Photographing Pantera’s Career was a Headbanger’s Ball
How a heavy metal fan in Texas became a real rock & roll photographer
Words and Images by Joe Giron
It was the spring of 1985. I walked into the Fort Worth Star-Telegram photo department for my 2:00 to 11:00 pm shift and flipped through my assignments. Of the three to four I’d been given, it was the last and latest one that intrigued me the most.
I was to go to a rock concert at the Bronco Bowl, a 3,500-seat venue in Dallas, with music writer Roger Kaye, who would be covering a local band trying to break through on a national level. After developing a strong regional following through relentless club touring and the release of two, self-financed albums on their own Metal Magic label, Pantera seemed poised for breakthrough success. The assignment was simple: meet the members of the band backstage, get some fly-on-the-wall shots of them getting ready for the show, and then shoot them performing on stage.
I was no stranger to Pantera and their musical abilities. By chance I had seen them perform three years earlier, in November of 1982, when, in my final quarter at Ohio University (where I was pursuing a degree in photojournalism), I was invited to interview for a staff photographer’s position at the Star-Telegram. During my tour of the newsroom, I ran into a features writer from The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida, where I interned the summer of 1981. After some small talk, she invited me to join her for dinner that night. We ended up at the Aragon Danceland, a club in Fort Worth, where, she said, there was a really good band playing. What immediately struck me about Pantera that night was the quality of their showmanship and how tight they performed as a band. They were covering songs by KISS, Judas Priest, and Van Halen — and, to my ear, they were besting the original versions.
I had moved to Fort Worth in January of 1983, after taking the staff photographer position at the Star-Telegram. My love of hard rock and heavy metal frequently led me to seek out and attend rock shows at various clubs around the city. Eventually, during the summer of that year, I stumbled into a club called the Roxz, where Pantera had been hired as the house band.
They played four sets a night — three filled with cover tunes and one set of their own original material. It wasn’t until midway through that summer that it hit me: this was the same band I had seen on the evening of my job interview nearly a year earlier. As a live band, Pantera was TIGHT. They could improvise at the drop of a dime and they already seemed arena ready. Over the course of the next year and a half, I fell into the habit of going to see them perform at various clubs in the Metroplex, such as The Roxz, Savvy’s, and Matleys. Then the Star Telegram assignment happened and, from that day forward, my life would become inextricably entwined with the lives of the members of Pantera: Darrell Abbott, Vinnie Paul Abbott, Rex Brown and, later, Phil Anselmo.
Before I started shooting the band backstage that night, I handed my business card to Jerry Abbott, the band’s manager and Vinnie and Darrell’s father. A few days after the article appeared in the newspaper, Jerry called to say that the band thought the photos from the shoot were the best ever taken of the group and he asked if I might come to photograph them at some future shows. I took him up on the offer and began photographing the band at various venues around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I also traveled with them to a couple of out of town shows in Shreveport, LA, and Muenster, TX. The more time I spent hanging around the band, the closer we became and the more they let me into their inner circle. In the summer of 1985, they invited me to Pantego Sound (Jerry Abbott’s studio, where they had recorded their first two albums) to do a band portrait shoot for their upcoming release, I Am the Night.
In October 1985, I visited London, England for the first time and pitched Pantera to some of the music magazines there. Metal Forces, a fanzine that had reviewed the band’s first two albums, agreed to publish a cover story using my photos from the album shoot. This was the first cover I ever got and it was professionally satisfying that it was for a music magazine. I couldn’t help but think back to my high school days, poring over the images in magazines like Circus, Creem, and Rock Scene and dreaming of one day photographing rock bands like the pros. It was an exciting time for all of us (I believe this also was the band’s first magazine cover). We were reaching new heights in our respective professions and helping each other get there. The band was ecstatic about the cover and the article generated some much-deserved buzz and positive press in the U.K., where metal and hard rock bands are taken more seriously.
1986 was my last year in Texas. Although my professional and personal relationship with the band was flourishing, my job at the paper was becoming stale and I was eager for a new challenge. In November, I took a job at the Tacoma, WA, News Tribune and relocated to the Seattle area. It was difficult leaving my friends, both at the newspaper and in Pantera, but it was necessary.
As the band continued to gig regionally, I flew back to Dallas every chance I got to hang out with the band or join them on a road trip. I had no idea then, that our journey together would span two decades, five albums, and three world tours.
In July of 1992 the band made their first trek to Japan for a headlining tour. There were dates in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Every show sold out and the fans were amazing. Traditionally, Japanese fans stay in their seats and show their appreciation by clapping, but Pantera’s infectious “power” metal had the crowds on their feet at every show.
To liven up the backstage hours before the band hit the stage, we did a bunch of portrait sessions using Japanese props and signage.
We also discovered Kirin and Asahi beer on this trip. The best part was that they sold small “pony” kegs in vending machines on the street. Any time we ventured out of our hotel, we’d load up to bring back to our rooms. One night, we were riding back to our hotel in a cab when we spied a beer vending machine at an intersection and attempted to hop out of the cab. Our cabbie thought we were skipping out on the fare and freaked, but we somehow convinced him to pull over so we could stock up.
The Japanese thrash metal band Outrage opened for the tour. They introduced us to the sake bomb. For this deadly concoction you drop a shot of warm sake into a glass of beer and chug it down. These drinks made for some wild nights after each show.
A few dates into the tour, we met up with the Outrage guys for a late night meal. When we arrived they were already seated. A traditional Japanese table is low to the ground. You sit on the floor and it is customary to remove your shoes. The moment Dimebag walked into the restaurant, he made a beeline to where the members of Outrage were sitting and did a stage dive onto the table, shoes and all. It was highly amusing to watch the prim and proper hostesses chasing after Dime in horror at this egregious violation of Japanese tradition.
“I think that the uniqueness of our brotherhood was that we had a common goal. We never had to compete with each other. It was a magic chemistry that we had; we could just bleed off each other and it went back and forth, and it created some pretty tremendous music.” — Vinnie Paul Abbott
Excerpted from A Vulgar Display of Pantera. Photography by Joe Giron. Published by Lesser Gods Books. Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine retailers.
