The Tapes Archive

Pete Prown: I read somewhere about you being banned from every guitar contest in Texas.

Dimebag Darrell: Uh, it’s like this man. I started off about the age of 14, half 15, around there. They had this Q102, it was the radio station back then, it was the only happening rock station around there. They had, hottest guitar player in Texas, type thing. You know, they had the big commercial with the, pew, Q102, hottest guitar. What the deal was, you record two minutes of your hottest playing, take them to this music store in Dallas, and you’re gonna listen to it, I mean it was for all of Texas and stuff. They listen to it and they’d pick like the top, I believe, 15, and then there would be the big playoff, the big showdown at a popular club in Dallas, which was the Agora Ballroom. Anyways, so get up there and you play for something like five minutes a piece. You get up there and wail and shit, and then they pick like the top three dudes. First time I got up there and I wailed and I did what I could. I got picked for the top 15, went to the club, had to get for my parents to get me into the club and shit, ’cause I was underage. I was the youngest dude out of everybody. I didn’t think I did that well, I got picked for the top 15, I got out there, and then I got picked for the top three. I hammered as hard as I could, dude I won first place, and I just could not fucking believe it. It was a Dean guitar, like I play, and I just died because I always wanted one of those, and won that. Next time they had another one, I entered, of course I got in, fuckin’ won first place again, Charvel. Entered again, won first place got a ESP guitar. Entered again, next time, this is like two months per pop, or three per pop.

Pete Prown: What were you doing that people like? Just shredding?

Dimebag Darrell: I did a couple of licks that I had made up on my own. I’m like one of them dudes got like decent at playing lead guitar, within like three months or something like that. I could just burn pretty quick, I had good chops and I could play lead. And I actually had a half ass idea about what it was. I think that showed through and of course, I listened to records and I would sit down and I would pick out leads and stuff. I would do a little bit of an Edward Van Halen solo, maybe a little Eruption, Randy Rhoads or something, like Mother Earth or something like that. And I guess, at the time those were the real respected guitar players, and I did it well, man.

Pete Prown: So, eventually, did they say you can’t enter anymore?

Dimebag Darrell: That’s

what happened. I went to turn in the tape again, and they said look man, just be a judge dude, you’ve already won everything you can win, give somebody else a shot at it.

Pete Prown: Does being from Texas affect your playing? Is there some kind of a?

Dimebag Darrell: I believe so man, I think there’s a lot of great guitar players from Texas. Such as like, Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, Ricky Lynde, Rocky Athis, which are big influences on me when I was growin’ up and stuff. And I would like go to a club and watch those dudes, and I would sit there and I would play.

Pete Prown: Are they from Austin, or?

Dimebag Darrell: Mainly, all those dudes are from Dallas, man. Wasn’t like any one of ’em sat me down and taught me anything or nothin’. I was lucky enough to, that my dad worked at Pantigo Sound at the time, which is a studio that he eventually owned, where we cut all of our records at. He was doing a record on Bugs Henderson, he’s a true blues player.

Pete Prown: For a metal guy, you’re singing a lot more, you’re spinnin’ those notes and screamin’ ’em. A lot of guys are just into the shredding thing.

Dimebag Darrell: Man I’m into fuckin’ feel, I’m into note value, I’m into melody, man. I can still shred, there’s no problem doing that shit. I mean that’s like, shredding I think began with people that weren’t, I don’t wanna dis anybody out, but maybe people that weren’t talented enough, or weren’t happening enough to play lead or really feel something, where they just took out their aggressions on the guitar and they fuckin’ hammered. I got aggressions just like everybody else, but I have the other side to me, too.

Pete Prown: Who were you listening to when you were younger?

Dimebag Darrell: Big Time, Eddie Van Halen, and then Eddie Van Halen 2, then Eddie Van Halen 2. Eddie Van Halen 1 and 2. But to me, you know, it’s Edward. I’m more of a listener to the music more than I am, like a vocalist type dude.

Pete Prown: Definitely.

Dimebag Darrell: Although I love vocalists that can wail from the heart and dude, like I look at lead vocalists like I do lead guitar player. Rob Halford or something, wails a melody out, and a ridiculous pitch or a really gutty throat value. I think of that as like chunk and distortion on a guitar, like a squeal or something.

Pete Prown: So, you’re into Randy Rhoads, too?

Dimebag Darrell: Randy Rhoads, and Ace Frehley was a really huge influence on me.

