Black Tooth Grin

This was the boring part of Mitch Carpenter’s job, telling assholes like the guy in the red Pontiac Grand Am they couldn’t park their cars wherever they felt like it. If one were to break it down, what Mitch did, it was like being a glorified hall monitor sometimes.

The Grand Am had pulled to a stop next to the fence bordering the patio area at Alrosa Villa. The low-key, stucco-sided building had been hosting heavy metal shows in Columbus, Ohio, for more than three decades. Albert Catuela and his wife, Rosa—hence the name “Alrosa”—opened the club in 1974 and just about every hard-rock band worth a damn had graced (if that word was appropriate) the stage since then.

The driver of the Grand Am, a burly six-foot-something with a shaved head, had been heading for Alrosa Villa’s front door, probably in search of tickets for tonight’s show. He’d have to wait. Mitch turned him around and made him move his car.

Mitch walked back to his post in the parking lot. It was only 9 P.M., but he’d already been working for almost three hours. Having his brother, David, here with him, working security in the parking lot, too, might make the time pass a little quicker, but it didn’t do a damn thing about the weather. If winter wasn’t here yet, it was at least close enough to count. Maybe later he would duck inside, get out of the chill, and check out some of the show. Two of the guys from Pantera were in a new band that was headlining tonight and—wait.

Christ. Now the red Grand Am was parked by Alrosa’s sign, which, besides marking the club’s location off Sinclair Road, also happened to be a no-parking zone. Dammit. What did he want, valet parking? Mitch waved the driver away: “Hey, can’t park there either.” The beefy guy at the wheel nodded and—again—eased out of his illegal space without putting up a fight.

Maybe it was going to be one of those nights, a trying shift that found Mitch having to practically hold everyone’s hand like a kindergarten teacher. Or maybe not. Maybe it would be a boring night, the kind you hope for when you work security. Whatever. It was cold and getting colder. Yeah, he’d duck inside for a bit later, just inside the door. At least he’d be out of the wind. Mitch noticed the Grand Am’s misguided owner was heading his way. Looked like he ended up parking across the street. Why couldn’t he have just done that in the first place?

AARON BARNES was the last guy left on the tour bus tonight, which wasn’t unusual. The Abbott brothers, Darrell and Vinnie Paul, hall-of-fame hell-raisers for more than two decades, liked to be out among the fans, buying shots and posing for photos. Barnes had been with them almost the entire time. The only thing the Abbotts, and Darrell in particular, liked better than having a good time was making sure everyone else had a good time, too—whether they wanted to or not.

It was a few minutes after 10 P.M., and the show was about to start. Then there would be an after-party, because there was always an after-party, and Barnes wouldn’t be alone again until he hit the sack, whenever that happened. Definitely wouldn’t be for hours.

There wasn’t much time to enjoy this rare moment of solitude, but no one really got into the music business for that anyway. It was time to go to work; Barnes, the band’s sound engineer, was needed inside. He stepped off the bus, locking the door behind him, and turned into the face of a muscle-bound man in a Columbus Blue Jackets jersey with a hooded sweatshirt underneath. He was bald, or close to it anyway, and anxious about something.

The Columbus Blue Jackets fan wanted to know if the Abbotts were still on the bus, or if they’d already made their way inside the club. Barnes wasn’t surprised by the question. People always wanted to hang out with the brothers, before and after the show, and they were rarely turned away. That wasn’t exactly standard operating procedure with most bands, but it was in the Abbott camp. Barnes told him the brothers were already backstage, preparing for the night’s gig. He shrugged off the missed opportunity, a losing lottery ticket bought with a dollar he found in the street.

LIKE MOST rock-show audiences, the crowd that night was acting as a human motion detector. Any hint of action onstage brought forth a chorus of whoooos and/or chants of the band’s name, each syllable separated by an exclamation point: Da! Mage! Plan! Even though it was only tour manager Chris Paluska arranging water bottles on the drum riser, or security chief Jeffrey “Mayhem” Thompson crossing from one side to the other to set up the band’s ever-present video camera.

“If you do get carried away down there, make sure there’s no fists swinging or kicking or anything like that” began an announcement over the club’s PA system. “It will bother our security. We want you to have a good time. There is no wall of death in this club.”

