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Wikipedia Summary for Dimebag Darrell
Darrell Lance Abbott (August 20, 1966 – December 8, 2004), best known by his stage name Dimebag Darrell, was an American musician. He was the guitarist of the heavy metal bands Pantera and Damageplan, both of which he co-founded alongside his brother Vinnie Paul.
A son of country music producer Jerry Abbott, Abbott began playing guitar at age 12, and Pantera released its debut album, Metal Magic (1983), when he was 16. Originally a glam metal musician, Abbott went by the stage name Diamond Darrell at the time. Two further albums in the glam metal style followed in 1984 and 1985, before original vocalist Terry Glaze was replaced by Phil Anselmo in 1986 and Power Metal (1988) was released. The band's major-label debut, Cowboys from Hell (1990), introduced a groove metal sound to which Abbott's guitar playing was central. This sound was refined on Vulgar Display of Power (1992), and the group's third major-label record, Far Beyond Driven, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1994.
Tensions within Pantera reduced its output after the release of The Great Southern Trendkill in 1996, and Reinventing the Steel (2000) was the band's final studio album before its acrimonious separation in 2003. Abbott subsequently formed Damageplan with his brother Vinnie Paul and released New Found Power, the band's debut and only album, in 2004. Other works by Abbott included a collaboration with David Allan Coe titled Rebel Meets Rebel (2006) and numerous guest guitar solos for bands such as Anthrax. On December 8, 2004, Abbott was shot and killed by a fan while on stage with Damageplan at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio. Three others were murdered in the shooting before the perpetrator was killed by a police officer.
Abbott was ranked at No. 92 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011, and No. 19 on Louder's list of "The 50 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2018. He placed at No. 5 on Gibson's list of "The Top 10 Metal Guitarists of All Time" in 2015, and the same year was ranked as the most influential metal guitarist of the past 25 years by VH1.
I can never understand how a solo could ever be 'uncool.' Play something good, and it won't be uncool, you know?
I've tried to force a solo before, but sometimes it's like, 'That thing don't really fit, man!'
I'm into the whole song-as-a-piece-of-music thing: if it literally doesn't call for it, if it already has enough stuff going on, then it's okay not to play a solo.
Most bands don't make it past two albums and tours, if that. We pulled it off, and everybody's been happy and cool, but we got to the point where we knew it was time to take a break.
Yeah, nothing feels better than knowing that I can put a guitar in my hands at any time and rip -- even when I'm taking a crap!
Find someone you can jam with. That's a big deal. When you play with someone else, you gotta work together to get the thing started and in time, working and in the groove.
The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book. My old man used to flip out whenever I would try to branch out and do something different. Although he didn't do it on purpose, he really held me back in the beginning.
I got home, picked up my ax, turned on the four-track and just played it ... I played three solos back to back on Cemetery Gates ... the next morning, the second and third solos weren't bad, but the first had that first take magic ! .. I didn't touch it.
I respect the Pantera fans with all my heart.
Losing control of your pick on stage sucks, so I scratch some deep X's into both sides of my pick with something sharp, like a dart.
It's funny, man, sometimes you record something that you plan on re-doing later, but then when you listen back to it, you decide to keep it because you realize that it's gonna be real tough to beat!
Towards the end with Pantera -- although I was never unhappy with the music we were making -- it became one-dimensional, and we wanted to open things back up.
Way before we got a record deal, we were playing clubs seven nights a week, three one-hour sets a night. Then we got the record deal, and we took off on the road and stayed out.
It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.
When I play live, I jump around like an idiot for an hour-and-a-half or more under a lighting rig that's hotter than hell.
To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!
I love 'Dogman' by King's X and Living Colour's 'Stain.'
I'm not going for a soft sound. I ain't lookin' for a warm sound. My sound is warm, but I don't need tubes to do it. The Randall RG-100 is the best amp for what I do.
Whenever I record more than two or three layers, it starts to get cluttered up, and you can't hear the cut of the guitars as good. It's hard to get four guitars to hit at exactly the same time and keep the attack tight.
I do some three-part harmonies on 'Throes of Rejection' and 'Hard Lines, Sunken Cheeks,' but I didn't go overboard with it.
When you're on the road, you've got to have your four-track -- or some kind of recording device to jam on and have a good time.
Using string bends instead of just playing regular, unbent notes can definitely help give certain riffs a cooler, heavier edge.
All syncopation means is accenting beats that you don't normally accent.
As far as I'm concerned, it's no good being able to wail out smokin' leads if your rhythm chops hugg!
I use some pretty radical harmonics at the beginning of 'Heresy.'
Some of my favorite harmonics are located between frets. There are two really cool ones between the 2nd and 3rd frets that I use a lot.
When I first started experimenting with harmonics, I'd sometimes hook up two distortion boxes just to get my strings 'frying,' which helped bring out the harmonics.