Pete Prown: Where did you get that wicked picking from? You have really clean picking, could be a jazz or country influence, it could be only rock, I mean?

Dimebag Darrell: Which kind of pickin’, on the rhythms, right?

Pete Prown: No, when you’re playin’ lead, like especially, what’s that song, Rise? That’s real clean, where does that come from?

Dimebag Darrell: I don’t know if you listen close enough or not, because I do a lot more of the legato, like Edward stuff. When people come out with a video camera, they film a close up of my right hand, and I’m sitting there going , doing like a double, triple, single rake and stuff, and my left hand’s doing all the work, mainly. But there is some definite chunking in there.

Pete Prown: Just that one song in Rise, .

Dimebag Darrell: I actually thought I played that a little bit sloppy, but it had the character, so I said leave it alone.

Pete Prown: So it wasn’t anybody you listened to for picking, it was more like the Van Halen guys?

Dimebag Darrell: Man, I was talking to this dude the other night. I think I said it the best for the first time. He was trying to pick my brain on what influenced me to be like I am, and why I do this and why I do that. I just told him, I said, who was your main dude? He was like, I’m into Yngwie right now. He goes, I know every solo, and every this and every that. And I go, man, honestly, even since I was fuckin’ 14 years old, til’ now, I’m 25, I’ve never learned more than like, two or three solos by any person’s lead guitar playing. I never like really, got all stoned and did a bunch of crank and sit there all skitzed out and listened to every lead and learned every lick, and tried to figure out what scale– –

Pete Prown: Trying to get the spirit of the player, or just their-

Dimebag Darrell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just the vibe, like a Van Halen record, Jesus Christ. Dude, I still listen to that shit today before I go on and play. The spontaneity and the liveness of that dude’s guitar playin’ was just un fuckin’ real.

Pete Prown: How do you like, balance your guitar playing, which is so clean and polished, with sort of the grunge of Pantera music? Do you ever think, how do I balance it out, or?

Dimebag Darrell: I never, ever analyze anything I do at all. I write the best songs we can possible, and-

Pete Prown: Do you know your scales and shit?

Dimebag Darrell: I know a major scale and a minor scale and a pentatonic blues scale, and that’s like as far, as deep as I ever got. Two days ago, I bought a scale book, and I was going over, learning all these five positions of F major, or something scale. Something to feel like I was doing, like I was digging in a little bit, ’cause dude, I’m not a heavy theory dude at all.

Pete Prown: Did you take lessons, or anything, or?

Dimebag Darrell: I took like one or two from one dude, and then one from one dude. And the only dude that really, I think ever taught me anything was my dad. He’s a very well-rounded musician, he plays acoustic guitar real fluently. And he played electric guitar. He plays anything from rock to country and he’s always cuttin’ his own tunes. So he plays everything on his tunes. I come in and he’s doing a keyboard part and I go what the fuck is he doing? Dude, he just blows me away. He never ever tried to cram me on one style or anything. I showed him that I learned Smoke on the Water, like on the E string, . And dude, he goes, he goes, well check this out, this is what you call a bar chord. Then I went and I died, I went Jesus Christ.

Pete Prown: You have the greatest dad on the planet.

Dimebag Darrell: I thought it was like fuckin’ 20 millions times what it was on the one string. And then I go, I can dig this. And then I really got into the playing aspects and stuff. I would go over to my dad’s house on a Sunday night, before I would go back to school on Monday, I would take a record, like Cocaine, by Eric Clapton, or Van Halen, which he had some problems with. He was going, God damn, that dude uses a lot of reverb, son. With that kind of guitar sound, you could almost play anything and it sounds like God. And that’s where I got noticin’ tones and stuff like that. And got into, he showed me probably like 10 songs, like 10 different Sundays he’s showing me different songs and I’m starting to pick up on it.` And he said, man, are you paying attention to how I’m doing this? I’m just listening and I’m trying to think of chords, bits and pieces of chords, and he would explain it out as best as possible and I would just learn it on my own from there.

Pete Prown: Is that where you got? Your tone is pretty distinctive. It is from your dad telling you to pay attention to tone?

Dimebag Darrell: No, he didn’t just tell me to totally, hey watch your tone, son, or I’ll spank you. No, he just, things that he would say, I would just link up to other, there’s so many values to look at. From note value to tone value.

Pete Prown: Did you ever work on saying, I wanna get my own tone?

