When The Music Stops

I recently attended a Metallica concert in London where the chief support band were Pantera. In 2004 one of the founders of Pantera, guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott, was shot dead - along with three other people - by a crazed fan while playing with his new band Damageplan. It is one of three incidents I discuss in this episode - the others being the horrific terrorist attack on an Eagles of Death Metal gig at the Bataclan in Paris, and a fire which killed 100 people at a Great White concert in Rhode Island, US. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, I'm Chris Summers. This is the Total Crime Podcast, and this is episode 27. Last month I attended a Metallica gig at the London Stadium, where the chief support act was Pantera. I've never actually heard either of these bands play live before, but I love live music in general, and uh heavy metal as a genre. In fact, I put down my dodgy hearing to a particular motorhead gig in Portsmouth many years ago when I was probably a tad too close to the speakers. So I decided to do a Total Crime podcast episode about three incidents when live music was interrupted by horrific events. Now I could of course have included the terrorist bombing, uh the awful terrorist bombing at the end of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017, in which 22 people were killed. But I decided to focus instead on crimes involving heavy metal or rock bands. So the first incident on the list is the murder of one of the founding members of Pantera, Dimebag Darrell Abbott. On the 8th of December 2004, Dimebag Darrell was shot dead on stage at the Al Rosa Villa Nightclub in Columbus, Ohio. Daryl, a guitarist, and his brother Vinnie Paul, a drummer, had founded Pantera in 1981 in their native Texas, along with singer Phil Anselmo and bass guitar player Rex Brown. Pantera hit the big time in 1990 with their breakout album Cowboys from Hell. Here's a blast of them playing the song Domination. One of the comments on a Pantera YouTube visit video sums it up nicely. Turn that off, shouted my dad. Why? I shouted back. We've got bigger speakers downstairs. Pantera had more success with the album Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven. But in 2003, the band broke up. There had been growing tensions between Anselmo and the Abbott Brothers, or artistic differences, as they think they are sometimes called in music. The Abbott brothers went off to form a new band, Damage Plan, while Pantheira founded. In February 2004, Damage Plan brought out their first album, Newfound Power. They took the album on the road and also played old Pantheera hits. But two nights before the end of the tour, disaster struck in Ohio. Damage Plan was nowhere near as successful as Pantheira, and only 250 people had turned up for the gig in Columbus at a venue which normally held 600. But Nathan Gale, a former US Marine, was in the audience, and he was hellbent on violence as Damage Plan came on stage and began to play their first track. But he was not done. He wanted to kill Vinnie too, but he had fled to the safety of the tour bus. So Gail turned his gun on a roadie and then on the band's head of security, Jeff Mayhem Thompson. Thompson was shot dead, along with Roadie Erin Hawke. Nathan Bray, a fan a fan of Pantera and Damage Plan, had also bravely climbed on stage and attempted to give CPR to Darrell, but he was also killed. By this stage, James Nickemeyer, a police officer, had reached the venue and he gunned down Gale. The last words Dimbag uttered The last words Dimebag uttered was Van Halen, which was a code word he used with his brother before each gig, which was their way of saying, Good luck and enjoy yourself. Gail is believed to have been suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of the shooting, and there are conflicting reports about his motivation. One suggests he blamed the brothers for the breakup of his beloved Pantyra, and another indicated the ana he actually thought Pantera was stealing his thoughts. Vinny is said never to have recovered from the shock of witnessing his brother being killed on stage, and he died in 2018, age 54, as a result of cancer. The Al Rosa Villa nightclub itself was demolished in 2021. Immediately after Dimebag was killed, Phil Anselmo gave this interview.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

This is not about me. This is about Dimebag Daryl. Purely Daryl. That happened to destroy the most beautiful fing person. My bet one of my best friends in the world. It was the heavy metal goddamn media that destroyed Pantera. He was not just some guitar player. I want to say, bless his family and all of his close friends. And I never got a chance to say goodbye in the right way, and it kills me.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

In 2022, Anselmo gave another interview about Dimebag.

