Black Tooth Grin

Thanks to that guitar—and now, thanks to his grave as well—Darrell will always be closely associated with Dean Guitars, the same way Eddie Van Halen is known for his tape-striped homemade axe and Zakk Wylde is identified with his bull’s-eye Les Paul Custom. But the truth is, Darrell spent more time (1996-2004) on the Washburn Guitars roster. Dean went out of business, so Darrell entered into a lucrative and creative partnership with Larry English, his liaison with the company, around the time of The Great Southern Trendkill. “He and I designed the guitars for that tour together,” English says, “and it just kept going from there.”

He certainly knew how he wanted things to sound, and play. We did some interesting things together, like his rattlesnake guitar and the Southern cross guitar and dozens of—you know, the metal-top guitar, you know, the diamond plate? All the wild inlay issues. It was so much fun, I can’t begin to tell you. It was like a designer’s paradise. All he wanted was for me to be creative with him. He wanted me to be able to read him, to understand what he was saying, and then be able to translate that into an inanimate object. So that was the challenge. And it was more fun than most people could deal with getting there.

DARRELL HAD a habit of collecting brothers. Even though he was born with an older brother, and even though he always got along well with Vinnie, Darrell was in a unique position because his brother was also his bandmate and had been since he was in his early teens. Add to that the fact his father was Pantera’s manager for much of the band’s first decade of existence, and it’s not terribly difficult to understand why Darrell was always looking for someone else to help fill the role, someone outside the Abbott family. There were certain things Darrell might not have always been able to talk to Vinnie about. They were in a band together, which meant they were in business together. Given that both of their lives were so deeply connected to band business, it would be impossible to get a fresh opinion if one of them had a problem involving Pantera. It would be tough sometimes to even talk about matters outside Pantera because, inevitably, one of them would wonder how the issue at hand affected the band.

Darrell was tight with his brother, but he also craved straight answers. So he collected a group of friends and mentors whom he could call on at any time and count on to give those answers to him. Not surprisingly, most of them knew a thing or two about guitars.

There was Buddy Blaze, who taught him everything about guitars except for how to play them and later helped him navigate the choppy waters of endorsement deals. There was Zakk Wylde, his partner in crime, his mirror twin onstage and off, his soul mate, musical and otherwise. There was Nick Bowcott, the former Grim Reaper guitarist who worked with him both on his Guitar World column and toward the ruination of their livers. And there was Larry English, his artist relations guy at Washburn Guitars. Their relationship began solely as a business partnership; they designed guitars and amps together. But out of that partnership was born a mutual respect that grew into a tight friendship.

Our relationship was one where pandering was unacceptable and straight talk was essential. He had a lot of relationships where, basically, you know, he was the star. Everybody basically just kissed his ass and that was the relationship. I think that’s very typical of any star. You know, he was a star. He was a music star. I think that’s true of anyone who is a public person. So, inside of that understanding, every one of those personalities hopes to find somebody in their lives who, for some reason, they trusted or respected or felt that they could get straight answers from, maybe confide a bit, be able to talk about stuff. I think I kind of filled a little bit of a void for him.

It was a different role than English was used to. With most of his other clients, like KISS’s Paul Stanley, English maintained a businesslike presence in their lives. He was their man at Washburn, and that was it. They talked facts and figures, contracts and deadlines. But Darrell was too emotional for something like that. Very few people had a strictly business relationship with him. If he trusted you enough to work for him or with him, then he trusted you enough for anything and everything else. Simple as that. Besides, it’s tough to comport yourself in a purely professional way when you’re on your fifth shot in two hours. Or when the phone rings in the middle of the night, and Darrell’s on the other end of the line, just to talk. Nothing was purely professional in Darrell Abbott’s world.

Something had come to mind. He’d think about something. It might have to do with guitar stuff. It might have to do with something going on in his life. I’m fifty-nine, and so he always kind of looked at me as a friend, but kind of an older friend. I always tried very hard to give him good input and good guidance whenever I was called on to do it, which was a pleasure. Spent a lot of nights out drinking and doing the thing with him, which, of course, you have to. Had a lot of crazy dinners with a lot of crazy people and a lot of crazy things going on. Throughout everything, the ups and the downs, he was always Dime. He was always kind of a beautiful person, in that he had a lot of great, positive energy, which he liked to spread around.

But I think simultaneously inside of him, he was still a human being and, like all of us, had his own share of concerns and frustrations. He could be temperamental to the extreme, in some cases. He could be loving and giving to the extreme, in most cases. You know, I would see him do some great things. When we’d call on him to come and work with us somewhere and ask him to sign guitars or autographs for people, he would make sure that nobody left empty-handed, no matter what it took, how long it took.

English never left empty-handed from one of his encounters with Darrell either. Though they differed in age and background, English and Darrell connected on a level neither one of them necessarily understood. All they knew was that they’d each found someone they could talk to. Really talk to, the kind of conversations that aren’t always readily available. The kind of conversations you tend to take for granted, until you can’t have them anymore.

During the eight years they shared a business and personal relationship, the setup for these talks rarely varied. English would be in town for a visit, bunking at Darrell’s home in Dalworthington Gardens. After they recovered from the previous night’s carousing with a late breakfast and maybe a pick-me-up cocktail or two, they’d end up on the couch, “talking existentially,” as English puts it.

“Talking about life and people’s places in it, what philosophies I or he had or shared,” English explains. “Actually, these were very, very deep conversations. Most people I don’t think have the opportunity to meet somebody they can share all of those thoughts and feelings we just never seem to have an opportunity in life to explore. I mean, who do you do it with? Those times that we shared together, those were the times that meant the most, I think, to both of us, in terms of our relationship.”

THOUGH THEIR respective conversational skills were important to Darrell and English’s connection, there was also another thing in play, something that had been a part of Darrell’s life longer than he could remember: KISS. Darrell had never stopped being a fan. Now that he had a man on the inside, Darrell could fully indulge his KISS fandom, peppering English with questions, lapping up every detail, every tossed-off anecdote. He could be fifteen again, except this time, with better access and more souvenirs.

“Oh, he would eat up anything about them,” English says. “He just totally enjoyed them. What an incredible KISS fan. They have millions of fans, but I mean Dime—his house had KISS blankets on top of chairs. He had KISS stuff everywhere.” He laughs. “Anything that we would do that was KISS-related, I always made sure he got whatever we were doing. Because he loved it so much. Hell, I loved giving it to him, because it was like seeing a kid at Christmastime.”

One of the most important KISS nuggets English passed on to Darrell wasn’t another trinket in a long line of band-branded merchandise. It was something far more tangible, allowing the wannabe Frehley to get a step closer to the real thing. Years after he had stood in front of a mirror in his bedroom, face painted, Alive! cranked up, he finally got his hands on something that would help him capture that sound.

I built him some for his use. With an isolation box, you could play from your guitar into this box, and then from the box to your PA system. And what it did was it cut out all the ambient noise, everything around it. It’s really cool. It’s a trick I had learned from KISS. They already knew about this trick and they had been using it for a while. Since I worked with them, I was backstage once and saw how their rig was put together, and I was absolutely astonished. Each guitar and bass had this one little isolation box and had a speaker in it. And each one of those tied back to the sound system and the board. Then you could mix with the board. You had this really pure, crystalline sound that was incredible live. It was kind of part of the KISS mystique. I talked to Dime about this and showed it to him and he used it ever after. He loved it.