In a new interview with Scott’s Bass Lessons, Rex Brown reflected on PANTERA’s early years, after he joined the band in May 1982 as the group’s bassist, replacing Tommy D. Bradford and adopting the alias Rex Rocker. Brown was a classmate of, and played in the high school jazz band with, drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, and guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott (then known as Diamond Darrell).”The [Abbott] brothers were playing more LOVERBOY, 1981, ’82 kind of stuff,” Rex said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET),”[with] a little bit of VAN HALEN thrown in — a lot of VAN HALEN, a lot of DEF LEPPARD thrown in — but the pop sense was still there. We were a popular band. We were just trying to write good songs within that sense, and that’s hard to do, man. So about ’84, by the time [METALLICA’s] ‘Ride The Lightning’ came out is when it all changed — this heavy riffing, that’s when it all changed. Because we were so young, we kept that natural progression. You’ve got a band that’s tight; we can all play together really good. [We] had a different singer the first three records and then found this crazy dude down in New Orleans named Philip Anselmo. He wasn’t that crazy; I’m just saying. He was different because he wasn’t from the same neighborhood. Everybody in this band, we basically all lived not five miles apart from each other in Texas.”Brown continued: “The coolest thing about all of this is that I played in a jazz band from the seventh to the 12th grade. And I used to be able to sight read really, really good. And Vinnie and I knew each other from we were all in junior high. We were in one of the top lab bands for the high school level in North Texas. And they had some really good teachers. And so that’s where Vinnie and I were playing for that lab band. And his dad just happened to be an engineer at the only studio for miles in Texas. I think there might have been one other one. That’s kind of crazy for the late ’70s. But everything changed around that period. And he was a really good engineer, but it was more country. He wasn’t ready for this rock from his kids. And so I think that’s where we got a little angst and rebellion from in those early years, because it was fighting with the old man, just to try to get some sounds down there. He was not used to [recording that kind of music].”Rex added: “They were the first kids with a P.A. in town. But once I got in the band, they told me, ‘Well, you can’t smoke and you can’t drink.’ And so I showed up at the first rehearsal with a six pack of Löwenbräu and a cigarette in my mouth… It was fun. We were 17, 18 years old, and we wanted to make a name for ourselves. And to make a name for yourself, you have to get out there and practice, practice, practice and learn other people’s songs. My sister was 17 years older than I was, and I had all this great material to pull from — all the way from THE [ROLLING] STONES and THE BEATLES. I mean, any of THE BEATLES stuff through the ’60s, it was all over. So I would just dig through those records, man, and learn how to play it. I was a guitar player first before I started playing bass. They wanted me to play the guitar in the lab band… And I was also wanting to be on the drum line ’cause of the rudiments and all that kind of stuff… I took nothing but music classes my whole seventh through 12th grade. It was all music.”Rex confirmed that he and his PANTERA bandmates were turned down 28 times by every major label on the face of the Earth before they were picked up by Atco Records prior to the release of “Cowboys From Hell” in 1990.”It was a lot hardship — it really was,” Rex recalled. “I think that things happen for reasons, being at the right place at the right time, and having the perseverance to go ahead and see that for what it is, but keep… God, we were writing this incredible stuff, and the chemistry was just getting better and better. By the time we were 25 years old, we had a major label record deal.”We pretty [knew] that we were gonna do this, but how were we gonna do it?” he added. “So we started selling all of our cassettes at the shows. We sold 46,000 copies out of the backseat of our car. And that’s when somebody goes, ‘Well, of course, we’d rather make the money than you guys.’ But once you got your foot in the door, it wasn’t time to go, ‘Phew, we’re rock stars.’ It was time to get to work. And that was hitting every radio station… But we still had the melodic sense that was left over from the ’80s in our music. And then we incorporated stuff like that. I mean, even a song like ‘Fucking Hostile’. You take that song — that’s a pop song. It became popular. Yeah, it did —even though it wasn’t on the radio. Nobody would play it. Nobody had the balls back then to do it. Philip and I still carry that with us. Absolutely.”PANTERA and AMON AMARTH will embark on a U.S. amphitheater tour this summer. Produced by Live Nation, the journey will commence on July 15 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania and wind its way through over two dozen cities, coming to a close on September 13 in West Palm Beach, Florida.Featuring classic members Anselmo and Brown, alongside guitarist Zakk Wylde and drummer Charlie Benante, PANTERA’s latest stretch of live dates continues the celebration of the lives of late founding members, Vinnie Paul and Dimebag. The tour follows PANTERA’s spring run of stadium shows with METALLICA and SUICIDAL TENDENCIES as well as a very special U.K. performance as part of BLACK SABBATH’s and Ozzy Osbourne’s historic final show alongside METALLICA, SLAYER, GOJIRA, HALESTORM, ALICE IN CHAINS, LAMB OF GOD, ANTHRAX, MASTODON and more.Up until his passing in June 2018, Vinnie remained on non-speaking terms with Anselmo, whom the drummer indirectly blamed for Dimebag’s death.Vinnie Paul and Dimebag co-founded PANTERA. On December 8, 2004, while performing with DAMAGEPLAN at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, Dimebag was shot and killed onstage by a troubled schizophrenic who believed that the members of PANTERA were stealing his thoughts.Vinnie, who was Dimebag’s brother, and Anselmo had not spoken since PANTERA split in 2003. But the relationship got even more acrimonious when Vinnie suggested that some remarks the vocalist had made about Dimebag in print just weeks earlier might have incited Dimebag’s killer.[embedded content]
