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Decible magazine: That Time Monte Pittman Taught Madonna a Pantera Riff

We all knew Dime’s influence went beyond metal. Check out this article, it’s a better read than you think.

From deciblemagazine.com:
By Jeanne Fury

Some time around 2008, the internet became flooded with YouTube clips of Madonna playing a Pantera song on guitar on her Sticky & Sweet tour. Naturally, portions of the human population became severely butt-hurt and decided such a false display of metal was blasphemous, so they took to the comments section of metal websites to air their many grievances. That’ll show Madonna! Meanwhile, the earth continued to spin on its axis, and the butt-hurt people went about being butt-hurt about many other things.

Not surprisingly, nobody was interested in why Madonna was playing Pantera. Well, Madonna’s guitar teacher Monte Pittman is the man with the answer. Pittman has a metal pedigree, having played alongside Tommy Victor in Prong, and the guy grew up near Dallas, so he was pretty familiar with Pantera’s repertoire. Oh, also, Dimebag had something to do with it.

You’ll read more about Pittman in an upcoming issue of Decibel, but for now, here’s the story, as told by the man himself:

There are so many little details that led to it. It wasn’t like one thing that happened. That goes back to me playing in Prong. There was a Prong show we played in Dallas. That’s the closest place to where I’m from that we played. Dimebag came to the show. He came early, around sound check to say hi to everybody. Tommy Victor was introducing me to Dimebag. It’s just me, Tommy, and Dime backstage at the Galaxy. Tommy’s saying, “This is the new guy; he’s playing guitar with us.” Dime kind of knew about me from the area because I had a band there, [longtime Pantera producer] Sterling Winfield did our last album, so there was a little bit of a familiarity. And Dime was saying, “Do you guys do ‘Cut Rate’?” And we’re like, “Yep.” He’s like, “That’s one of my favorite Prong songs ever.” And he’s looking at me, like, “You can do the solo, right? You got that part?” And he was kinda singing out how the solo went. And I said, “Yeah, that’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to play because the song does not let up.” And we played it faster than how it was on the album. He said, “You gotta stay on top of that string!” And I’m like, “Yep, I know, yep.”

Fast forward years later, I’m playing bass with Prong. We were playing in Oklahoma City and we’re exhausted, doing a lot of traveling and playing every day. And we played that song, and I had to play that on the bass, which is even harder [than playing it on guitar]. And I’m thinking, “How did Paul Raven do that?!” Then this voice went off in my head: You gotta stay on top of that string. And I realized what Dime had been saying to me. When you play fast, your pick naturally goes away from the string, but it doesn’t need to go far away from the string. And so I kind of realized what he was saying, and that changed my right-hand technique forever.

Now fast forward again, we’re getting ready for a Madonna tour [Sticky & Sweet]. She and I go back and forth [practicing the guitar]. We work on some left-hand things, then we work on some right-hand things. I said, “Let’s work on your right hand. Here are some techniques.” Then I told her the story about how Dime told me, “You gotta stay on top of that string.” That kinda led to me filling her in on the whole story of Pantera and how that relates to me. They weren’t just a band that I found out about—that was our hometown heroes.

The next day, she comes back, and on the guitar I could tell she had been practicing what I told her. She was just chugga chugga chugga on the guitar. I was like, “Wow! That’s so much better! That’s a huge difference.” She said, “Yep. You gotta stay on top of that string.”

And so at the same time, she had gotten a new musical director. He wanted to do her song “Hung Up” with her playing guitar. But it’s in D minor. That would be a great segue to me showing her drop D tuning on the guitar. So I was showing her the song, and I was like, “You know what, I gotta teach you some Pantera.” So I showed her the riff to “A New Level” because I thought it would be easy to remember how the notes just move up chromatically, one at a time. She loved that. She kept playing that all the time.

When we were in band rehearsals doing “Hung Up,” once we ended the song, she would start going into that Pantera riff. The rest of Madonna’s band, they’re not really familiar with that music, so they just started playing what she was playing. Every day in rehearsal when we would end that song, we would just start playing that riff. I thought, “Oh that’s cool, that’s fun.”

