The Warfield theatre, San Francisco. As Pantera arrive here for two gigs, their seventh album, Far Beyond Driven, has just hit the US top 100 at No 1. This leaves Pantera with a set of problems and schedules they only seem ready to meet halfway. There are photo sessions, videos and interviews; time-sapping buggers, the lot of ‘em. Ahhh, the pains of being in demand!
The previous night’s show was deafening proof as to why Pantera have appealed to so many so quickly. A blinding array of dazzling bright lights, a legion of bruising mono-riffs, a battery of double-bass boots. It’s Judas Priest-style metal without so much as a nod towards the former’s melodic skills. Real heavy metal, mutha!
Pantera also have Philip Anselmo. It is Anselmo who gives their metal its edge. Without his Rollins-esque moves, without his anguished guttural roar, without his doomy, marauding presence, Pantera would just be an ordinary heavy metal band.
Anselmo is a true metal hooli-thug and performance artist. A series of curls, crunches, jumps and facial postures keep the crowd wrapped up. Yet at this stage of the tour, Anselmo is clearly working something out inside his head about where Pantera are headed.
Anselmo makes Pantera unique, but it is evident at the Warfield that he can also be the band’s greatest demon. The most worrying aspect of the shows is Anselmo’s stage mouth.
He speaks of a cough syrup that hits like heroin, and tells the crowd that if they come to the gig tomorrow night, they should “take some speed”. Later, he motions putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. The gesture is a touch too close to the Cobain tragedy, even given Cobain’s general flippancy.
After the show, Anselmo sits in his darkened dressing room relaxing to some old Nick Cave material.
Anselmo is a fascinating paradox; behind the angry and intimidating postures, he possesses a mellow and amiable demeanour when caught in his own comfortable environment. He’s happy to share a beer with you, although he is not the man to come to if it’s party central you’re after.
This might explain why he reportedly travels in a separate bus from the rest of the band, who seem to enjoy the more “traditional” spoils of Old Testament metal life after a hard night’s work. Phil gestures to a bunch of guests roaming the backstage area.
“Hey,” he tells a roadie. “I don’t want those fucking assholes on coke coming back here, OK?”
This makes a refreshing change from the pillock metallers’ response of “wherezitat”. Anselmo is brutally honest.
“Last night’s crowd sucked my dick,” he sighs. “But I’ll say that Pantera, as a band that boasts as much as we do about being as effective as we are, didn’t adapt as we should have last night. I don’t think we grabbed anybody; I don’t think we did anything about the lame audience.
“Most bands will maybe kiss a little ass – when a crowd sucks, the frontman will say shit like ‘ALRIGHT! WE LOVE IT! YOU GUYS ARE ...’ this and that.
“Tonight, I did my warm-up as usual. I hit the pads boxing-style and I sat here by myself and said, ‘Man, I desperately want a beer’.
“Usually, I try to stop myself. I know I’ll throw up the beer onstage because I’m doing physical things. But I said, ‘Fuck the world, or fuck my nausea, whatever’. This being the second night here, I figured that this crowd were also gonna suck me off. So I decided, ‘Why kill myself? Why jump all over the place?’ And I quit.
“I didn’t jump anywhere tonight. I stood my ground, drank beer, enjoyed myself and enjoyed the power of my band — which is a true, honest power. There is no band in the land that plays music like my band, and as well as we do. So I fed off Vinnie Paul, I fed off Diamond Darrell and I fed off Rex. And the crowd loved it, they got off on it – and even though it didn’t touch the normal Pantera crowd, it blew away last night’s crowd.
“Tonight’s show, I didn’t give a fuck and that made a difference. No rules. Y’know why I’m feeling like that? It’s because I’m fresh into it. You take a few months off and you start to forget what you’re good at, why you were ever good.
“Last night I said the same things to the audience, and I felt like the kind of fucking rehearsed, choreographed pile of shit that neither I or my band will ever become. I go out onstage with the mind that I don’t have to say a motherfucking thing to the audience. Anything I want to say, I will; that’s how I felt tonight and that’s how it’s gonna be from now on.”
“I don’t put much thought into other people’s problems ...” There is a long sigh as Philip wrestles with his thoughts.
“It’s tough to say, but I have a fucking passion for horror films, shock value things. I love the power of it, man. Other people shirk away from that because they don’t have the stomach enough for it.