MITCH CARPENTER was standing just inside Alrosa’s north entrance. Damageplan, tonight’s headliner, was about to start its set. Another couple of hours and he could go home.

Something caught Carpenter’s eye, over by the privacy fence bordering the club’s outdoor patio. It was the guy from the parking lot, the one who couldn’t figure out where to park his damned Grand Am. What was he up to now? He wasn’t trying to . . .

“VAN HALEN?” Vinnie Paul Abbott asked. It was a question rooted in the shorthand favored by brothers, bandmates, and best friends. Darrell and Vinnie could check all three boxes on that list. To him and Darrell, those two words meant, “Let it all hang out there tonight.” Or, more to the point, and in their vernacular, “Rock and fucking roll.”

Darrell stopped warming up his hands. “Van-fuckin’-Halen,” he said, slapping his brother’s big hand, the engine that had been driving their shared career since they were teenagers. It wasn’t a question that needed to be asked (or answered), but it was their ritual. The Abbotts hadn’t played Alrosa Villa in years, not since their previous band, Pantera, was getting off the ground as a national touring act. They’d been playing—and usually filling—arenas since then.

But Damageplan wasn’t Pantera, not yet at least, and so it was back to the clubs. Their careers, like so many careers in the music business, had come full circle. The Abbotts didn’t seem to mind—“The highs and lows of rock and roll,” as Darrell often said. After a few years stuck at home while Pantera messily dissolved, they were happy to even have a band again, happy to be out on the road, happy to be playing onstage.

The set was about to begin. Everything was ready to go. A couple of dozen red Solo cups were lined up on a table just offstage. Their role in the show had been a highlight of Darrell’s act for years now. He’d fill the cups with beer and then toss them to the crowd. The Abbott brothers might have been downsized into smaller venues, but they still approached every gig like they were playing in an arena. That’s how they did it on the way up, and that’s how they’d do it now.

PENNY REED yelled, “Fugitive! Fugitive!” when the husky guy in the Columbus Blue Jackets jersey grabbed the top of the fence at the edge of the patio and started to pull himself over the top. She wasn’t necessarily trying to alert Alrosa’s security staff to the presence of the intruder. Just heckling the stocky kid awkwardly trying to sneak into the gig, having some fun with her husband, Jimmy, and her brother-in-law, Andrew, before the band started playing. So someone was trying to get into the show for free. Guys like that never got away with it.

As a general rule, no one ever stops people from hopping over fences at concerts. This time was no different. A few of the paying customers out on the patio encouraged him. Some even helped him make it over the fence. Still, it didn’t appear as though he was going to get away with it. One of the club’s bouncers was already on the patio, heading toward him. The warm-up act, such as it was, was coming to an end.

The scofflaw was undaunted—and quicker than he looked. “What’s up?” he said as he darted past the bouncer and into the concert-ready darkness of Alrosa Villa.

MITCH CARPENTER wasn’t bothered by the fact that the fence-hopper was running toward the stage as much as he was that the dude hadn’t paid. He couldn’t have known what was about to happen.

Carpenter hustled after the guy, this thorn in his paw all night, yelling for him to stop. The guy didn’t even turn around, because even if Carpenter’s words would have caused him to stop, there was absolutely no way they were audible. The band had already started, and like most groups that played Alrosa Villa, they were loud.

Mitch had better luck with Ron Jenkins, one of the club’s bouncers. He quickly explained the situation as best he could, but Ron could only understand half of it. Mitch was the one saying it and he couldn’t make out much more. It was like a foreign film no one had bothered to subtitle.

Ron picked up the gist, at least, since he picked up the chase, following the guy as he ran toward the left side of the stage. Mitch figured Ron would have some help if the guy made it all the way up front. Beyond Alrosa Villa’s own security staff positioned at the foot of the stage, the band had brought its own bodyguard along, a beast of a guy they called, appropriately, Mayhem.

Yes, he would be back in his Grand Am soon enough, illegally parking somewhere else on someone else’s watch. If they were lucky, and if he was smart, this guy, not exactly the best representative of the Columbus Blue Jackets, would bail out on whatever it was he had planned to do and just keep on running through the back door.