But then all of a sudden, you would start to see, like, some runners bring water in to stock the refrigerator. And the tour manager just happens to walk in, doing something. All of these people just started showing up at rehearsals who are there working, but just kinda popping their head in the door, like, “Hey I wanna see Madonna play that Pantera part again.”

And it stayed [and became part of the live show]. I was surprised that it stayed. Of course, I’m not gonna say no. When else am I gonna get to play Pantera on a stage in a stadium? But it stayed, and that’s where that story came from.

Here’s Madonna and Pittman performing “Hung Up” and getting their Pantera on beginning at the 4:27 mark.

Source: http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/that-time-monte-pittman-taught-madonna-a-pantera-riff/

Sterling Winfield: (Pantera) had the ability to not only talk the talk, but they could walk the walk, and they could walk it all over your fucking face. They had raw power.

(Pantera) had the ability to not only talk the talk, but they could walk the walk, and they could walk it all over your fucking face. They had raw power. That’s what they were all about, just unforgiving. Pantera were the forefathers. They could assault your senses and have you beg for more. They had this energy, and they not only delivered these cutting-edge albums, but each one broke the last one’s mold. Engineer Sterling Winfield on Recording Vangough and Working with Pantera. Read it here: http://www.guitarworld.com/engineer-sterling-winfield-recording-vangough-and-working-pantera

Metal Masters Clinic #5 is coming up in a few weeks. Both Philip Anselmo & Rex Brown will be performing!

Metal Masters Clinic #5 is coming up in a few weeks. Both Philip Anselmo & Rex Brown will be performing along side Kerry King, Gary Holt, Charlie Benante, Frank Bello, Scott Ian, Billy Sheehan, Chris Broderick, David Effelson, Chuck Billy & Mike Portnoy. Will you be there? January 22, 2014 at the House of Blues Anaheim, Anaheim, CA.
mm5

Dimebag Darrell spoke to Guitar World in May 2002 about the Pantera song he would most like to be remembered for.

“I think the kind of music we play will stand the test of time for however long. But if I had to pick just one, I’d go with the powerful, off-the-cuff statement that is ‘Fucking Hostile.’

“When it came out it definitely set the tone and pace for what we were about. I also think our boy Philip [Anselmo, vocals] got it perfectly right lyrically and we got it perfectly right musically.

“So I believe that if somebody heard this song 500 million years from now, they’d go, ‘Goddamn, these motherfuckers knew what they were talking about and sure had their jamming skills down’. Plus, I think people will always be hostile, which is another reason I went with this one.”

-“Dimebag Darrell Abbott

Vinnie Paul appears in the new Black Label Society video.

Noisecreep put this video in their top 10 videos of 2013.

From Noisecreep:
t’s important to remember that videos are here to entertain, and with that in mind Zakk Wylde and his Black Label Society likely registered many a smile with their clip for their cover of the typically heart wrenching Bill Withers classic, ‘Ain’t No Sunshine.’ As the camera pans up on Wylde playing the opening notes of the track, we see that he has a horse head. In fact, all of the characters in the clip are a hybrid of humans and animals, with Wylde’s titular horse imagining a dream life with a unicorn. Add in an odd Vinnie Paul cameo (on guitar no less) and ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ is one of the year’s most bizarre (in a good way) and best music videos of 2013.

Click here to see the other videos that made the list.

ARTISTdirect posted what they believe are the top 10 Dimebag Darrell Pantera riffs.

Every riff Dimebag Darrell recorded for Pantera could be considered legendary. Let’s just get that out of the way first off. The man was one of the greatest to ever pick up a guitar, and he’s responsible for an entire generation of players. So, that said, narrowing down a list to the “Top Ten Dimebag Darrell Pantera Riffs” wasn’t easy…but we did it anyway.

Dime tragically passed away nine years ago on December 8, but his spirit shines through in every note he cut to tape. Once again to honor his memory, ARTISTdirect.com editor in chief Rick Florino and AllAxess.com co-founder and DevilDriver guitarist Jeff Kendrick and DevilDriver drummer John Boecklin assembled a list of ten. Now, this took a ton of back and forth, but we think we nailed it…

Click here to visit ARTISTdirect and seehear the clips they selected.