Dimebag Darrell: I always wanted my own tone, I always did. And I got I wanted a Randall half stack, and that’s where I heard something different. I said, man this is like a chainsaw, man, it’s like, too gritty, I bet I can make it my own one day. And like, a year and a half later, I was using solid Randall. I got a cheap endorsement with him, I got it for like 39% off or something, and then established ourselves as a band and myself as a player, and of course I’m endorsed full key with them now. And they dig me and I love them. I think they’re the best amps.

Pete Prown: The tube amps?

Dimebag Darrell: No, that’s the funniest thing, everybody thinks they’re fucking tube amps, solid-state. They made a tube amp. I had him mail me one, and I was going, oh man, if it’s gonna sound like the solid-state, but more warm, I’m gonna die, and it did. But just some of the shit that that tube amp is nasty, I mean the solid-state is a nasty fucking amp, and you just squeal and do feedback, and for what I do, it’s bad.

Pete Prown: So what’re you doing tonight? Something where you do a super high screaming thing, you do an upbend with a whammy. How do you get that high?

Dimebag Darrell: I have a Floyd Rose, of course,

Pete Prown: Is that how you’re doing it?

Dimebag Darrell: And it’s, and what I do, here’s the theory, I hope everybody learns it, I hope everybody tries to trip it off, ’cause I, this is one thing I would definitely take credit for. Wait! Doing an interview dude, tone it down a little bit. My brother’s loaded again. Anyway, I would say this is definitely one thing that I’ve contributed to the millions of fuckin’ things. Of course it won’t be no big stand out deal or nothing, but it’s my own deal. I take the G string, flick it with my left hand, and whenever I flick it, I dump the bar too. I usually do it from the back, but you could do it either way. I pull it back, you pull the bar behind, and dump it like this, al la Steve Vai or whatever. I think I saw it on a video once. Right when I flick it, I dump it, so you don’t hear it go , it goes, it goes, it goes. Jesus! I’m trying to role a fuckin’ set up over here, buddy. Geez, anyway, sorry man, we should have our own hookup.

Pete Prown: It’s all right.

Dimebag Darrell: I used to be the dude that got loaded all the time and fell down and people had to carry me home. My brother, big brother would all wanna take care of me and shit. Now, dude, he’s loaded. Anyway. Flick the motherfucking G string.

Pete Prown: Dump it.

Dimebag Darrell: Dump it, you don’t hear it go , you hear it go . And it’s so low, I mean, you don’t dump it all the way where it’s like flappin’ and shit. And right when it goes down, catch it, just barely tap it like on a fifth, fourth, third, second, second and a quarter, second and a half, second and three quarters, that’s where my whole fuckin’ set up is right there. And you’ve gotta have to tone for it too, or it’s just not gonna come out of there.

Pete Prown: So the real high tone, in your lead to Demons Be Driven, is that that thing?

Dimebag Darrell: Absolutely.

Pete Prown: I thought it was like a harmonizer or something.

Dimebag Darrell: No, I’ll tell you this one thing. And I hope you print it so nobody gets the wrong idea. I just bought a whammy pedal fuckin’ two weeks ago. I was at a music store and this, I go what’s new dude, what’s fuckin’ weird? And he broke this pedal out on me that has like all these thirds fifths and everything. High octave and low octave, have you ever seen one?

Pete Prown: Yeah.

Dimebag Darrell: You know what I’m saying? You can go like . I added that to what I already did and I could get the dogs coming out of the fuckin’ background. It goes and it goes away, dude it’s so high. I doubt I’ll use that, like, I never used it on a record yet, I’ll say that, so.

Pete Prown: Do you work out your solos, like when you’re doing it?