The easiest place to get a natural harmonic on any string is at the 12th fret. All you do is lightly rest one of your left-hand fingers on a string directly above that fret and then pick it.
I love jamming with my band because the guys inspire me every time. We all get off on each other's playing.
Jamming with other people will create energy and excitement that you can feed off, and which will help push you to do things you'd never dream of doing by yourself.
If you wanna get out of a rut bad enough, it'll always happen. It's up to you, though. No one else is ever gonna do it for you.
Play the pentatonic blues scale, just for fret- and pick-hand dexterity and to mesh them both together.
Learn licks and songs from records.
Whenever I feel my chops are slacking, I'll play some wide-stretch trilling exercises and take them up and down the neck as well as across it.
I really respect Zakk Wylde's guitar playing and his compulsive work ethic.
Man, don't get me started on Pat Travers. That dude writes killer blues rock and roll riffs.
Of all the grunge bands to come out of Seattle, Alice in Chains were the greatest.
I'm not gonna say it's all done, 'cause it ain't ever all done.
Washburn built me the guitar that changed my life.
I was more influenced by players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen than by the guys in southern rock bands.
I would just listen to records and learn what I could, then just roll it over and over and over.
It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.'
Pantera is the only band I've ever been in, and at the start we used to play covers to make a living.
I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up.
A lot of bands whine about the road and how tough it is.
I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, all those great Texas blues players.
If you improvise a riff and the crowd immediately reacts to it, you know you're on to something.
Make your heart bleed! Put your soul into that damn thing. And try new things.
You can tune your guitar funky, and something's gonna come out. There's no secret to it -- either you got it, or you don't.
To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it's live. I'm very conscious of that.
Musicians tend to get bored playing the same thing over and over, so I think it's natural to experiment.
We still get those kind of cats coming out to our shows. Once you're into it, you're into it for a lifetime.
Lessons didn't really work out for me, so I went to the old school, listening to records and learning what I wanted to learn.
Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.
When I tried to play something and screwed up, I'd hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.
My old man was a musician -- that's what he did for a living. And like most fathers, occasionally he'd let me visit where he worked. So I started going to his recording studio, and I really dug it.
My heroes were Eddie Van Halen -- especially after Van Halen I, II, III, and IV -- Randy Rhoads, Ace Frehley and dudes like that. My brother played drums and we jammed in the garage and started writing our own stuff.
Always have a collection of your favorite CDs with you.
Spittin' blood, smokin' guitars, fire everywhere -- Kiss is where I started.
Who doesn't like to play Black Sabbath tunes!
I've become more interested in creating a band sound than trying to outshine the other guys.
My first killer amp was a Sunn Beta Lead. It was solid-state, but that Sunn was incredibly loud. I used to say to my friends, 'Hey, check it out. It's only on two.'
I was mostly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest -- Metallica's 'Kill 'Em All' was also a hell of an inspiration.
My hair's a pain in live performance. I'm always inhaling it: I almost choked to death a couple of times.
On our early demos, I was really frustrated with my recorded sound. I'd tell my dad, 'Dude, I want more 'cut' on my guitar -- I want more treble.' And he'd say, 'Now, son, you don't want that. It'll hurt your ears.' But my dad just didn't understand.
I try to do things in one take, but doubling rhythm parts is always difficult, especially if you want things to cut the way I want them to cut.
I got food poisoning in Venezuela, and it sucked!
Each track has to be precise, and that is a problem on a rhythmically complex track like 'Slaughtered.'
Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing are the gods of double-guitar axemanship.
Man, that first Leppard album really jams, and their original guitarist, Pete Willis, was a great player.
I'm not a super blues player, but I was exposed to the Texas blues sound while I was growing up, and that definitely rubbed off on me.
To me, blues is more of a feel and a vibe, rather than sitting there and saying, 'Well, I'm gonna play bluesy now.'
You can write every song on an album in E and not hurt a thing.
The first time I heard 'Crazy Train,' I was crashed out in bed, definitely not wanting to get up and go to school, when my brother Vinnie came in and cranked it up.
Van Halen was a huge influence on me, and 'Eruption' was the song that really leaped off that first Van Halen album.
The harder stuff has always done it for me. Man, if it rips, I'll give it a thumbs up!
'I'm Broken' was a sound check riff.
People that love this form of music have loved it from way back -- Sabbath, Zeppelin, the early days.
When you're a little kid, you have nerve. I'd walk right up to whoever was recording and say, 'Hey, dude, what's the lick of the week?'
The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.
To make harmonics scream, I first dump my Floyd Rose real quick, hit a harmonic with my left hand while the string is still flapping, and then use the bar to pull it up to the pitch I wanna hit.
Music drives you. It wakes you up, it gets you pumping. And, at the end of the day, the correct tune will chill you down.