SEBASTIAN BACH (ex-SKID ROW) remembers guitar legend "Dimebag" Darrell (PANTERA, DAMAGEPLAN) in a new commentary that can be found at Classicrockmagazine.com:

"I first heard about Dimebag when I was in a band called MADAM X, touring the southern States. I was about 16 years old and we were in Fort Worth. I was getting dressed for the show and I remember everyone being really excited that Dimebag had come down to check us out. This is back when Terry Date was singing for the band. And then when we were going out for the Slave To The Grind tour, headlining arenas, we wanted the heaviest, coolest band out there to support us. And I was at Scotti Hill’s house and we were writing the song 'Mudkicker' and he pulls out this Pantera CD and sticks it on. I’d never heard anything like it. It was like ZZ TOP meets SLAYER. So PANTERA were the band we took.

Two months later they released A Vulgar Display Of Power and it debuted at #44. Whenever Dimebag came in our dressing room he refused to call me Sebastian, only Bierk, cos that’s my real name. He was like, ‘Bierk, I want this and this on our rider.' He was just joking and we were all really proud to have him there. Pantera were a great opening act. Dude, you’d better rock with those motherfuckers on before you every night!

Dimebag loved music. He loved drinking too, but he wasn’t always ripped. His name was Dimebag but I never really saw him smoke that much pot. I think he did when he was younger. I remember we got a call once on the tour bus and were told not to come to the hotel because we’d been kicked out. Dimebag was on acid and he’d taken a knife to all the couches in the front lobby! He could get super fucking crazy.

As a musician he was like Eddie Van Halen was in the late '70s. He reinvented heavy metal guitar. He got credit in the metal world. But when he died it pissed me off that it wasn’t a main story. I had to play the next night in Madrid in Spain. And we didn’t know if there was some terrorist plot to kill all the rock stars. It was so sad, though. He went too young, but he left us with that REBEL MEETS REBEL album which is so cool. Incredible."