Metal Insider’s Top 5: Bands Who Released Three Great Albums In A Row.

From Metal Insider:

While Pantera was a popular regional glam band, when Phil Anselmo joined in 1987, the band started evolving. Power Metal was heavier than anything the other band had joined, evoking the album’s title more than their previous three albums. Yet they got much heavier for their major label debut. Vulgar Display is simply one of the best metal albums ever, and needs no explanation. Yet instead of following that album up with a Vulgar Display part two, Far Beyond Driven was heavier than either of its predecessors in every aspect. In fact, the band’s album-closing cover of Black Sabbaths’ “Planet Caravan” is one of the only times the album lets up.

Click here to visit Metal Insider and see the other bands selected.

Rollingstone.com recalls Pantera’s final concert.

By
Andy Greene
November 14, 2013 2:50 PM

Pantera were in pretty rough shape by the time their Extreme Steel tour touched down at the Beast Feast in Yokohama, Japan on August 26th, 2001. They’d spent the past couple of months on the road with Slayer, Static-X, Skrape and Morbid Angel and were playing to huge crowds, but long-simmering internal tensions and addiction issues were starting boil over.

“The tour seemed to go on forever,” bassist Rex Brown wrote in his memoir, Official Truth, 101 Proof. “The financial offers were great, but because we felt like we were in a marriage that was going south, that just didn’t matter anymore. Something had to give sooner rather than later.”

Read the entire article here: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/flashback-pantera-play-their-final-concert-20131114

Ex-PANTERA Bassist REX BROWN Guests On ‘Talking Metal’ Podcast (Audio)

Former PANTERA and current KILL DEVIL HILL bassist Rex Brown was interviewed on episode 444 of the “Talking Metal” podcast (link textweb site). You can now listen to the podcast using the audio player below. (Note: The Brown chat begins around the 27-minute mark.)

KILL DEVIL HILL is the band featuring legendary drummer Vinny Appice (DIO, BLACK SABBATH, HEAVEN & HELL) alongside Rex Brown, Mark Zavon (RATT, W.A.S.P., 40 CYCLE HUM) on guitar and Jason “Dewey” Bragg (PISSING RAZORS) on vocals.…

HELLYEAH: First Clip From The Studio Posted Online

A short video clip from the recording sessions for the fourth studio album from HELLYEAH can be seen below.

HELLYEAH’s new CD is being helmed by producer Kevin Churko at his The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, Nevada. Churko is the Canadian musician, sound engineer, songwriter and record producer who has previously worked with OZZY OSBOURNE, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH and IN THIS MOMENT, among other acts.

HELLYEAH’s first three albums were laid down in Dallas, Texas at drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott’s home studio, VP’s Upstairs Studio.

In a recent interview, Vinnie Paul stated about HELLYEAH’s plans for the next CD: “Everything [Kevin has] ever done is great. I feel like he really made Ozzy sound fresh again, [on 2007’s] ‘Black Rain’ especially. Sonically, [Kevin’s] records are unbeatable, and he gets the best out of every band.…

PHILIP ANSELMO Speaks To DeepEllumOnAir.com At Housecore Horror Film & Metal Festival (Video)

DeepEllumOnAir.com conducted an interview with former PANTERA and current DOWN frontman Philip Anselmo late last month at Anselmo’s Housecore Horror Film & Metal Festival in Austin, Texas. You can now watch the chat below.

Anselmo’s first-ever solo album, “Walk Through Exits Only”, sold around 8,700 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 35 on The Billboard 200 chart.

Produced by Anselmo and Michael Thompson, and recorded over the past couple of years at Philip’s New Orleans studio, Nodferatu’s Lair, with his band THE ILLEGALS — guitarist Marzi Montazeri (ex-SUPERJOINT RITUAL) and José Manuel Gonzales — “Walk Through Exits Only” is abrasive, aggressive, anthemic and 100% Anselmo.…