Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera (25 page)

Amazingly, Toby Wright
still
calls me from time to time saying stuff like, “Hey man, I’m looking for a gig.”

“You’re a piece of shit,” is about all I’ll offer in reply.

Jerry was in no position at that point either due to his excessive drug use. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say I would go past his place from time to time and see his dog chained up with no food in the bowl for three fucking days, and that indicated to me that maybe something was seriously wrong. It felt like I was leaving one for another. Crazy shit.

CHAPTER 14

THE ’TUDE

T
he Toby Wright fiasco was an example of the scrappy character I’d been since I was a kid. Yes, I could handle myself if I had to, but I’d also developed a really strong bark and that was almost always enough to get people to back down. I nurtured that as I got older to the point that whenever I walked into a room, I did so as if to say, “This is my room,” no questions asked. Dime, Phil, and I were all like that in our different ways. Whenever we walked into a room our presence was noted.
Duly
noted. We were united and you did not fuck with us.

As a general principle, I guarantee that when I first walk into a room I can set the tone for whatever the outcome’s going to be, just by changing the expression on my face. When I walk in I make sure that everybody knows it’s my room and you don’t fuck with me, and then after that we start talking like any normal people. Of course I’ll always show manners and respect, but at that initial point of entry, it’s as if I’m walking in there as part of a street gang. We wanted people to think, “Here’s these crazy fuckers from Texas. They drink a shitload of booze and they’ll kick your fucking ass.” Even though me and Dime were tiny in physical stature, we more than made up for it in attitude.

It might surprise you to know that this attitude is more important to me than going up onstage and hitting a lick. I’m serious. It shows who you are more than
anything
. If you walk in there all smiley or all scared, people just will not take you seriously and you will lose any argument or negotiation before it even starts. Consequently, I’ve never been starstruck in my entire life. I can’t afford to do that. It would put me in a position of weakness, and since childhood I haven’t liked that place.

At times it has not been easy to not be fazed by certain scenarios, because throughout my career I’ve been in situations that even I think are pretty fucking cool, like hanging out with Ozzy, smoking a joint and the whole bit. Had people calling me on the phone that you just wouldn’t expect, and these are guys that I’ve idolized, worshipped even, since I was a kid. I got the chance to meet Jimmy Page in London once, and beforehand I didn’t even
want
to meet him—what if he turned out to be a total tool? I just didn’t want to know that. But it did make me think about how
I
am when people come up to
me
. Let’s say I’m in a bad mood—a little irritated maybe—and then when people come up to me, maybe they want to know if
I’m
a total tool. That really made me think about other people’s perception of me because I realized that strangers probably have a certain level of expectation about how I am. Unfortunately a lot of people in the public eye get reputations for being assholes, so my thinking was always to surprise them by showing that I’m not, rather than confirming their preconceived suspicion that I am.

That’s not always easy though because I come from the old school of rock ’n’ roll, which involves trying to live just like Keith Richards. Lots of guys in this business try to do that. Slash, Nikki Sixx, they all fought hard to emulate Keith, but by their own admission they never got there. I still have that vision in my brain, but I’ve got to get rid of it because, as you’ll find out later, I can’t drink anymore, which kind of defeats the point. In any case, if you read Keith’s book you’ll see that it’s not like he went out and partied every night for his entire career either. He didn’t do that. He knew how to balance his life and that’s probably why he’s still playing at sixty-something years old.

THE PRESS WANTED
to give Dime this whole certain aura after his death, but really that was an old wive’s tale. He was a charismatic guy, no doubt about it, but one who could make you feel like you’re the most amazing person on the planet, just by being in his company. He entertained himself by doing crazy shit and by getting you to do crazy shit, too, but you couldn’t help but just love the cat, even though he pissed me off so many times that I can’t even count.

Darrell was always the culprit of practical jokes, and with him the camera was always on while they played out, so it’s no wonder we made three home videos of crazy shit and the fans bought it. In fact a lot of times the fans were in them.

To relieve tedium while we were on the road, Darrell would always come up with something: cards, dice, or shooting fireworks under somebody in a moving vehicle, so there was never a dull moment.

We even drove the bus a few times to relieve the boredom, and I wasn’t always in great shape behind the wheel when I did it. The bus driver would sit and get smashed with Dime in the back regularly, so somebody had to steer the ship, and I often drove the bus from one town to the next.

WALTER O’BRIEN

When it came to making the home videos, Dime thought he could direct. I knew he couldn’t. Also, some of the stuff he had in there was outrageous—material he had because he kept the camera rolling backstage. There were acts involving Heineken bottles that you just wouldn’t believe. It was basically pornography. I used to say to him, “Look, I know that you think this is funny and these incidents really do happen but Warner Brothers are not in the business of selling hardcore pornography.” Did he get it? Of course not.

Our profile was boosted further—if that’s possible—in ’97 when we were invited on the Ozzfest tour—its first proper year—and that was the beginning of a great relationship with Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne. We were the biggest metal band out there at the time, so what were they going to do? It was obvious what they had to do: Get Pantera on the bill.

