The musician Eddie Van Halen called an “original” who “breathed” rock ‘n’ roll
None was aware that when on September 29th, 2004, Van Halen, in the midst of one of those many ill-fated reunion tours, this time with Sammy Hagar, played a show at the United Spirit Arena in Lubbock, Texas, two of rock’s all-time sibling duos of the Van Halens and the Abbotts of Pantera would be meeting for the first and last time that night.
“We actually got to meet Van Halen right before the horrible events that led to my brother’s death,” Pantera and Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott told Noisecreep in 2012, referring to the onstage murder of guitarist Dimebag Darrell during a Damageplan show in December 2004.
“Eddie [Van Halen] calls and tells me that they’re playing a show in Lubbock and if we wanted to come and fly out to the city, he would send a limo to the airport to pick us up,” Paul continued, “So we do it and get to see Van Halen do a soundcheck from the stage. Me and my brother were like kids in a candy store. I remember being on the plane, on the way back home from the Van Halen show, and my brother saying to me, ‘Man, if this plane crashed, and I died tonight, I would be OK with it because we got to meet Van Halen’.”
The respective fan bases of the two bands didn’t always cross over, but the Abbott brothers had always been quick to praise Van Halen as a huge influence on their work. There was, of course, also the obvious parallel of both bands being founded by a pair of brothers, one of whom played guitar, Dimebag and Eddie, and the other the drums, Vinnie and Alex Van Halen.
Even the career tracks of Van Halen and Pantera looked increasingly familiar over time, as both bands were derailed by friction between the founding family members and the temperamental lead singers they’d recruited, be it Hagar and David Lee Roth in the case of the former, or Phil Anselmo with the latter.
When the Abbott brothers met their heroes, they’d already abandoned Pantera to form Damageplan; meanwhile, Eddie and Alex were coming to their wits’ end with Hagar yet again, which leads to the question of whether a supergroup solution could have been in the cards had Dimebag not been lost three months later.
Author Neil Daniels seemed to think so, writing in his 2013 book Reinventing Metal that actual plans had been discussed between the Van Halens and Abbotts for just such a project. However, rather than reconvening in a studio, the next time Eddie saw Vinnie Paul was at Dimebag’s funeral, where he not only provided one of his classic Van Halen II-era ‘bumblebee’ guitars to be placed into the casket, but also shared a few words about his respect for the fallen guitar god.
“I’m here for the same reason as everyone else: to give some love back,” Eddie said at the service in Arlington, Texas, according to a transcript from the Van Halen News Desk, adding, “This guy was full of life; he lived and breathed rock ’n’ roll.”
While some people in attendance assumed that the guitar Eddie brought with him was a replica, he made it known that it was the same one that Dimebag had loved and been inspired by all those years ago, noting emotionally, “Dime was an original. He deserves the original”.
