Former PANTERA Tour Manager: DIMEBAG Was 'A Magical Person'

March 8, 2012

Heavy music presenter Christina Rowatt of Soundwave TV conducted an interview with former PANTERA tour manager Guy Sykes during this year's Soundwave Festival in Australia. Sykes, who was working at the event with headliners LIMP BIZKIT, shared his insights on the music business and talked about what late PANTERA guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott was really like as well as why PANTERA's rise was like "capturing lightning in a bottle." You can now watch the chat below.

February 25 marked the 20-year anniversary for PANTERA's "Vulgar Display Of Power", a landmark album widely acknowledged as one of metal's most enduring and influential masterworks. Recorded by singer Philip Anselmo, "Dimebag, bassist Rex Brown and drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, the album has been certified double platinum by the RIAA and features several of the group's most iconic songs including "Walk", "Mouth For War", "This Love" and "Fucking Hostile".

To celebrate, Rhino channels the album's relentless blitzkrieg of musical aggression onto a two-disc Deluxe Edition. The CD includes the original album remastered and "Piss", a recently discovered unreleased track from the recording sessions. The DVD contains an unreleased live performance filmed in Italy in September of 1992 plus the three official music videos from the album.

Due out May 15, 2012 from Rhino, the CD/DVD set will be available at retail outlets, including Pantera.com and Rhino.com, for a suggested list price of $19.98. A version of the release will also be available digitally.

The collection features the debut of "Piss", an incendiary blast of vintage PANTERA from the original recording sessions. It remained lost until Vinnie Paul rediscovered the track while going through the band's vault.

Along with the unreleased song, "Vulgar Display Of Power (Deluxe Edition)" also features unreleased video of the quartet performing six songs at the Monsters Of Rock show in Reggio Emilia, Italy on September 12, 1992. The set list draws almost exclusively from "Vulgar" ("This Love", "Rise", "Mouth For War"),but also includes the title track from their previous album, "Cowboys From Hell", and a melding of "Vulgar"'s "Hollow" and "Cowboys"' "Domination", which was a live staple of the band. Video of PANTERA performing live during this era is extremely rare, making the DVD one of the few ways to see them in their prime.

Dimebag Darrell was co-founder and lead guitarist for PANTERA. When PANTERA broke up in 2003, Dimebag and his brother Vinnie Paul formed DAMAGEPLAN. On Dec. 8, 2004, while performing with DAMAGEPLAN at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, Dimebag was shot and killed onstage by Nathan Gale. He was 38 years old.

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