TESTAMENT Guitarist Remembers DEBBIE ABONO

TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick has issued the following statement regarding the passing of Debbie Abono, a well-respected and much-loved manager and promotional machine behind some of San Francisco Bay Area's strongest metal bands (POSSESSED, FORBIDDEN, EXODUS, VIO-LENCE, SKINLAB):

"In the mid-1980s, when most folks over forty were afraid of metal, there was Debbie Abono, a kind, sophisticated woman in her 50s, She saw right through the pentagrams, upside-down crosses, leather and spikes and recognized that some kind souls lay underneath the anger reflected by this imagery. She opened her door, her heart and her ears to the much-younger, often-misunderstood group of metalheads and become manager to some of the heaviest bands. By doing so, she helped helped us realize that older people weren't so bad either. The fact that she passed on the same day as the great Ronnie James Dio is almost not a surprise."

Video footage of TESTAMENT dedicating the song "Alone In The Dark" to Debbie Abono during the band's May 16, 2010 performance at Atak in Enschede, The Netherlands can be viewed below. (Watch beginning around 4:30 mark.)

Abono passed away on Sunday (May 16) at approximately 9:59 a.m. PST after a battle with cancer. She was 80 years old.

According to David Konow, author of the "Bang Your Head: The Rise And Fall Of Heavy Metal", Debbie Abono was in her mid-fifties when she began to manage a band named POSSESSED. Abono started taking her daughters to MOTÖRHEAD shows, where the members of POSSESSED first asked her to manage the band. "There's nothing to it," they told her. "All you gotta do is get us shows." Abono agreed and even allowed them to practice at her house.

POSSESSED's association with Debbie Abono would be a "first" for both sides: Abono would be the band's first manager, and POSSESSED were Abono's first managed band. Abono had no previous connection to heavy metal music other than as a concert designated driver for her daughters, one of whom was a girlfriend of guitarist Larry LaLonde. Due to generation gap, Abono also had limited awareness of the sometimes blasphemous themes of heavy metal, and was allegedly offended upon reading the lyric sheet of "Seven Churches". Nevertheless, she agreed to manage and represent POSSESSED as long as bassist/vocalist Jeff Becerra and LaLonde finished high school commitments. Although the group's relationship amongst themselves and their first manager would reach points of discord and eventual termination, Abono would go on to manage additional bands in the Bay Area metal scene like EXODUS, VIO-LENCE and FORBIDDEN EVIL (pre-FORBIDDEN),as well as death metal bands like Chicago's BROKEN HOPE and Florida's CYNIC and OBITUARY.