BONUS TRACK: BY DEMONS BE DRIVEN

Devil’s Night, Dime’s Night

“We’ve got all kinds of beer and shit in here.”

REX,

Airheads

As one might expect from a man who so idolized Ace Frehley and KISS that he had the guitarist’s autograph tattooed on his chest, Darrell Abbott treated Halloween like Christmas. It was the biggest holiday of his year. When he and Vince still lived with their mother, they’d turn the garage into a haunted house for the neighborhood kids. As Darrell and Pantera got more successful, the parties grew bigger and more elaborate, and the guest list, more star-studded. But at heart, every party remained the same, because Darrell was at the heart of every party, fueling each with the same sense of humor and mischief that never managed to age past sixteen years old.

“It was his big, giant party of the year,” Dale Brock says. “He’d totally deck the house up like a haunted house. The house was crazy: It had, like, hidden cameras in places, and he had a hidden control room, where he could watch what was going on in different rooms. As part of his Halloween decorations—just as a stupid little aside—he had a table with all these cans of potted meats, just like the worst, awful things you could think of, because it was scary. The scariest frigging canned meat you could think of, he’d have little displays of it setting out. People would be, like, ‘Jesus, that’s scary!’” He laughs. “It kind of took a minute to catch on. And the parties were always all night long.”

The rules were simple: If he invited you, you had to show up. And you had to show up in costume—“no ifs, ands, or buts on that,” says Scott Minyard. Darrell had a thing for costumes going way back. From his time spent in front of the mirror done up like Frehley and on through the early days of Pantera running around motel parking lots dressed like a low-rent gladiator, he always seemed to be in a costume of some sort, including when dressed as Darrell Abbott. But on Halloween, Darrell, of course, always went one step further; his costumes had costumes.

“It was almost like a kid going through a Halloween aisle and just grabbing a little bit of everything, sometimes,” Minyard says. “You couldn’t tell what it was. It was just something whacked out. As much garb as you can get on. He’s gone as pimps—but he’ll have a razorblade stuck in his head, you know? Just, like, ‘Oh, I like that, too. I’m gonna use that on the pimp outfit’—even though it doesn’t go. Just as much stuff as you can throw together. His stuff was pretty wacky.”

The Halloween parties were never actually on Halloween, nor did they ever happen at a time that most normal people would set aside for revelry. For an extra element of surprise, partygoers would typically find out about the shindigs the night before. Maybe later than that. It never mattered. The parties were always packed, and everyone came properly attired. No one would consider missing an Abbott Halloween party. Darrell was hard to turn down when it came to Halloween.

Minyard knows this as well as anyone. He was at Vinnie’s house the night before the 2002 get-together—though at the time, he didn’t know it was the night before. Not knowing they had to save themselves for the next night, Minyard and his group stayed up drinking until dawn, finishing up by admiring the sunrise from the house’s balcony. That’s the last thing Minyard remembers about the morning; as it turned out, he tripped by the pool and knocked himself out. When he finally came to, it was 6:30—at night.

“I get home and I am done for the night,” Minyard says. “I didn’t want to do anything. I had a headache from not only the hangover, but also the bump on my head from falling over and knocking myself out. I get this phone call. Guess who? Dime. He’s, like, ‘I heard you had a little mishap over at the house last night.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, I’m feeling it, man.’ And he goes, ‘Well, guess what? Get ’er thrown on, and I’ll see you about ten. Halloween party tonight.’ And I’m going, ‘Nooooo,’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, you gotta make it.’ So I was there, in my old Charles Manson outfit. I had to throw it together at the last minute.”

Minyard remembers another last-minute invite, another occasion on which he futilely tried to beg out of attending. This time, his excuse wasn’t as good: He couldn’t come up with a concept for his costume. Darrell, ever the Halloween pro, counseled him that some of the best costumes come from last-minute ideas, and furthermore, he was headed to Home Depot to pick up the rest of his own outfit. Meaning, “I’ll see you there, brother.” Darrell was right; inspiration struck. Minyard, thinking about all the cheap beer they drank, specifically Milwaukee’s Best (known more colloquially as “The Beast”), went to Wal-Mart and bought eighty bucks’ worth of Milwaukee’s Best along with the other accessories for his getup.

“So I get over there, and I’m walking in, and him and Rita are walking by the front,” Minyard says. “Inside, as soon as the door opens, he stops. I had this ’fro on, but I had the eighteen-pack box on as a hat. I had these Elvis shades on. I had this black plastic trash bag, and I put a hole in the bottom, and wore it like a gown. I had a cape on the back, and it was, like, random empty beer cans duct-taped on me. A walking piece of trash is what I looked like. It was pretty good, though. But he stopped and looked, and he figured it out: ‘Now that’s what I’m talking about.’” Minyard still seems touched by the memory of his friend and mentor approving of his last-minute idea.