Ex-PANTERA Drummer VINNIE PAUL: REX BROWN Got The Biggest Free Ride Of Anyone

Ex-PANTERA drummer Vinnie Paul recently gave a lengthy interview to KNAC.com about the break-up of his previous group and the formation of DAMAGAPLAN. What follows are some of the highlights of that discussion:

KNAC.COM: There was an incident that wasn't very widely reported that concerned you and Dimebag at Ozzfest a couple of years ago in Dallas. Rumor had it that [former PANTERA singer] Phil [Anselmo] instructed the head of his security, a guy named Big Val, to escort both of you out.

Vinnie Paul: "We never got escorted out. Dallas is our hometown, and obviously Big Val worked for us in the past, but we had a falling out with him and hadn't really spoken to him. The truth of the matter is — I’ll tell you exactly what happened — I was going to the front of the house to watch Ozzy. I hadn't seen Big Val all day long or anything. I was walking along, and I had my girlfriend with me at the time, and I saw him and went to wave at him — then the dude just leveled me with one shove. I was there on my ass in front of 20,000 people walking out to see Ozzy. He just kept going, you know. My security guard at the time found out about it, and him and Val exchanged words. It never really went any further than that. I let it go. It's no big deal. I don't harbor any grudges or any hard feelings towards the dude or anything."

KNAC.COM: How weird was it to have some guy [Phil] that you see and work with every single day all of a sudden no longer want contact with you? So much so in fact that you have to go through six or seven people just to try to get a hold of him? Was it just like a divorce?

Vinnie Paul: "Of course it is. We were four people who were married to each other for close to twenty years. For the communication level to go to zero for no reason and for everything to go from 'us against them' just didn't make any sense. Still to this day, if people want to know why PANTERA broke up….there is no real reason. There wasn't one big argument. There wasn't somebody fucking somebody else's girl — there was nothing like that. We played our last show in Tokyo, Japan and we killed. Everybody high fived and said, 'We'll see each other in six or eight months.' The next thing you know, I'm getting a phone call that Phil has quit the band and he's doing DOWN now. This was the start of it all. Like I said, there was a phone call from [ex-PANTERA bassist] Rex [Brown] that he made to Dime one night completely lambasting everything I did for PANTERA, everything Dime did for PANTERA and everything we did as a band. Where the fuck did this come from? He got the biggest free ride of anyone in this motherfucker."

KNAC.COM: Do you think [Phil] finds it easier to work with bands that aren’t comprised of equals? It's pretty obvious that in these other groups that he is the undisputed focal point and probably doesn't have to justify very much.

Vinnie Paul: "Without a doubt, he tells every one of them dudes exactly where to shit and what to do and how to do it. Without a doubt, every one of them would lick his balls until it felt nice and good to 'em. There you go, and that's the fuckin' truth. That's not the way it worked in PANTERA. Everybody had their say, and we all fought for what we thought was the right thing for the band. That's why it had the chemistry that it had."

KNAC.COM: Does the creativity suffer the majority of time when an artist limits the amount of collaboration in a given project?

Vinnie Paul: "There's plenty of solo artists out there, and not very many of them have the same type of success they had when they were in a band. Being in a band is just so much more than any one person could bring to the table. It's more than just one person's vision."

Vinnie Paul's final statement to KNAC.com: "I'd like to say this to anybody who is going to print excerpts of this interview, be it Blabbermouth or whoever: print what the damn thing is about and not just the one or two lines that go 'so and so said this or so and so said that.' Print a little bit more than just the punch line, so people know what’s going on and not just 'Vinnie Paul Talkin' Shit About So and So'."

Vinnie Paul's **ENTIRE** interview with KNAC.com is available for your reading enjoyment at this location.

(Thanks: www.VINNIEandDIME.com)