Dimebag Darrell: The way I do solos, is we write a song. We spend all the time writing the rhythm to the song and the structure and everything, we go, oh, now we need a lead part. Nobody’s interested in the lead part. Phil is like the day the lead guitar player is over with, let’s make the lead one measure long, and let’s get back into the jams, you know. And I agree to a certain extent. I mean, there’s not gonna be another Edward fucking Van Halen come along to where it just sounds so good, you wished the lead would never end. So the kind of stuff we’re doing is more of a foursome effort, and so when it comes to leads and stuff, I really work on keepin’ ’em interesting and innovative to my own extent that I can do it. What I do, is I go, ah, now we need a lead section here, let’s just go to the key of A flat, man. And we’ll just jam on that for four bars, and then we’ll just go back into the song. And usually we just do something like that to fake it for a sec, and then just to get the whole piece of music written and then, it usually hardly ever changes, or we’ll put a little something else in. And once we lay a basic down, I’ll take that home that night after I’m already fuckin’ six beers down, a little buzzed, I’ll go to my four-track room. I’ll put it in my four-track, and there’s two tracks available to play on. I play one lead, turn it off, switch over to track four, play another lead, and then I go back and I sit there and I listen to it. Or sometimes, like a Cemetery Gates, or something, off Cowboys from Hell. That’s the very first lead I ever played on there and I didn’t even play a second one. I just said, fuck it, I just turned the thing off and just went to bed knowing that I was gonna listen to that tomorrow and kind of work off of that a little bit. It’s mostly spontaneous.

Pete Prown: You just have this guy here just to go, just to cue you up then? The one you did the night before?

Dimebag Darrell: Yeah, I just wanna go home and see what comes out, instead of doing it in the studio and gettin’ frustrated and not gettin’ a good lead and sitting there skitzing, saying oh no, wasting their time and my time because I’m not prepared.

Pete Prown: Do you play a lot of acoustic, your arpeggios on Hollow are really tight as a, do you play a lot of acoustic?

Dimebag Darrell: I don’t think of it as, I think of it like the electric guitar. I play more of like a different release of, because it sounds different and the tension on the strings is different, like cat gut strings and shit, it’s cool man, you can really flow on some stuff like that and it brings different things out of you. A lot, a lot of stuff on acoustic you can’t play on a fuckin’ electric. But I don’t claim to fame any acoustical values, definitely.

Pete Prown: Are you familiar with Alex Skolnick of Testament?

Dimebag Darrell: Mhmm.

Pete Prown: A lot of people come up to him and tell him, you know, you’re too good for thrash, things like that. Anybody starting to come up and tell that to you, because?

Dimebag Darrell: Never.

Pete Prown: Really?

Dimebag Darrell: Because I’m not, I’m just good enough for thrash. No man, like dude, Alex Skolnick is just the same to me as like Steve Vai, or anybody else that knows every scale in the book and exactly how it’s gonna sound before you play it. I’m not trying to blow the dude down at all, but I mean there’s no, I don’t hear that dude playing from the heart. I just hear it like some dude that went to school and learned a computer and can sit there and patch in 20 million words per minute. You can learn that shit, it’s just chops, dude. I mean to play it from the heart and really feel something and to hammer something really means a hell of a lot more than 20 million notes.

Pete Prown: Where does Kirk Hammett fit into that kind of thing? Does he play with feel? Or is he more of a chopper?

Dimebag Darrell: I don’t know, man, I really wish you wouldn’t ask me about other guitar players. I don’t know, I like some of Kirk’s earlier playing.

Pete Prown: Things sort of changed, they’ve taken a different direction.

Dimebag Darrell: Yeah.

Pete Prown: Tell me about this Bill Lawrence pickup. Is that like central to your tone there?

Dimebag Darrell: It’s fuckin’ detrimental to my tone, I gotta have it.

Pete Prown: Who turned you on to it?

Dimebag Darrell: I turned myself on on accident. I wanted to set one of my friends up for this birthday present, and . This dude that worked at ICM had this huge box of pickups and shit. And I went over to his house and he said he would me one for a joint. I gave him a J and he was gonna set me up with a fuckin’ pickup. And I got, how ’bout that one? ‘Cause it had the little poles on it, and I thought it looked neat. And he goes, “Yeah cool, it’s a nice pickup.” And this and that, and he set me up, he mounted it in there and set me up. So I went home just to plug it in, just to see what it did man. And I found myself playing for like three and half hours, which is kind of long for me, and just the harmonics and just the clarity of it. You could have it totally distorted, play a full chord, and hear every note.

Pete Prown: Does it sound good through any amp, or with especially the Randall’s?

Dimebag Darrell: I hadn’t tried it through every amp, man. I’m not a dude that, I’m getting Boogies tomorrow, I’m getting this amp shipped in, it’s gonna be God. I got the new Celdono, or whatever. Fuckin’ shut up, you don’t have your own tone, and that’s why you’re shipping something else in and fuckin’ with it all the time. I don’t have a fuckin’ pedal board 30 miles long. I got my piece of shit, whatever you wanna call it. And it’s my tone and that’s all I want, man.

