Ex-PANTERA Bassist Talks 20th-Anniversary Edition Of 'Cowboys From Hell'

James Zahn of Kik Axe Music recently conducted an interview with DOWN/ex-PANTERA bassist Rex Brown. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Kik Axe Music: There's a lot of listeners out there that aren't really aware that PANTERA existed in a different form pre-"Cowboys From Hell", and for many years it was kind of a grey area for you as a band — not really talking too much about it [Note: PANTERA has long-considered "Cowboys From Hell" the first true PANTERA record, as do most diehard fans]. What was the catalyst for the turning point you had as a band, to move beyond your early career and into the "groove metal" we've all come to know and love?

Brown: We'd been trying to do that for about two years before writing "Cowboys". Basically, we got Phil [Anselmo, vocals] in the band and we started writing material for the "Power Metal" record — which has never been released majorly in the States — but we toured on that in the Southwest region and were always trying to get heavier and heavier. At the time, that's where our influences were coming from. I think that Phil joined the band toward the end of '86, so that gave us more than two years before we did the demo for "Cowboys" and it was a natural progression. We got Phil in the band and he brought this more hardcore element, and Vinnie [Paul Abbott, drums] had a working studio alongside his old man for a long time, so even on those old PANTERA records he had a really firm idea of what they should sound like. So, when we did "Cowboys", those old demos aren't that far removed from Terry's [Date, producer] stuff even though you can tell the differences between the subtleties of doing it on your own and then re-doing it with a major label and having a lot more money to do it with.

Kik Axe Music: Listening to the demos myself, I noticed that the biggest differences seemed to be in the arrangements of the songs. "Cemetery Gates" is a big difference for example, with the into riff completely omitted from the early version.

Brown: Right. Dime ["Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, guitar] and I wrote that while Vinnie was going over something. I had this big orange pumpkin bass from Kramer that they had put out — it was acoustic — and Dime and I were just sitting in the back of the office one day during the recording of that [with Terry], and started jamming and thought it was pretty cool and we could just take it and make a little diddy out of it. That's what it turned out to be — the intro to "Cemetery Gates". We just went right in and recorded it and had it all planned out and the whole bit. It was pretty cool that in just downtime, just me and Dime with the acoustic guitars started coming up with that stuff. In fact, I play acoustic on the actual piece, and I play piano on that as well.

Kik Axe Music: This new 20th-anniversary set is very extensive, so it begs me to ask if you'll be putting together similar collections for the albums that came after "Cowboys From Hell".

Brown: Of course. "Vulgar Display Of Power" is next, I guess in about a year and a half. It came out in 1992, so we're not that far off. We're just gonna put these things back into stores so that they have some shelf life again. Steve Harris [IRON MAIDEN bassist] once said when someone asked why they kept re-releasing all of their stuff, that "it's the best thing to do to keep your music on shelves and get it restocked to keep yourself out there."

Read the entire interview from Kik Axe Music.