“I’m not saying for all the readers out there – and you should print me boldly – I’M NOT SAYIN’ I’M THE ONLY DUDE WHO THINKS THAT ‘I AIN’T COPY-CATTING NOBODY’! That’s just what the fuck I’m into, straight-up. One man’s treasure is another man’s horse-shit, y’know what I’m saying?”
With Pantera’s ever-increasing success, there are more and more fans looking to Anselmo’s words for some type of worthwhile meaning. Does he feel pressure to deliver some worthwhile sentiments?
“I’m gonna say what I’m gonna say no matter what, and y’know why? I’m 25 years old, and by the time we do our next record I’ll probably be 27, maybe 28. I dunno how long it’s gonna take. I know where I’ve come from, and what I’ve come from. And y’know what? I’m still irresponsible, for Christ’s sake!
“I’m not looking to get married, I don’t love nobody, I don’t have any real fucking responsibilities. I’m the kid who still has his mum take care of his bills when he’s gone and shit like that.
“But you’re talking about kids hinging on my lyrical value? Well, kids today are obviously more aware than they were in the past; they have more things to be aware of. Hey, it’s a big technical fucking world out there!
“I will say this: you need to wake up. I ain’t trying to educate nobody, though, not a single soul. I’m just writing rock ‘n’ roll.
“Shit, in the past I wore Spandex and hairspray!” he continues, eyes growing angrier. “And y’know, people wanna thrive on that all the time, print pictures of us and shit. All I have to say is, what the fuck did anybody else look like when they were 15?! I was up onstage doing it, baby – getting laid, getting fucking loaded, getting in fights, doing the same fucking thing. I might have looked different, but that was my ballgame.”
You have to believe that there’s always been more to it than just sex, booze ‘n’ drugs for Philip. He cannot be that simple.
“No, you’re absolutely right. If that was it, then I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now, because kids are into Pantera because of our honesty. They aren’t into us for our laser shows or magic tricks – they’re into us for the songs.”
I know you love boxing. Wouldn’t you equate what you do with what a boxer does, in many ways?
“I’m a big boxing fan and that’s it. Do I feel a similarity with them? No, because boxers go to fight for a living, to put food on the fucking table for their families, and they are desperate people. They have that and not much other talent. When boxers fall from grace, when a world champion falls, they are custodians, dishwashers or fall through drug use. Ex-world champions rob banks, for Christ’s sake!
“But me up onstage, obviously I’m getting out this and that but ... but ... man, I’ve definitely got more facets in my life. Pantera is a tremendous part of my life – and yes, it does dictate my life to a certain degree, of course it does. But I am king, and I say yes or no.
“Even when we made nickels and dimes, when we did not appreciate something, it didn’t go. When we say ‘no’ it means ‘no’.”
When you were talking about doing speed onstage, was that just your boredom manifesting itself?
“Mostly frustration, yeah. I don’t condone speed, actually; speed is horse-crap. Anybody out there who does a lot of speed or coke or crank or crystal meth ... If you even knew what they put in that shit! Me and Rex used to live with a crank dealer when I first joined the band. You don’t wanna put that shit in your body. So what I said onstage was much more about frustration.”
You also motioned a gun going off in your mouth during the shows. Do you feel you understand the motivation behind a suicide like Kurt Cobain’s?
“Absolutely. And I will state that suicide’s a sad-ass thing to do. The only thing I do wanna defend on that is that I hate the pressures that I have being the lead singer for Pantera. I hate being poked at, I hate criticism, I hate having to do things for anybody.
“With Cobain, you’re talking about a guy who put out a first record just for the love of his music and then the album did nothing. The next record? KEERBLAAM! I hate my pressures and we ain’t sold a 10th of the albums they have.
“And drugs or not, you’re gonna be depressed no matter what. That’s why drugs come into play – depression. They don’t help but maybe they did at the time. As Pete Steele of Type O Negative said: ‘Suicide is self-expression’. Maybe it was his time to go, maybe as a man it was time to go. Selfish or not, it is no one else’s place to judge that.
“I’m from New Orleans, a place with the highest suicide rate in America. I just found last night that a friend of mine tried to commit suicide. I’m sort of ‘used to it’ now – not numbed, but sort of used to it. And as my mother says, ‘It was their time’.
