Dimebag Darrell: The guitarist buried with Eddie Van Halen’s guitar
Any guitarist usually sees their guitar as an extension of their body half the time. Much like knights used to do in the Middle Ages, seeing a musician onstage shredding countless licks and wowing audiences is the equivalent of watching a warrior engage in a vicious battle with their instrument as their sword. Everyone has that moment where they must lay their weapons down, but before Eddie Van Halen saw the other side of mortality, he ensured one of his guitars would be buried with Dimebag Darrell.
By the time Van Halen started working their magic with Sammy Hagar, Darrell had already been a student of everything that Eddie had ever done. Years before forming the group Pantera that people know today, Darrell would frequently win every single guitar contest in his native Texas, many of which included him going through the solo piece ‘Eruption’ on his own.
Once he was introduced to the world of heavier metal like Slayer and Metallica, Pantera became a completely different entity. Now, with professional growler Phil Anselmo in front, albums like Vulgar Display of Power and Cowboys From Hell were what would happen if Texas swing music met heavy metal, complete with the meanest grooves that anyone had ever headbanged to.
And as much questionable material has come out surrounding former Pantera members since their prime, Darrell was always the one that everyone wanted to party with. Outside of having a heart of gold, he was more than happy to just be one of the guys whenever he played, usually being seen jamming with people in between shows or knocking back a drink at the bar.
When Darrell started up his own project with his brother Vinnie Paul with Damageplan, though, everything came to an end way too fast at a club gig in Ohio. Right as the band tore through their first song, Darrell was killed by a deranged fan onstage, leaving a massive hole in the hearts of metal fans around the world.
If Darrell really was gone, he was going to get the heavy metal equivalent of a Viking funeral, and Eddie knew just the way to commemorate the guitarist. As former Pantera vocalist Terry Glaze recalled, “There’s Eddie Van Halen talking at the funeral service. He puts his guitar in the casket with Darrell. It’s the guitar off of Van Halen II. I mean, it’s the guitar. If someone said, ‘Darrell, when you die, Van Halen’s gonna put that guitar in the casket, he would have said, ‘Kill me now.’”
Then again, it wasn’t like the comparisons to Eddie’s playing were unwarranted. Darrell had a style all his own, but listening to how he used feedback and his whammy bar on tracks like ‘Cemetery Gates’ wasn’t all that different to the way that Eddie got different alien-adjacent sounds out of his instrument as well.
So, in essence, Eddie’s offer to place the guitar in the ground with Darrell was more of a tip-of-the-hat to what the Pantera guitarist brought to metal. Eddie was still the master, but in a world full of wannabes, Darrell was the wise pupil who took everything that Eddie did and pushed it even further.