Ozzfest
had
to pay. If they were going to do this thing, it
had
to be successful.

WALTER O’BRIEN

Ozzy was always out there touring and he always had a tradition of putting out younger bands to open for him, incredibly sensible marketing on his part. We kept trying to hound them and hound them to take us out, as did every manager of every other heavy metal band in the world. We tried and tried, and then finally Sharon said, “Because so many bands are always trying to tour with us, we’re going to do Ozzfest, then that way we can take a bunch of them out and call it a festival.” So they took us out and afterwards I made a point of sending her a thank you letter. One day when I was on the phone with her a few weeks later she said, “I have to tell you something. Your letter is on the wall above my computer in my office.” I said, “That’s tremendous; I’m really honored, but why?” And she said, “Ozzy saw it and he said ‘In all my years of bringing out young groups, this is the first time any manager thought to send us a letter of thanks.’” I’m not going to say that they got the Ozzfest slots because of that letter, but it certainly didn’t hurt, let’s put it that way. I don’t think Ozzy could have gotten away with touring every year for seven straight years without something like Ozzfest to carry it.

Although he had sold millions of records during the ’90s, nobody in the industry really gave a shit about Ozzy at this particular point, so he badly needed a reinvention of some kind. Sharon had tried to get him on Lollapalooza and they just wouldn’t have him.

I would imagine they said something like, “Go fuck yourself. We don’t want Ozzy Osbourne, the washed-up old Black Sabbath turd” type of thing.

But Pantera always had a good relationship with him—management, crew, and everyone else—and that sense of harmony just escalated, as did the money we got paid to show up. We’d get up there, play forty-five minutes to an hour, and get paid
beaucoup
for doing so. It was so easy to get up and do because it was day on, day off, and during the off days the promoters set us up with free golf at the most killer courses in the whole of America. I was living in a house right on Rolling Hills Country Club in Arlington by this time, so my golf game wasn’t at all shit. In fact I was taking the piss out of Sykes and all these guys in those days.

Guy Sykes was one of my best friends, sure, but he was also our tour manager, in charge of four individual fucking psychopaths, and we certainly made his life difficult at times. His responsibility was to make everything as comfortable as possible for us on the road, and in all honesty he was good-spirited, given some of the shit we put him through. He really was a trooper. He had to be because Dime would come up with something fucking crazy every night: grass skirts, top hats, and the whole fucking thing, and Sykes would have no choice but to go sort it out. Then I said to him, “I’m not going on stage unless I’ve got one of those cocktail umbrellas in my drink every night.” So they went to a Party Hut and bought a whole case so I could never bitch about it again. I used to fuck with Sykes all the time about that kind of shit.

On the on days during Ozzfest, Sharon showed she could drink like any of us. She’d come into our dressing room just to get fucked up, probably because Ozzy was out of his fucking mind most of the time. This was during the time he was in and out of rehab. But when he was sober, he was one of the sharpest dudes I’ve ever met in my whole life, and nothing like you’ve seen on TV. In front of the cameras he puts on this confused persona, but he definitely has it all together.

At one show he had this trailer sitting out backstage somewhere, and he says to someone, “Send the Pantera boys over.”

So me and Dime jumped in a golf cart and went over, and he’s sitting there with his robe on and his fucking balls are hanging out.

First thing he says is, “You buoooys want to smoke a joint?” in that thick Birmingham accent of his. We’re thinking, “What did you say?” You just don’t say no to Ozzy.

“You guys want a drink?” is his next offer.

“No thanks Ozzy, wait … of
course
we’re going to have a drink with you.” Remember, we were as notorious as fucking Mötley Crüe back then even though we weren’t using a whole bunch of coke and all that shit. But we
could
drink some liquor.

Yeah, well as much as I admired him and as happy I was to have a drink with him, I draw the line at staring at his or anyone else’s balls, so eventually I said to him, “Dude, can you please put your fuckin’ balls away. I don’t want to stare at your gum all night.” He ignored me.

“Godfather of Metal would you mind covering up the huevos?” I asked again.

“Aww fuck you mate.” Ozzy didn’t give a shit.

THIS WAS THE BEGINNING
of some really good years with the Ozzy guys, and one of the reasons it worked out so well is because we were always very respectful of bands that we admired. We were always very cordial and
never
stepped on anyone’s toes. At least I hope we didn’t. They definitely helped our careers to a certain point, but it also got to the level where it was detrimental because of Sharon’s drinking while her man was trying to get sober. It just became expected that we were going to do this thing every year and we just got a little bored of the same routine.

We got asked out on three more cycles of the Ozzfest Tour, the last of them in 2003 when I was with Down, and by that time I had a pretty close friendship with Ozzy. Sharon had just been diagnosed with cancer, and you could just tell that he wasn’t taking it all very well. He took me in at one point and said, “I’m fuckin’ lost, man. I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.”