PHILIP ANSELMO Says Original PANTERA 'Behind The Music' Special 'Smeared' His Name

An updated version of VH1's "Behind The Music" documentary on PANTERA, "Behind The Music Remastered: Pantera", will premiere on VH1 Classic in the U.S. on Saturday, April 6 at 9:00 p.m. EST. The new version contains fresh interviews with those who also lost loved ones the night PANTERA guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott was murdered in Columbus, Ohio, as well as with PANTERA members Philip Anselmo (vocals) and Rex Brown (bass),and Dimebag's longtime girlfriend, Rita Haney.

The original "Behind The Music" episode on PANTERA had its premiere in May 2006. The program included interviews with the surviving members of PANTERA — Anselmo, Vinnie Paul Abbott (drums),and Brown — along with appearances by Guy Sykes (tour manager),Walter O'Brien (manager),Terry Date (producer),several members of PANTERA's/DAMAGEPLAN's crew, and Haney.

"Sorry for your fucked up, retarded, asinine program that smeared my name to the goddamn toilets of every house in America," Anselmo says about the original show in one of the newly filmed interview clips that is included in the "Remastered" version of the episode. "You motherfuckers didn't have to live with it, I did. I resent it — still resent it."

Philip claims that since PANTERA ended, he has become a totally reformed character.

"Believe me, I've taken a good, cold, long hard fucking stare in the mirror," he says. "I know who the fuck I am, I know the mistakes I've made. Therefore, I can move on."

Eight years after Dimebag's death, Rita and Philip found themselves unexpectedly face to face at a concert in California.

"I came out of the restroom, and when I looked up, I just didn't expect it was him," Rita tells the "Behind the Music" producers. "I go, 'I have one question. First, I just need to know why.' And, you know, he looked me right in the eye, and he said, 'I have no excuse. I was a junkie.' And for him to say that, you know, that's all any of us wanted to hear."

Rita may have forgiven Philip, but is there any chance of Vinnie doing so?

"Probably not," says Brown. "And I'd say 'probably' is not the word. Absolutely not. At this point."

"I don't think Vinnie and Phil will ever make up," says PANTERA manager Kimberly Zide Davis, who joined Concrete Management in 1994, and served as vice president of artist management until the organization ceased operations in 2003. "[Vinnie] not only lost his band, but he lost his brother. And I think he does blame Phil in some ways."

Philip is so determined to make it up to Vinnie that he has made him an extraordinary offer.

"Vince, if it takes… If it's just this wall of anger and you feel like you need to just beat me up, I'll let you," Anselmo says. "I'll let you just beat me up — as long as we can sit down after and talk."

He adds: "[Dimebag's] gonna be a fantastic memory in my heart 'till I hit the dirt, and when it comes to PANTERA and healing, all I can say is my door is wide fucking open. You can probably end right there."

In the November 2007 issue of Revolver magazine, Anselmo was asked about the song "Mourn" on the 2007 DOWN album "Over The Under", which was reportedly written about Dimebag. "That's a very hard, hard song for me to really… honestly, the song speaks for itself," Anselmo replied. "It's about feeling isolated from my family in Texas, feelings about the obvious… deep, deep, deep feelings every day. You know, I've been very quiet ever since the incident, but it's all good. Everyone else has aired their laundry, like on VH1. I'm sorry, I thought what VH1 did was awful. They glossed over everything PANTERA did to and for metal, and not once… I'm not realy sure how it was put, but there was a segue or something that described [Darrell's] killer [Nathan Gale] as 'what many feel was a disgruntled fan angry that PANTERA had broken up.' But not once did they go into the psychology of the killing, and how he was dishonorably discharged [from the Marines], that his mother bought him the gun for Christmas because he was depressed, how he had been kicked out of the same club a weekend before for acting strange. He was going to shoot whoever, and it happened to be one of my best friends, one of my brothers, and one of the most beautiful people…"

Guitar World magazine conducted an interview with Haney for its March 2008 issue, which contained a special section dedicated to Dimebag, the magazine's 2008 Hall Of Fame winner. When asked about her comment in the VH1 "Behind the Music" episode about PANTERA where she said that she told Anselmo that she would blow his face off if he showed up at Dimebag's memorial or funeral, Haney replied, "One thing that really bothers me is how they edited my interview for that show. They only used that one part from what I said our phone conversation was, and they took out important parts that explained what I meant. They left out the part where I mentioned how Rex [Brown, former PANTERA and current DOWN bassist] told me that they had to throw ice water on Phil just to sober him up enough to tell him that Darrell was dead. I thought it would be disrespectful for Phil to show up here in that shape on that drug. I got on the phone with Phil and asked him why he never bothered to call back all those times Darrell tried to reach him. He said, 'I'm so devastated.' I said, 'You're devastated? Your words murdered my boyfriend!' He said, 'You and I don't see eye to eye,' and I said, 'You're damn right we don't!' Then he said, 'Well, right things happen to right people.' I asked him to repeat that because I couldn't believe what I just heard and he did. It just blew me away that even then, at that moment, he would still try to throw something out there to take away his responsibility for his actions. That's when I told him that if he showed up I would blow his face off myself."

In "Remastered", VH1 Classic takes the best episodes from the award-winning "Behind The Music" series, condenses the original episode, and then updates the viewer on what the artist or band has been up to since the original show premiered.

Launched in May 2000, VH1 Classic is a 24-hour network that present videos, concerts and music specials all day long, featuring the best of rock, soul and pop artists from the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s, including THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, TINA TURNER, LED ZEPPELIN, MICHAEL JACKSON, THE WHO, STEVIE WONDER, THE POLICE, BON JOVI, POISON and many more.