The next time I saw the band, I made sure Mark Ross came along. He was younger and a bit of a drinker, so he did enough revelry for both of us. When I was handed a drink, I leaned against a wall, and when no one was looking I splashed the booze onto the floor. Another maneuver I developed was to feed Black Tooth Grins (dozens of them, over time) to potted plants and shower vodka cocktails over railings and onto hotel balconies and sidewalks. When we were at the bar, I made sure to order a club soda and lime that looked like an alcoholic beverage and then drink it like I was relishing a fine cocktail.
Despite the differences in our drinking practices, the band and I got along well and became great friends. They were fantastic, brilliant people, and I loved them to death. They had that effect on people. They enjoyed having a good time and made sure everyone around them was equally entertained, amused, and/or wasted. They all had such different personalities and interests, which made them fun to be around and musically unstoppable. It wouldn’t be too farfetched to call them the heavy-metal Beatles. You have to have a certain level of friction meshed with airtight camaraderie to be a great, airtight band. In the best moments, something comes out in the music that stems from that friction, that contrast. And it’s those differences that make great bands exceptional. I could see that in Pantera.
Phil Anselmo was full of anger, listened to hardcore, and loved boxing. He viewed life as a struggle, and while he could be a great guy, he didn’t want to get too close to anyone. When he was in a bad mood, it was best to leave him alone. He was the darkest member of the band, and he endured many dark nights of the soul long before he got hooked on narcotics and almost destroyed the fragile chemistry of Pantera toward the end. Vinnie was the pragmatic let’s get it together and do this guy. He kept things moving. Dimebag was the biggest party guy and a happy drunk. ‘Hey, c’mon Phil,’ he’d growl. ‘Let’s do some shots!’ Phil would go along with it and laugh along with Dime, but then he would go off and party with his own people, who were a little more volatile and less positive about life. Then there was Rex, the quiet, creative bass player who drank with his buddies but would just as often be in the corner drinking by himself. Pantera had the perfect combination of creative forces to make them about as heavy as a metal band could be.
When Terry finished Cowboys From Hell, it sounded modern and savage, mixing elements of thrash, traditional metal, and something newer and more forward-thinking, which set the bar for the new wave of American metal bands like Lamb Of God, Slipknot, and Machine Head. Between Metallica-inspired riffs and shredding solos, the rhythms abounded with Southern groove and brimmed with attitude. As a record executive, it was clear this was a great album with a batch of classic songs. Now that I had it in my hands, I had to figure out what to do to attract the uninitiated. My first thought was, I can’t believe this is so fucking good, followed by, How the hell am I going to break this?
MTV was at the end of its AOR period, and the glam era was fading. Grunge and alternative were starting to sway programmers. Where MTV went, radio followed. And radio wasn’t playing much hair metal anymore. The closest they were getting was Guns N’ Roses and Pearl Jam. They’d still have a soft spot for a hooky Journey song, but something as rooted in thrash and bursting with exuberant rage as Pantera—that seemed like the last thing anyone would put into rotation. I realized that to break into an environment that was growing hostile to metal, Pantera needed a good manager.
I called up Walter O’Brien, who I knew from Concrete Marketing back when we were both doing radio promotion, and invited him to my office. We exchanged pleasantries, and then he tried to get me to sign the Seattle band Metal Church, who had lost their label deal following several good, heavy albums.
‘Well, Walter,’ I began. ‘I would love to talk about Metal Church. But right now, I’m thinking about something bigger. I want representation for Pantera, because they just did a really great record, and I believe they could blow up on a mainstream level. I think you’re the right person to manage them.’
Having taken tons of metal bands to radio, Walter spoke Pantera’s language as well as anyone. I brought them together, and they clicked right away. He agreed that outside of the few metal radio stations that existed, it was going to be hard to get Pantera airplay. We decided the best way to build awareness was to put the band in front of audiences to do what they were best at—tearing up the stage. We put a ton of money into touring and put them on the road with everyone we could think of: alt-metal, funk-metal, thrash—all were fair game.
Throughout 1990, anyone who needed a support band, big or small, Pantera opened for them: Prong, Suicidal Tendencies, Exodus, Mind Over Four, Sanctuary, Fates Warning. We reached out to journalists and radio folk in every market and comped so many tickets at every show that the clubs were always packed. No matter how mismatched the bill might seem, Pantera were consistently unbelievable. Phil climbed PA monitors and amplifier stacks and leaped back to the stage like an Olympic athlete. Rex and Vinnie locked into one another’s playing with unerring precision, and Darrell soared above it all, striking metal poses, making rock faces, and flying through solos that wowed audiences every night. They were young, but having played so many shows in their teens, Pantera were already veteran performers, yet they played with the hunger and energy only young, ambitious, and slightly dangerous bands can generate. I was sure Pantera’s live shows would make them legends.
A year after Cowboys From Hell was released, Pantera were opening for Judas Priest in England. And by the time they started working on their second album, Vulgar Display Of Power, they were more focused and determined. Having tasted the fruits of stardom on their first ATCO album, they were writing better, more consistent songs, and fans who discovered the band from their live shows, via word of mouth, or through impulse purchases were eager to snatch up Vulgar when it came out on February 25, 1992. It wasn’t on radio; it wasn’t on TV. Only the fans knew about it, and in no time, there were tons of them; in less than two years, Pantera went from playing rock clubs to headlining arenas.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
STRAIGHT INTO
COMPTON
It might seem strange that the guy who signed Bon Jovi and Cinderella and resurrected Men Without Hats would be so gung-ho about Pantera. Maybe I welcomed the challenge of doing something totally different. At the same time, I’ve always loved great music, and it was clear to me that Pantera were a great band headed for great things. Besides, it was hardly my greatest fish-out-of-water moment at ATCO. That came when the label signed a distribution deal with Ruthless Records, and I was jettisoned with no seatbelt into the wild world of gangsta rap. During my whole tenure in the music business, there’s only one time I’ve felt completely out of my element and possibly scared for my life, and that was when I was meeting with the members of N.W.A and traveling around LA with their entourage.
N.W.A manager Jerry Heller and rapper Eric ‘Eazy-E’ Wright founded Ruthless with $7,000 in 1988, and in no time they had built up an underground empire, putting out records by the group and their members Easy E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Arabian Prince (later replaced by MC Ren). In an effort to reach a larger and more diverse audience and sell more records, they negotiated a distribution deal with the Warner Music Group, and I wound up as the middleman. For some reason, the higher-ups at the company thought I was the right man for the job.