Pete Prown: So, you’re, the bottom line is just getting a feeling for us.

Dimebag Darrell: I don’t have fuckin’ chops like, I don’t want chops like that.

Pete Prown: You got pretty good chops, you’re underestimating yourself.

Dimebag Darrell: Well, I got decent chops in my own way. But I mean if you sit me down with a dude like Alex Skolnick, to somebody that didn’t understand heart, and just wanted to hear five million notes, they’d go, “Oh, dude, they burned you.” You know? Or maybe he did, in theory value, sit in his room for 30 years fuckin’ burning these scales up and down the neck. It’s more intimate to me to play the guitar from the heart. It’s not like something you can try to earn either, either you’ve got that or you don’t.

Pete Prown: Right, what so what was it about the Dean? Why’d you go with the Dean? It’s like an antique to a lot of people.

Dimebag Darrell: For one, that it’s an antique to everybody else and that it’s a fuckin’ tool. It’s a fighting fuckin’, she’s what you’d call, it’s my shotgun.

Pete Prown: I got one like that, I got an Ibanez Ice Man.

Dimebag Darrell: Oh, badass!

Pete Prown: I liked it for the same reason, I think. Just looks like it could hurt somebody.

Dimebag Darrell: Well, it was the look originally, back to the 13 year old thing, 14, lookin’ at something and just being a kid and just going, oh God, that’s bad! I looked at a Dean catalog and I almost shit my pants, man. Anyway, I got it for that, and flat fuckin’ cold. It was the nicest guitar I’ve ever played. Right out of the box, I ordered one and shit. Fuckin’ when I got it, my dad bought it for me, for my birthday or something like that. I mean, dude he didn’t have that kind of money. But I was just like dad, look at this dude, look at that, it’s a Dean guitar, and I didn’t even know what it was, but it sounded good, I’d just tell him that. He splurged his ass off and made payments and paid it off. Dude, I won like two weeks after that, and then I had two, so I was like, fuck, and I started my arsenal, Dean arsenal. And then when I put a Floyd Rose in it. Actually that was something my dad did for me, too on a birthday present that I didn’t even ask for, like two years later. They had just come out with whammies and they had like, Floyd Rose and the Kahler. And he took a look at both of them and he made the decision that he thought the Floyd was the more durable one when it happened. Anyway, he just went down just under my, not even knowing it at all. I came to the gig that night and I had a fuckin’ whammy on a Dean guitar, which is the strangest thing in the world at the time, it was like a whammy on a Les Paul. It was never meant to be, anyway, I can ramble on for hours. I love Dean guitars, they got, they do everything I want, and they sound fucking great for me.

Pete Prown: Are they still around?

Dimebag Darrell: They petered out and tried to do that Japanese thing, I think. Sell some cheaper guitars to make some cash. But that’s all I do is fuckin’ search for old ones constantly.

Pete Prown: What model?

Dimebag Darrell: ML it’s a half-line V and half explorer. It’s got the big headstock.

Pete Prown: 24 frets?

Dimebag Darrell: It’s 22 frets. Near the end of their whole setup, they started making 24 frets and stuff, I got one 24 fret Dean.

Pete Prown: Do they still have the Floyds on there, or?

Dimebag Darrell: Oh, they all have to have Floyds and they have to have Bill Lawrence fuckin’ 4500 L’s. Or L500 XL, XL is a little hotter.

Pete Prown: Did you change anything else on it?

Dimebag Darrell: Unless it’s got the classic tobacco burst, or sunburst fuckin’ paint job. I take that this dude rigged up that, and he paints jet skis, and so he put pot leafs and skulls or something you know, and he goes.

Pete Prown: What kind of Randalls are they?

Dimebag Darrell: They’re Randall RG100 HTs they’re rack mount. I think HT means rack mount, I don’t know.

Pete Prown: You got a pedalboard?

Dimebag Darrell: I don’t, I have them in a rack, and the only thing else I use is a Fermin PQ4 parametric equalizer. I just use that. I don’t really use it for much more than just cutting out some frequencies that I don’t want, and boosting a couple that I do want. And the main thing is another vital, detrimental thing to my tone, is a little blue MXR, 6 band EQ, 9-volt battery and that’s it, I use a.

Pete Prown: A whammy pedal?

Dimebag Darrell: I don’t even include that, because I just come out and I use that thing to get super ridiculous squeals. I just got it, I don’t even know how to use it good yet.