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Dimebag and Vince always wanted this band to be a legacy band, to be massive, to be our own conduit to success. Simply put. I know Diamond Vince would want the legacy and the name of Pantera to go on and on and on.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

That same year, almost 20 years after it broke up and folded, Pantera reformed with Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown being joined by Ozzie Osborne's former lead guitarist Zach Wilde and drummer Charles Benante. On Pantera's website, a message was posted on the 8th of December 2025, which read, It's hard to believe you've been gone nearly 21 years. Your influence and energy is still very much alive. We feel it daily. Thanks to all our fans for keeping Dime's legacy going. Pantera supported Metallica at their gig in London on the 5th of July. I was there and I can assure you they were in very fine fetal. Now the murder of Dimebag Darrell Abbott and the three other people at that damage plan gig was a horrific incident, but it pales in comparison with two other attacks which had a much higher death toll. Firstly, I'm going to talk about the infamous terrorist attack on the Batterclan, Paris venue popular with rock bands. On Friday, the 13th of November 2015, a US band, the Eagles of Death Metal, were playing a gig at the Batter clan. Here's a clip from that show. By the end of that horrific night, 90 people were dead. Lead singer Jesse Hughes and the three other members of the band managed to hide backstage or in the dressing rooms, sheltering with a number of their fans. The band did return to Paris only three months later to perform an emotional gig which was the centerpiece of a 2017 documentary on Netflix. But in March 2016, Hughes triggered an outraged reaction after he claimed several security guards at the Batter clan had not turned up for the n for work on the night and told the Fox Business Network it seemed rather obvious that they had a reason not to show up. This outraged the venue, who uh later issued a statement saying Jesse Hughes spread some very grave and defamatory accusations against the Batterclan teams. And they called this uh his his statements insane. Hughes later apologized for the remarks he had made, saying his allegations were absurd and blaming the trauma he had undergone. But in May 2016, he gave another interview with Tackies Magazine in which he said, I saw Muslims celebrating in the street during the attack. I saw it with my own eyes in real time. How did they know what was going on? There must have been coordination. A subsequent French judicial investigation ruled out any complicity by the security guards at the Batterclan. And a parliamentary commission said there had been a global failure by French intelligence agencies. The Eagles of Death Metal, whose name is actually uh a joke. Uh it's ironic, they are not meant to be a death metal band. They recently uh announced a tour of Europe and Britain, which includes dates in Paris on the 3rd of November, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Leeds, and London, and will end at a venue in Froome, Somerset called the Cheese and Grain. It will be known bizarrely as the Death by Sexy Tour. Now the last horrific incident during a live music event I'm going to talk about is a fire at the station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, during a set by the group of the rock band Great White. A pyrotechnic display had triggered a fire which rapidly spread through the dilapidated venue, killing exactly a hundred people. John Barilek, an attorney who led the prosecution team in the aftermath of the fire, later wrote a fantastic book about it, Killer Show, which I really recommend. In that book, uh Barilic quoted radio executive Stephen Scarpetty as describing the station nightclub as being a place where good bands go to die. Among those who died that night was Ty Longley, Great White's rhythm guitarist. While most of the band members fled out of the stage entrance, Longley spotted his friend Bill Long and jumped down to join him, saying, Come on, let's get out of here, bro. But they got trapped in the smoke. And although Long made it out alive, Longley perished. The most chilling thing about the station nightclub fire is that it was all filmed and that the footage is still on YouTube. The 13-minute film really is quite terrifying, and I strongly advise you not to watch it if you're the least bit sensitive or afraid of fire or crowds. I'm gonna play a clip. The band kept playing for 30 seconds as flames started to pr spread up the walls, and apparently people in the crowd initially thought it was a special effect and part of the show. But at the end of this clip, you can hear the chaos as the music stops. As I wrote clumsily at the time, the dangers posed in venues holding under 5,000 people was illustrated most graphically in the United States in 2003, when a hundred people died in a fire caused by a heavy metal band's pyrotechnic display. I went on to write in 2008 the band's insurers agreed to play one million dollars to survivors and relatives of the victims of the fire at the Station Nightclub in Rhode Island. Great White's lead singer, Jack Russell, has always denied the pyrotechnics were his idea, and he said his tour manager Dan Bekila Great White's lead singer, Jack Russell, has always denied the pyrotechnics, which he described as indoor fireworks, were his idea, and said his tour manager, Dan Bikela, thought they might spice up the show. Russell said the problem was that the roof of the venue was made of an inflammable acoustic foam, which was illegal and hadn't been spotted by the local fire marshal. There is an interesting interview with Russell on YouTube where he talks about the fire. Here's a clip.

