Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler says that he implored Vinnie Paul not to reform Pantera without “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. Dimebag died in 2004, while Vinnie died last month.
While paying tribute to Vinnie during an interview on the Talk Is Jericho podcast, Adler discussed his feelings on a hypothetical Pantera “reunion,” saying that he spoke to Vinnie “at length about that. Not that my opinion mattered whatsoever, but I encouraged him repeatedly, ‘Please, don’t. It’s not right,'” he said.
“As much as I love Zakk, or whoever else might be able to do it, and I know the fans would want that, and I know there is this concept of, ‘Do it for the fans. Do it for the songs. Celebrate this,’ it’s celebrated by the fact that it’s over; it’s celebrated by the fact that we all remember it well with the appropriate pieces to the puzzle,” he continued.
Adler went on to discuss the key to Pantera’s success.
“There’s a chemistry you have as a band, and sometimes in my band, it can become tumultuous, it can become difficult, and sometimes those things, actually, are beneficial in ways that you push each other creatively and kind of get around the obstacles,” he said. “But in [Pantera’s] case, it was a positive chemistry… No, I don’t know the internals of how everything fell apart and how things went down, obviously — it didn’t go that way the whole time — but I really love the idea of it not being… It’s not that Vinnie said ‘no’; it’s that it wasn’t possible. Whatever other unit would be put together, it’s not capable of creating the chemistry necessary to put on the show that Vinnie and his brother did.”
Chris Jericho also remembered Vinnie: “I really feel like he and his brother kind of set the standard for what the good-guy model is. And sadly — I don’t obviously know everyone everywhere — I feel like he may have been the last good guy. In the way that we’re all self-conscious about what we do, and we’re tied up in our daily activities and worried about what it is we have going on, both Vinnie and Dime, in how I knew them, would go out of their way to make you feel comfortable, to be present outside of their own troubles or daily stuff. And it’s unheard of; I don’t know anyone like that. Vinnie had a way — and Dime did as well — of making a room of people, strangers even, feel like they were his best friend. And I’ve never met anyone like either of them.”