Pete Prown: There seems to be a lot of rhythmic interplay between you and the drums. Is that something you guys work on?

Dimebag Darrell: Rhythmic what?

Pete Prown: Interplay, it’s just like, there’s a lot of rhythm and the playing, and it’s sort of like you and the drums are playing with each other really tight. Do you guys work on that?

Dimebag Darrell: Do you know Vinnie’s my brother?

Pete Prown: Yeah.

Dimebag Darrell: Okay, well a lot of people don’t know that. We don’t look alike. We grew up together. I’ve never jammed with another drummer. Never ever tried to form anything with another drummer in my life. And so, we grew up together, first song we ever played was Smoke on the Water. And then we were doing More Than a Feeling, by Boston. And I thought I had learned the riff right, and then he goes, look dude, he was trying to play to me, and he goes, look man, check this out, this is one and two and, he counted the time out to me and shit, and he goes, look man, you’re missing like two notes, right there, if you could try to figure that out. And we listen to the record, and he goes, right there, you know. So, he like helped me to get the time. After that, everything was like, fine with time. We just grew it from there, and we’ve always played together. I fuckin’ me and him are like, attached.

Pete Prown: A telepathy type of thing?

Dimebag Darrell: It’s easy, it’s very easy. It’s not complicated.

Pete Prown: I gotta drive.

Dimebag Darrell: You gotta drive, are you gettin’ hammered?

Pete Prown: No, I gotta go home.

Dimebag Darrell: Okay. I have to have another beer before I can go home.

Pete Prown: I’m gonna go home, and I have to go to my apartment. Tell me about the Moscow gig.

Dimebag Darrell: Amazing.

Pete Prown: How did you get on with it?

Dimebag Darrell: The guy that signed us, the A and R guy that had all the belief in us in the first place. He moved on from Atco, or was doing something else. And he got hooked up with Warner, he was one of the main dudes that threw the rock concert there in Moscow. His names Mark Ross. He’s been very good to us all along. And they needed one more band to fill the shoes. This dude that was a promoter over there in Russia had saw us in Europe somewhere, and he really enjoyed the show and shit. And he said, what about this band, Pantera? They wanted somebody that could be real honest and could do the fans some justice and stuff. And my heart just died. He goes, dude I’d sign those motherfuckers. Let me give them a call, I wanna do it. Funnier part about that was, doing the Cowboys from Hell record, we took a bunch of breaks to go play gigs and keep doing everything and keep it going instead of concentrating on the record. It kind of broke us from doing the most concentration out of it, so we said, we’re never doing that again. And then on the next record, we could just gulp right in the fuckin’ middle of it. We get offered to go to Moscow, play with Metallica, ACDC, and we just go, God I can’t believe we got it dude, we gotta do it. So we took a break, we went over.

Pete Prown: Are Russian metal fans different than U.S. metal fans, or?

Dimebag Darrell: They don’t understand our language or what the singer’s singing, but they can hear the conviction in Phil’s voice, and the music is the universal thing that moves anybody, fuck you can’t even talk, but you can listen to dudes like.

Pete Prown: And they reacted to your set?

Dimebag Darrell: Fuck, you’re gonna die when you see this movie they’re putting out on it. It’s a documentary, we’ve already got our segment of it, and it’s, dude they chopped a couple of leads in half and stuff, but the crowd was, dude it was insane. It was insane. I mean just, I had never played in front of that many people in my life. And probably never will again.

Pete Prown: Did you hang with the other guys on the bill, with Metallica, and all those guys?

Dimebag Darrell: I saw them for a couple. I know James and Lars from like five years back or so. We stayed up and jammed for like two nights solid in my garage.

Pete Prown: So are all your live shows pretty wild, do they get pretty crazy?

Dimebag Darrell: Every, our music’s just fuckin’ wild music, if you wanna call it that.

Pete Prown: Where did the come from, is that just Phillip’s lyrics?

Dimebag Darrell: Fuck no, I mean-

Pete Prown: Or are you guys just all like that?

Dimebag Darrell: I mean, shit, his lyrics. You know, we gotta accommodate each other, if you’re catching the vibe off me. People look at others from Texas and stuff, and they’re like ah, you’re all egoed out, or you’re all. I’m proud of what I do and I’m happy about it. I don’t wanna be all low key and skitted out. I go off on shit, dude. And I’m a fuckin’. I go off on my music. Just fuckin’ rage on it. I like to fuckin’ rip, dude, period. Anything I do, anything I do anytime, unless I’m sick as piss, man. I like to fuckin’ just go with it, man.