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I wish I had a magic dream the night before. You know, I wish that was in my everyday channel before I look at the ceilings and fancy. I mean nobody wants to say that. I mean, uh you know, if it was up to me, I would have to take a precaution that that wouldn't happen.

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The core manager Dan Biekeler would plead guilty to a hundred counts of involuntary manslaughter and was jailed for fifteen years, although he only served 16 months. The station's co-owners, brothers Michael and Geoffrey Dedarian, were also jailed for involuntary manslaughter. Michael spent 27 months in prison while Geoffrey was given community service. Jack Russell was never charged. Great White continued to uh tour for years before splitting up into two bands, Great White and Jack Russell's Great White. Russell died in August 2024, aged 63. Great White are still going, and according to their website, currently on tour. Over the years, there have, of course, been a number of famous musicians who've been murdered off stage. The most famous was the assassination in 1980 of the 40-year-old former Beatle John Lennon as he approached his apartment in New York's Dakota building. The mur murder ironically took place on the same day, the 8th of December, as the killing of Dimebag Darrell Abbott. Lennon's killer March Chapman was mentally ill and suffering from various personality disorders. He gave various reasons for the murder. At one point, he said a demonic power had been at work. On another occasion, he said it was linked to his obsession with The Catcher in the Rye, a novel by J.D. Salinger, which involves a protagonist who is convinced that most adults are phonies. In one interview, Chapman said he bought a biography of Lennon, which portrayed him as a hypocrite who professed peace and love, but had a huge personal fortune. Chapman said, I brought the Lennon book home into this catcher-in-the-ry milieu where my mindset is Holden Caulfield and anti-phoniness. Chapman has now spent more than 45 years in uh behind bars and he was denied parole again last year, his 14th application. Other famously slain music stars include Selena, the 23-year-old Texan singer who was shot dead by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her fan club on the 31st of March 1995. Selina, who sang a popular Tex-Mex fusion style known as Tejano music, was shot dead at a Days In Mo Motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, by Saudivar, who had been exposed by the Star's family for s embezzling money from her fan club. After the shooting, Saldivar was besieged by police for nine hours before she surrendered. She will be eligible for early parole in March 2030. The 1960s soul star Sam Cook was shot dead in a case which was ruled a justifiable homicide. After a physical confrontation, Franklin pulled out a gun and shot him three times. Boyer would later claim she fled the room when Cook tried to rape her. But there have been claims that Cook was wrongfully accused and may have been murdered by Franklin. Another star who was slain was Carlton Barrett, a former drummer with Bob Marley and the Wailers. He was shot dead in Kingston, Jamaica in September 1991. His wife Albertine, her lover Glen Roy Carter and hitman Junior Bang Neil were later convicted of conspiracy to murder. Famously sole legend Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father in April 1984. And in the 90s, a feud between the West Coast and East Coast rappers in the United States led to two infamous murders. In September 1996, Tupac Shaker was shot dead in Las Vegas. And then in March 1997, his rival, Biggie Smalls, was gunned down in Los Angeles. Biggie's murder remains unsolved. But this very week, Dwayne Keith Davis, aka Keith D is due to go on trial for Tupac's murder. Last but not least, I'm going to mention Jam Master Jay, real name Jason Meisell, of Run DMC fame, who was shot at a recording studio in the Jamaica district of Queens, New York, in October 2002. In April this year, Jay Bryant pleaded guilty to orchestrating the murder, which was uh committed by Ronald Washington and Carl Jordan Jr. Jam Master Jay was involved in drug dealing at the time, and the murder was linked to a dispute over consignment of cocaine. So there you have it. That's the end of this episode. I hope it has not scared the bejesus out of you when it comes to attending concerts. Live music is still, in my opinion, one of the purest forms of entertainment and usually very safe. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll come back to listen to the next Total Crime podcast.