A few days ago, I read the phenomenal piece that Revolver had in their latest issue, which paid homage to PANTERA's classic 1992 release Vulgar Display of Power. The piece was written as an oral history with members of the band telling the whole story of what was going on around the time of the release. It was the first time that both Vinne Paul and Phil Anselmo agreed to be a part of a piece about Pantera since the infamous Behind the Music episode in 2006. In the piece, they talked about partying, playing festivals around the world and blowing up as a band. They even included the story of how Dimebag got that nickname:
Rita Haney: Philip was the reason why Darrell is named Dimebag. When Philip first joined the band, he and Darrell connected really well. Phil smoked weed, and that was the dime when Darrell would sometimes wake up and hit the bong in the morning. Phil would always hit Darrell up for weed and back then nobody had any money. But Darrell was always like, "Dude, I got a couple of joints on me." And he would give Philip half of whatever he had, which was two joints – about a dimebag. So one day we were all sitting around getting stoned, and it just came out. It was just one of those stoner moments"
It was little anecdotes like that and a complete lack of shit talking that made me think, wow, maybe enough time has passed where the two parties can just let bygones be bygones and communicate once more. But then, Guitar World had to come in and ruin everything.
While I haven't read their piece (because they never gave me a copy like those fine people at Revolver), I saw an excerpt posted on Blabbermouth of an interview conducted with the band's former manager, Kimberly Zide Davis, that pretty much contradicts all my hopes for a possible truce:
Guitar World: Is there still no interaction between Phil and Vinnie?
Zide Davis: There is not. And I don't believe there ever will be. And truthfully, I don't know if they would be interacting even if Dime hadn't been murdered. But his death sealed it. I don't think Vinnie will ever be able to communicate with Philip again, and I don't really blame him on a lot of levels.
Talk about a megabummer. On the plus side, Davis revealed that there are plans for 20th anniversary re-releases of the band's seminal releases: Cowboys From Hell (in 2010), Vulgar Display Of Power (in 2012) and Far Beyond Driven (in 2014) albums containing extra material.
