Hammer snapper and longtime friend of Pantera Joe Giron took most of the images on these pages. Here he recalls his favourite Dimebag memory.
Pantera were in the middle of recording _A Vulgar Display Of Power _during the summer of 1991, when they received a call to see if the band were interested in performing a Monsters Of Rock show in Moscow, Russia. Other bands on the bill would be AC/DC, Metallica and The Black Crowes. Before we all knew it, we were roaming the streets of Moscow a couple of days before the show in September 1991.
“As we hit tourist area after tourist area, locals would do double-takes as they observed this entourage of westerners with long hair, tattoos and leather jackets.
A group of children gasped, giggled and stared in amazement. They were getting the biggest kick out of Dimebag’s pink goatee.
“Dimebag, being an even bigger kid himself, engaged the young ones – giving them guitar picks, introducing himself by asking them to slap his hands (‘Give me some skin!’) and generally having a grand time.”
“The smiles on everyone’s faces are what speak to me in my photograph. It was heartwarming seeing him use the universal language of communication to make these children laugh, trust him and enjoy their brief encounter. He didn’t speak any Russian and they didn’t speak English. And it didn’t matter one bit.”
