Remembering Dimebag Darrell Ten Years Later: Anthrax’s Charlie Benante
On December 8, 2004, Dimebag Darrell Abbott was brutally murdered while playing live with Damageplan. The already-legendary Pantera guitarist was just thirty-eight years old. Today, the tenth anniversary of his death, heavy hitters from throughout the metal world will honor this fallen icon on MetalSucks by sharing their favorite Dime riffs, solos, and, in some cases, personal remembrances. Below, read a tribute from Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante:
Anthrax and Pantera go back to 1985 when Pantera was a band from Texas. They were different back then, they didn’t have the extreme heavy sound — they were playing Judas Priest and looking like Ratt. We first met them when they played with us at a place in Texas and we all hit it off. It was a different time — he wasn’t “Dimebag” back then, he was “Diamond Darrell.” But Philip Anselmo joined the line-up, they evolved into this whole other band. Thank God for evolution: if that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have had the guitar player we did.
Dime played on three Anthrax albums: Stomp 442 [on the songs “Fueled” and “King Size”], Volume 8 [on the songs “Inside Out” and “Born Again Idiot”], and We’ve Come for You All [on the songs “Strap it On” and “Cadillac Rock Box”]. We bought him a big screen TV for playing on the first two, but he did the last one for free. The way he approached his leads… it was as though some of them were songs within a song.
My favorite riff of his was on “Rise” from Vulgar Display of Power. That song is a good example of his leads being a song within a song. Makes me smile every time I hear it, and every time I hear it, I think of him and how amazing he was.
When he was going to do a lead for an Anthrax album, he and I would talk about how it should sound. He’d ask me, “What do you hear?” And I’d say “Ace Frehley meets Eddie Van Halen.” He’d say, “OK, I’ll get back to you.” Then he’d call me from Texas and play the leads over the phone – and it was music to my ears. We were always on the same wavelength.
We were recording Stomp in Philadelphia, so he flew in there to do the leads. We spent thirty-two straight hours just getting it done, then went to the bar. He was jumping on top of the bar blowing fire out of his mouth. He always made things memorable.
When Pantera toured with Anthrax in ’97 or ’98, we’d always hide from Dime, because we just couldn’t drink like that anymore… but he’d always find us. If he didn’t get to us before the show, he’d get us during the show: he’d come onstage with a full tray of shots (sometimes, he’d wheel them out on a cart). Then it was, “Drink it or wear it.”
I miss his phone calls at two or three AM. He’s call about nothing in particular, just bullshitting about a song, why this guitar player was so much better than another one, why one band never got the success they deserved, topics that bothered both of us. We both went though similar rough periods in our lives, and we talked about that one night. The next time I saw him, he gave me a book called Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff. One of the last times I saw him, he had this great pair of boots on and I told him how much I liked him. The next time I saw him, he had a pair of those boots for me.
The last time I saw him was in Chicago, when Pantera played a show at the House of Blues. After the show, Dime and I went downstairs, where a blues band was playing. We went onstage and played a song with them. We just had a great time, that last time together.