TWENTY-FOUR years to the day from when John Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of his New York City apartment building, Nathan Gale, a six-foot-five, 268-pound former U.S. Marine and semipro football lineman, emerged from behind a seven-foot-high stack of amplifiers on the left side of Alrosa Villa’s stage. Damageplan was less than halfway through its first song of the night, “Breathing New Life.” Hardly anyone noticed him, and those who did probably thought he was just a thrill seeker looking for a little extra excitement to add to his concert-going experience. If they were frightened, it was only because they weren’t looking forward to catching someone that size once he toppled like a felled oak tree off the stage and onto their heads.

Gale jogged past the bass player, Bob Kakaha, and past the singer, Pat Lachman, moving with the aimless lope of a typical stage diver. He slowed briefly as he made his way past Vinnie Paul and his drum kit. His hands weren’t in his pockets anymore.

Walking with purpose now, arms in front of him, Gale didn’t stop until he reached the other side of the stage, where Darrell Abbott stood, crouched over his guitar, enraptured, as always, by the power of the sounds he made with it.

Mayhem was a few feet behind Gale, too close to give up, too far away to make a difference. He might as well not have been there at all. It would have been better for him if he hadn’t been.

WHEN DARRELL Abbott was murdered onstage at Alrosa Villa on December 8, 2004, it was the lead story on every news channel and above the fold in every newspaper. But before that moment, Darrell was more-or-less unknown outside the hard rock/heavy metal community.

So when David Draiman of Disturbed called the murder “the 9/11 of heavy metal” in the aftermath, some might have been taken aback by the comparison. To those who knew Darrell, or knew of him, however, the parallel was obvious. It was a shocking and unprovoked attack on a symbol of everything they stood for. Both a fan favorite and a fan himself, Darrell had something in common with everyone in all corners of the heavy metal universe, from the most insignificant specks of cosmic debris to the brightest suns. People were drawn to him, even those Darrell never could have imagined. He died much too young, but by then, he had already lived out an existence far beyond his boyhood, head-banging dreams.

At his funeral less than a week later in his hometown of Arlington, Texas, Eddie Van Halen, one of Darrell’s heroes since before he could even play the guitar, told a story. Not long before the murder, it was announced that a limited-run series of guitars decorated with Van Halen’s signature tape-striping would be issued. To sweeten the pot, Van Halen would personally customize the instruments; each would be sold with a certificate of authenticity and a photo of the guitarist performing the task. When Darrell heard the news, he called Van Halen, trying to buy one before they went on sale. Van Halen told him no—he’d give Darrell a guitar the next time they were together and would tape-stripe it right in front of him.

Van Halen told the assembled that he never got a chance to make good on that offer. Then he pulled out his famous black-and-yellow-striped guitar—Darrell’s favorite, the one that appeared on the back cover of Van Halen II. He put it in Darrell’s casket so it could be buried with him.

“When Eddie put the black-and-yellow guitar in the casket with Darrell, I remember thinking, You know what? If back in the old days, when we first started, if you would have told Darrell that, when you die, Van Halen is going to put that guitar in your casket, Darrell would have said, ‘Kill me now,’” says Terry Glaze. He was an original member of Pantera, singing on the group’s first three albums.

That was Darrell—at the beginning and at the end. He became enough of a guitar hero to be respected by arguably the biggest guitar hero of them all, and yet he remained a fifteen-year-old kid inside. He was still awed by the power of rock and roll, still enthralled by the entire experience, whether he was onstage with his Dean ML in hand or backstage with one of his customary “black tooth grins” (a double shot of whiskey with a splash of Coke) instead.

That’s why, while most people would say they’d prefer to die doing what they loved, it’s doubtful anyone meant that more than Darrell Lance Abbott. His death was a tragedy. It would have been even more tragic if it hadn’t happened where it did, when it did.

But doing what he loved wasn’t the reason Darrell’s death resonated so intensely with so many people. It wasn’t the only reason, at any rate. When I covered his public memorial service at the Arlington Convention Center for Spin, everyone I met that night had a story. Not just about their favorite Pantera concert—they were far more personal than that. Everyone, it seemed, had shared a joke with Darrell, done a shot with him, something.