Last month was the 20 year anniversary of the death of Dime Darrell Abbot, the lead guitarist of
both Pantera and Damageplan. Darrell’s brother, Vinnie Paul, was also a member of both
bands. He was the drummer. Many fans of both bands mourn the loss of Dime to this day, as he
was and still is considered to be one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
Darrell Lance Abbot was born in Grand Prairie TX on August 20th, 1966 to a family of four: his
parents and his brother Vincent. Not much can be said about this time since he was so young
but when he was twelve years old he got his very first guitar for his birthday. Darrell was very
influenced by several different metal bands at the time, like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.
With Darrell having this new interest, and his brother having already been playing drums, they
played their own gigs together.
When Darrel was fourteen years old, he had entered a competition in Dallas TX, one of the
judges was Dean Zelinsky who was the owner of a guitar brand called Dean Guitars, who
Darrell would eventually go on to partner with in his later career. Darrell had wanted a Dean
guitar for some time and winning this competition was how he was going to get it. When Darrell
took to the stage he simply blew everyone away with his level of skill, so much so that after he
had won several other contests he was asked to stop competing and to be one of the judges.
After everything else Darrell had done with his instrument, he would go on to be a co-founding
member of the metal band Pantera: however, this was in 1981 before they were known the way
they are now and had taken up a completely different, glam metal style, as opposed to their later
groove metal style. Members of the band at the time consisted of Darrell Abbot, Vincent Abbot,
Terry Glaze, Donny Hart, and Tommy Bradford. The first Pantera albums were nothing too big at
the time, though most of the reviews for the albums were positive.
After a few more albums and the introduction of Rex Brown on bass, Terry and Donny had left
the band, and instead they found a new vocalist named Phil Anslemo. It’s said that the
connection between the band members and Anselmo was like magic and the band quickly got
to work making more music. The band would go on to release several incredibly popular albums
over the years such as: Cowboys From Hell, Vulgar Display Of Power, and Far Beyond Driven.
Sadly after quarrels between band members, the band had broken up, and the Abbot brothers
started Damageplan. They had only released one album and were playing a venue in Ohio,
when a former fan of Pantera rushed the stage and shot Darrell , tragically ending his life then
and there. In 2018 his brother Vincent would also pass leaving only two members of the original
band. Though gone, never forgotten, that was the life of Dime Darrell Abbot.