Conventional wisdom says that you should never meet your heroes. That might be true in most cases, but when Pantera had the opportunity to spend quality time on tour with their lifelong idols in Kiss the Texas juggernauts soon found out that they were two peas in a heavy metal pod.
As drummer Vinnie Paul told The Washington Times in 2015: “Pantera was the opening band on the Kiss reunion tour in 1997, with all the original members. We toured with them in South America. We did three nights in Mexico City, then we had a flight on my birthday, which is March 11, and we were on a flight from Mexico City to Santiago, Chile. Kiss was in first class, and we were in business class.
“Halfway through the flight, all four of the original members of Kiss came back to me and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in four-part harmony. They gave me a Kisstory book. I felt like a 14-year-old kid. I had tears coming out of my eyes.”
Vinnie Paul’s birthday flight is a story for the record books, but it’s a drop in the rock and roll bucket compared to his brother Dimebag Darrell’s lost weekend with his childhood hero, original Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley.
As the Spaceman told Loudwire: “I spent a weekend at his house and it was a pretty crazy weekend. I was talking to Rita [Haney, Dimebag’s wife] and Rita was telling me that me and Dimebag wrote a song that weekend but we were both so drunk I don’t remember it; but she has a cassette of it somewhere so we’re trying to retrieve that and maybe… who the hell knows if it’ll ever be released. Maybe I’ll finish it up.
“But yeah that was a pretty crazy weekend. He was a great guy; a lot of fun. We just had a ball that weekend. Unfortunately we were so drunk I don’t remember too much about it. I have to talk to Rita a little more.
“Now there’s where we got some hookers. Because who is it? I think Paul, Vinnie Paul, I think he’s got a strip club there where they live. Where is that, Atlanta? Or no, it’s in Texas, Dallas. So some hookers came over at the end of the weekend. So it got a little crazy.
“I got a blowjob. What do you wanna know? In front of Rita and Dimebag. They were watching. It was crazy. But I didn’t care because I was kinda loaded and so were they, so it was just like one big happy family. Can you imagine it?”
Years later, Frehley would be given the melancholic honor of speaking at Vinnie Paul’s funeral. As he told the Never Not Funny podcast (and reported by Blabbermouth.net): “In the church, I’m at the podium, and I spoke for about 10, 12 minutes. And then we get out to the cemetery, and he’s in a Kiss casket.”
“Vinnie Paul got buried in a Kiss casket, and I see my face on the casket, and it weirded me out,” he said. “But above and beyond that, his father said to me, ‘Would you say a few words by the casket?’ And I had nothing prepared. I don’t know where it came from. Somebody beamed it into my head.
“I came up with the line… Everybody was looking at me. I said, ‘I’m assuming everybody here has seen the movie The Wizard Of Oz. And I think nobody knew where I was going with that, but they all nodded. There was maybe a hundred and fifty people there, two hundred.
“And I said, ‘Well, remember the part at the end when they discovered the wizard was a fake and he was talking to the Tin Man. And he used the line, ‘It’s not how much you loved but how much you were loved by others.’
“And I said, ‘Vinnie was that kind of guy. Everybody loved Vinnie.’ I go, ‘He’s up in heaven right now — rock and roll heaven — playing with his brother Dimebag.’ I said, ‘Thanks so much for having me here. And God bless you.’ But I don’t know where that came from.”
Like his brother, Vinnie Paul was buried in a “Kiss Kasket” provided by the band as a gift at the family’s request. While Vinnie’s was a custom job, Dimebag Darrell was interred in the original Kiss casket prototype. The design on the coffin features the faces of the four original Kiss members along with the band’s logo and the inscription “Kiss Forever”.
A giant Kiss fan, Dimebag went as far as getting a tattoo of Frehley on his chest. When Darrell met Frehley, he had the Spaceman autograph it and promptly had that tattooed to on him as well.