Pete Prown: Have you ever got hurt at a gig?

Dimebag Darrell: Oh yeah, several times. Got knocked out, almost knocked myself out trying to do a ridiculous stage dive, with the guitar, into a crowd of like 50 people at the end of a night at a club, about two and a half, three years ago. Anyway, sure man. I fuckin’ rage on it, fuckin’ sprained ankle, big time. I’m pretty much not into the stage. I’d still do it, fuck. I stay I’m all, I do it, I still do it, I just don’t do it when I’m playin’ man, ’cause everybody see’s that guitar coming, fuckin’ pointed headstock. Say, they’re outta there, and I fuckin’ smash the concrete.

Pete Prown: Do you guys all get together when you write, or just?

Dimebag Darrell: Big time, I would say me and Vinny are like the main, we’re just one chunk man, just put it that way. Rex, is just one chunk with us too, man. I mean the riffs are coming from me, and Vinny’s accommodating me with the Latin Rhythms, or whatever it takes to fuckin’ bang with it. And Rex, he really fuckin’ in a cool way, knows what he thinks is his place as a bass player. He doesn’t try to go all these double hammer on’s and shit like that, and he’s just, I mean, I can respect him more for the way he is, being solid and fuckin’ just kick ass. He jams with Vinny like I jam with Vinny. They’ve been together for about as long as we have, too.

Pete Prown: Do you all just come up with ideas when you’re standing around?

Dimebag Darrell: Phil sits in the control room, and he’ll go, oh man, that part’s great. Do it two times and let’s see how it sounds. Or, that part didn’t fit. Phil is a brilliant listener. And so, he coaches us. I got the riffs, Vinny and Rex are the backbone, and we just hammer ’em out. We wrote Vulgar Display of Power in two weeks. I’m proud of that. We wrote it in two weeks.

Pete Prown: That’s fantastic. Let me ask you this,

Dimebag Darrell: It’s all right, could be better.

Pete Prown: are you gonna have any ideas for your next album?

Dimebag Darrell: No, I ran out.

Pete Prown: You guys writin’ on the road, or are you gonna just wait?

Dimebag Darrell: I don’t know how anybody else writes, but I can’t just sit down and decide to write. It comes out, spur of the moment and that’s just how it’s gonna be. I mean, you know, I’ll play something, and somebody will go, god damn what was that? Or somebody does something, and then I’ll get the video camera out and film it. Anything that’s handy, I’ll just, any time, anywhere man.

Pete Prown: Finally, what would you say like, five essential guitar albums every guy, the young guy should have in their collection?

Dimebag Darrell: Five essential guitar albums? I’d have to base that on either, whether you were talkin’ like, not to break your question up into two, but like, band-oriented guitar albums, or just like Steve Vai solo guitar albums?

Pete Prown: Whatever you would think.

Dimebag Darrell: I’m into band-oriented shit, I’m all for one. Fuck man, Van Halen 1, Van Halen 2, easily. Blizzard of Oz. On Through the Night, by Def Leppard is a huge influence on me.

Pete Prown: Really, why?

Dimebag Darrell: Just because those dudes were young too, and they were tearing it up. I think that’s the best record they ever did. For a third one? Geez, now I’m gonna fuck it up. Oh, God. Oh dude, what a hole. How ’bout uh?

Pete Prown: Just anybody doesn’t have to be metal.

Dimebag Darrell: Are you in a hurry? No you know, I would say, I guess just Double Platinum. Just because it’s got a well-rounded scan of a bunch of the KISS records that I really love the guitar playing on. That was my original. That was my original reason to ever wanna play guitar, Ace Frehley.

Pete Prown: Even a million other guys?

Dimebag Darrell: All the guys in Skid Row, too. Yeah.

Pete Prown: Me too.

Dimebag Darrell: You too?

Pete Prown: Yeah. ’76, saw ’em on this Paul Lynde, remember Paul Lynde, he used to be on Hollywood squares, he was this comedian.

Dimebag Darrell: Oh, right, yeah I got you.

Pete Prown: There was this Halloween special in ’76, it had Kiss on it.

Dimebag Darrell: I saw that, flames and everything, dude.

Pete Prown: And I just didn’t, I didn’t know how to play. That was it.