Last year, Headbangers Ball Blog received a call from writer Zac Crain requesting an interview about the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott. Since we had followed Pantera for nearly their entire career and interviewed Dime and his brother drummer Vinnie Paul on numerous occasions, we happily set up an appointment to talk with Crain.
However, not long after, we received a mass email from Vinnie's publicist stating that the family of Dimebag didn't endorse the book and wanted members of the media to deny interview requests from Crain.
Although we were curious, we made no inquiries and soon forgot about the whole thing. Then, late last week we received another mass email badmouthing Crain and his book "Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott," which is scheduled for release on November 5.
"The family of the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott has not authorized nor cooperated with Zac Crain on his upcoming book on Dimebag," said the statement. "In addition, Mr. Crain did not know Dimebag personally."
Judging by the rest of the letter, it seems like Crain's requests for cooperation from Dime's family were denied primarily because of a scathing review he wrote of Pantera's "The Great Southern Trendkill" when he was music editor of the Dallas Observer. The review included the lines, "The Cowboys from Hell should stick to running low-class strip joints instead of trying to record albums that would be played in them. Fortunately, it looks like they've decided to do just that. Oh, except for that horrendous Dallas Stars theme song. But, hey, whatever keeps them from working on new material in the studio. And, yes, I'm fully aware that Vinnie Paul could kick the s--t out of me."
In response to the heat being generated by the Abott family, Crain contacted Blabbermouth.net to tell his side of the story.
"The idea for the book wasn't to cash in on a tragedy, but to do what I could to let people outside of the metal/hard rock community know about him," Crain said. I'm sure, outside of that world, the first that people ever heard of him was on CNN. It didn't seem right to let some moron with a gun have the last word."
Crain added that the review of "Great Southern Trendkill" was the only negative review he wrote and that he's actually a Pantera fan, but still doesn't like that album. "I sincerely regret throwing The Clubhouse (Vinnie's strip club) under the bus," he joked "That place is awesome — specifically Dr. Rock — and I even wrote a cover story that was, in part, dedicated to it."
Then Crain got serious and defended his decision to write about book about the life and death of Dimebag. "Darrell had a great story to tell, and I spent a year doing my best to tell it," he said. "I did everything I could to involve Vinnie and Rita [Dimebag's longtime girlfriend]. They didn't want to participate, and I understand. No hard feelings on my end (as if there could be)."
Crain added that he plans to donate a percentage of profits from the book to the Dimebag Tribute Fund. "I told Vinnie that at the beginning," he said. "And I'm a man of my word, whether he (or anyone) believes that or not,"
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