REX BROWN On PANTERA's Success: 'We Just Came In At A Time When People Needed Us'

Jack Antonio conducted an interview with former PANTERA/DOWN and current KILL DEVIL HILL bassist Rex Brown on the February 12 episode of "Do You Know Jack?" radio show. You can now listen to the chat using the Mixcloud player below.

Speaking about PANTERA's commercial success following the release of the band's 1990 major-label debut, "Cowboys From Hell", Brown said: "Everything was kind of changing at that point. All the hair bands and all that kind of stuff. Everybody was kind of stale. If you think about just songs in general, there were some pretty good songs that the look kind of took away from all that, 'cause you got lumped in with all that kind of crap. I'm not saying we did. But we just came around at a time that we saw a crack and we slipped through it, and we put a lot of hard work and a lot of touring [into it]."

He continued: "Those first two records ['Cowboys From Hell' and 1992's 'Vulgar Display Of Power'], we toured nonstop. We had 32 days off on the 'Cowboys From Hell' tour, and that was the total time period between 18 months on, and then directly back in the studio."

Brown added: "We just came in at a time when people needed us. We would stay out in the parking lots until six in the morning signing autographs. I think that really made a big, huge difference between us and other bands that were just, you know, 'go on the bus and bye.' You know, you meet one guy, and he goes, 'Man, those guys were cool.' And he tells another friend, and it gets around like that.

"We were the biggest underground band of the '90s. We didn't have a lot of MTV [support], we didn't have any radio play. Now you go to any sporting event and hear one of our songs at a football game, which is great, but they wouldn't touch it back then. So we just kind of [flew] by the seat of our pants and kind of D.I.Y., and just toured our butts off and worked really, really hard."

Late PANTERA guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott's longtime girlfriend Rita Haney in 2011 called on ex-PANTERA drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott and singer Philip Anselmo to settle their differences in honor of Dimebag, who was shot and killed by a crazed gunman while performing with DAMAGEPLAN at a Columbus, Ohio rock club in December 2004.

Vinnie, who is Dimebag's brother, and Anselmo have not spoken since PANTERA split in 2003. But the relationship got even more acrimonious when Vinnie indirectly blamed Philip for Dimebag's death, suggesting that some remarks the vocalist had made about Dimebag in print just weeks earlier might have incited Dimebag's killer.