there. But I understand completely. I’m so sorry to his band members. I’m so sorry to the whole fuckin’ world that loved Dimebag Darrell because let me tell you something. There was not one motherfucker like him. Vinnie Paul, my other brother. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.