“There’s been times when I’ve called my mother up in tears, freakin’ out: ‘Oh shit, I just wanna cap myself, end it all, I’ve got my gun ready, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, I CAN DO IT!’ And she’s the first to say that’s selfish – and then I’m the first one to feel guilty about it.
“When you’re laying in bed and thinking suicide, you think, ‘Oh fuck: the aftermath’. You think of the people you leave behind, because it’s a crushing, painful thing that changes people. It makes them different in a way you cannot explain.”
So just what pressures are busting your skull right now? Is it the simple business level of more press, more of everything, or is it deeper?
“My pressures are fickle, man, fickle. But I am the type of man that has a certain routine and regiment he does day by day on the road. And when that’s upset, yeah, I have a problem with it, I have a problem.
“I hit a peak where it bothered me, but the people in my management and organisation respect me so much that it’s worked out fine, and I’m an easy guy to get along with – I really am an easy guy to deal with. These are fickle things but they become BIG problems, these tremendous fucking deals.
“But hey, the point is, man, we can always get together. Business is business, but for Christ’s sake crying out loud. Not to bad-mouth another magazine, but some magazines give us the biggest fucking problems. I could piss on some magazines and feel no remorse. All of a sudden they’re doing a story on us, but we’re not alternative, we’re not AOR, we’re not rock, we’re not grunge; we’re a HEAVY METAL BAND that blew everyone’s fucking ass away but theirs.
“Fuck! This band has never taken anyone’s shit; we’ve been as nice as we can possibly be, but people get bent out of shape because we are how we are. We’re from the fucking South in America, from Texas and from New Orleans, and you say what’s on your mind.”
If I was a betting man, I would wager that Anselmo has felt happier in his life then he does right now. What exactly is success doing to his life?
“My life? I got a laaahhhta money! I’ve made a lotta money all of a sudden – they’re just throwing money at me, and that’s the only way my life has changed. And kids wanna sue me because of my money. They get hurt at my shows, they come to the shows and they fucking slam and bust their heads up ... and it’s our fault they went slamming and stage diving! So that’s a problem.
“And then there’s a lack of intimacy with the crowd. It felt intimate tonight; I felt I could see every motherfucker in the building. See, when you play these colossal places, you’re up there doing the same stage rap every night, man.”
That point on your tour is coming.
“Coming? It starts in June! We’re playing 15-30,000 seat places outdoors.”
Not forgetting Donington: 72,000.
“Ahhh, I ain’t worried about Donington, that’s just a festival. They’re not there to see us, they’re there to see a load of other bands. I’ll deal with that when I get there.”
Pantera are big news, hot shit. We see it as a band’s golden period. They always see it differently. “A lotta places will be seated, which is gonna make it harder. Instead of Pantera, you’re Johnny Carson. ‘Welcome to the Pantera show, how-are-you-feeeeling, let me jump around and be entertaining’!
“Fuck THAT. I’m gonna get drunk. I’m gonna get fucked-up. I’m gonna work-out my ass, I’m gonna eat the healthiest I can, and before I go onstage I’m gonna get fucking wasted and deal with it. That’s what I’m gonna do.
“But if I don’t get drunk every night, that’s cool too. If I walk out on that goddamn stage, all I know is we’ve got songs! I know some of the crowd are there to see Diamond’s leads, what Rex does, Vinnie’s drumming, some to check me out and see what kind of crazy thing I’m gonna do tonight.
“Look, I ain’t no goddamn puppet! I’m into shock value but I ain’t gonna cut my wrists, cut my head open and do a stage-dive into the audience like the fucking alternative thing took from the old hardcore shows. I’m gonna stay on my goddamn stage and do what I’m gonna do!”
Philip Anselmo’s willingness to do what the fuck he’s going to do at all costs is the key to Pantera’s survival.
Yes, Vinnie Paul is a good drummer. Yes, Rex is a good bass player. Yes, Darrell is a hot metal guitarist.
But whether anyone wants to admit it or not – and I doubt that many close to Pantera do – Philip Anselmo is the band’s star player, the main reason for their success. Judge for yourselves on Saturday, unless you already know.
- History of Hostility, a nine-track album of the band’s greatest songs is out on 30 October on CD and LP. New box set, The Complete Studio Albums 1990-2000, is out on 11 December.
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