Dimebag Darrell

I consider Dimebag Darrell one of the greatest guitar players of all time.

Had he not been shot and killed, he would have been about a year older than me.  Because we grew up roughly around the same time, his influences are very similar to mine.  That's not super uncommon for guitarists our age, but it makes me feel a sort of kinship and even understanding of his guitar playing.

Of course, he had become an incredible guitarist in his own right, and was and still is highly influential to me, in a lot of ways.

As a guitar player, his feel, his tone, his playing, is unmatched to this day.  He was such a combination of his influences, from the soaring lead guitar playing that he got from guys like Randy Rhoads, to the groove of Eddie Van Halen, to the driving rhythm guitar playing of James Hetfield.  And like those guys that influenced him, he fused his influences into his own recognizable style.

I remember hearing Cowboys-era Pantera on Radio Free Hawaii and Z-Rock in the early 90s, and then seeing the "I'm Broken" video at my aunty's house in L.A. when I took my professional engineering exam for California, and was blown away at the intensity and groove of that song.

As far as his personality, he just seemed like the most genuinely nicest person that wanted everyone to feel at home.  It seems that tributes to him revolve even more around his generosity and spirit, than his incredible musicianship.  He was a positive person....  and I hope to someday leave a legacy, as a person, in even a small fraction of a way that he did.

Style-wise, people in the know see it in me, but most people don't realize that my red-dyed beard and razor blade necklace are tributes to Dime.  It's funny when people that don't know metal say "your red beard is cool" and "I've never seen a dyed beard before", but metal fans will come up to me and say "Dimebag, right?"

I feel fortunate to have a lot of people to look up to, and Dimebag is definitely on the top of that list.