Dimebag Darrell - Influences and Guitar Skills

Influences and Guitar Skills

Abbott once said in a Guitar World interview that if there were no Ace Frehley, there would have been no "Dimebag" Darrell – he even had a tattoo of the KISS guitarist on his chest. Frehley signed the tattoo in pen ink upon meeting him, at Dimebag's request, and the autograph was later tattooed over.

In the late 1980s, around the time of Power Metal, Abbott often covered songs by guitarist Joe Satriani, such as "Crushing Day". He also incorporated elements of Satriani songs like "Echo" into his live solos as well. Abbott stated in various interviews, that his riffs were largely influenced by Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. Iommi influenced Dimebag's tunings, which often went down to C# or lower. Pantera covered Black Sabbath songs "Planet Caravan", "Hole In the Sky" and "Electric Funeral."

Abbott cited thrash giants Anthrax, Metallica, and despite a sometimes vicious feud, Megadeth as primary influences. He was also a fan of Slayer and a good friend of Kerry King. Dimebag mentioned in an interview with Guitar World that the clean chord passages in the intro to Cemetery Gates were influenced by the clean chordal passages found in much of Ty Tabor's (King's X) playing. As with Billy Gibbons, Abbott frequently made use of pentatonic scales and pinch harmonics in both his leads and rhythms. Both guitarists employ blues scales, start / stop dynamics and pedal tones, as in Abbott's southern style riff in "The Great Southern Trendkill" and the main riff to ZZ Top's "Tush".

Randy Rhoads-style chord arpeggios can be heard in much of Abbott's playing as well, noted examples being "Floods", "Shedding Skin", "The Sleep" and "This Love". Three of Abbott's solos were ranked in Guitar World magazine's top 100 of all-time: "Walk" (#57), "Cemetery Gates" (#35), and "Floods" (#15). Abbott stated that "Eddie Van Halen was heavy rock and roll, but Randy was heavy metal".

Eddie Van Halen, whom Abbott had befriended, placed his original black with yellow stripes guitar (commonly called "bumblebee") into the Kiss Kasket Abbott was buried in. Abbott had mentioned to Van Halen that he liked that color combination the best of the latter's guitars (the guitar appears on the back sleeve of Van Halen's second album Van Halen II) and Van Halen was going to paint one that way for him. Abbott credited Vito Rulez of Chauncy for convincing him to try Bill Lawrence pickups.

Pete Willis of Def Leppard was seen as another major influence for Darrell. In his Guitar World magazine tribute issue, Abbott was quoted as saying, "Man, that first Leppard album really jams, and their original guitarist, Pete Willis, was a great player. I was inspired by him because I was a small young dude and he was a small young dude, too—and he was out there kickin’ ass. He made me want to get out there and play. Def Leppard used the two-guitar thing much more back then than they do now."

According to an interview with Dino Cazares of Fear Factory, Abbott told him that during the recording of Reinventing the Steel he compared his guitar tone with Dino's. Incidentally, during the making of Fear Factory's Demanufacture, Cazares compared his guitar tone to that of Vulgar Display of Power.