DIMEBAG Book Author: 'I Place The Blame Squarely On The Shoulders Of The Killer'

Morley Seaver from antiMUSIC recently conducted an interview with Chris A., author of the upcoming book about the murder of PANTERA/DAMAGEPLAN guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, "A Vulgar Display Of Power: Courage And Carnage At The Alrosa Villa". A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

antiMUSIC: What prompted you to write about this book? If I understand right, this book is not necessarily a focus on or tribute to Dimebag but rather a historical recreation of the events that happened that night. Is that correct?

Chris A.: That's a pretty accurate assessment of it all. You know, it's been tagged the "Dimebag book" or the "Dimebag murder book," and, of course, I kinda expected that. It does of course cover that stuff but it's far more than that. What prompted me to write it…you know I remember the day that I heard that Dimebag was murdered and it was one of those times where…man, it was just kinda like a kick at the chest. I remember when I was stationed in England in the military, when John Lennon was murdered. And I kinda felt like I really felt the same kind of frustration at why would somebody kill a guy who's on a stage playing guitar entertaining people, and it's not like Dimebag Darrell was this divisive, arrogant idiot or anything. He was by all accounts a really, really nice guy. And so you know, for the next few months I kind of passively followed it in the media. And one of the first things that kinda jumped out at me was Dimebag Darrell and these three other people were murdered and I wasn't reading the names of the other three people. And I wasn't really reading much or hearing much about the circumstances by which they were killed. So I'm wondering, were these people just in the audiences or something and they got hit by stray bullets, what was the deal. Because they were just completely smothered by Dimebag's celebrity. And of course the media focused almost exclusively on either Darrell or the bad guy. And one of the things that really started pushing me towards thinking about maybe doing something with this was what I thought was a very ludicrous assertion of motive, that being, the guy was upset that PANTERA broke up. Well, there are a lot of reasons to go up and kill a bunch of people but I don't really consider that to be particularly viable even if you're talking about somebody who's perhaps got mental health issues. So I was really, really skeptical. I thought that was just far too, too generic. I mean it just didn't make sense. My background is, I've got a background in criminal justice, I've got a bachelors degree in criminal justice and a couple of master's degrees in some other stuff. So I started looking at it a little more analytically and tried to get a little deeper in it. So those two things, the fact that these three regular guys were killed and I didn't really know the circumstances behind that. Plus the very weak motive kinda got the wheels turning that perhaps…you know, I was confident that there was more to it than just PANTERA breaking up. So what really propelled me to move forward was I was doing an interview with Zakk Wylde in Columbus, oh, probably six, seven months after the murder. And we got to talking about Dimebag and he was really telling me, just these wonderful things about Dimebag, the guy not the guitar player, not the rock star. Just the guy. And that really is what convinced me to really…you know…I needed to find out more about this guy cuz I'd never seen PANTERA. I was certainly a PANTERA fan to an extent. I'm not...you know, I don't live breathe and survive on just PANTERA stuff, but I was very familiar with who he was and had good respect for his skills in the heavy metal genre. So I started putting together bits and pieces of stuff. And then when the criminal investigation was over, I said, okay, here we go. I need to grab a copy of it. So I did what I needed to do and started obtaining all the official documentation and at the same time watching the media and watching things on the web, because I was actually sure that somebody of merit would want to put something together about this and I saw nothing. So I'm like, okay, well maybe I can do it. So that's what really propelled me to do it man. The fact that I wanted to know more about these three guys who were killed and I didn't buy the motive.

antiMUSIC: The main question asked at the time was how did the gunman get the gun through security. What did you find out about that?

Chris A.: That's easy. That's real simple to answer. And this has been…when I started the book, I tried to…I'm not a journalist. I don't consider myself a journalist. I'm a writer and a historian. So I wanted to look at this as objectively as I possibly could. I had no real preconceived notions on anything. Because I found out pretty quickly that any that I had were wrong. What happened was, when Nathan Gale, that's the bad guy, when he arrived at the venue…the configuration of the entrance to the Alrosa Villa is you walk in a side door…that's the main entrance, and you go down a hallway, probably 10 feet, then you take a 90 degree right, and go about another seven feet. And that's where security is. You cannot see what actions are being taken by security from the outside of the venue. So he had no clue what was going on. He didn't know if there were metal detectors. He didn't know if there were strip searches. He had no idea. So consequently, he didn't go through that door. What he did was, there's a fenced-in patio with a six foot privacy fence around it, that patrons use to smoke. So if you're inside the venue you go out this patio door, and you hang out in the patio and you smoke your cigarette. He jumped over this fence and he got in through the patio door. And he was seen by this parking attendant. And the parking attendant ran in the venue and told some security guys and they actually pursued the guy. Now what you gotta bear in mind, now this is where a lot people get kinda stupid. Well I don't really want to say stupid, but they become unrealistic. Why didn't they stop it? First and foremost, the guy's six foot four, 265. The tickets were only $8. Now I don't know about you, I don't know how things work in Canada but if a security guy were to jump on and throw a guy down on the ground and pounce on him for trying to evade an $8 dollar ticket.. that would be a problem. That's a pretty big over-reaction. But the biggest contributing factor, is this is such an extreme event. Who in their right mind…? What security guy, what venue, what band would for a moment think that somebody is going to jump the fence, come in the building, make their way to stage and start shooting people? You know, it just doesn't add up. DAMAGEPLAN is currently trying to sue the venue and other people have alluded to, they've made comments critical of security, without really having a good grip on what really happened there, and the nuances that made it what it was. My thoughts on that are that, if you really, really look at what happened, this is one of those things that it's such an extremely rare event. I've looked for precedence for any type of entertainer who was literally murdered while performing on stage, and I never found one. I don't know of any precedent for this. Assigning any culpability, in my opinion, my research and look into this, I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the killer. I think to try to rationalize that somehow the venue, or the band, or some third part, had some role in it, is just unrealistic.

Read the entire interview at this location.