Dark Days: A Memoir

by D. Randall Blythe

  My friend Tommy, a singer from New York City, had assembled several other musicians and men who worked in the music business, all of whom were sober alcoholics or drug addicts like myself, and had begun a daily email gratitude list. Some of these men I knew, some I did not, but all had begun emailing each other lists of things in their lives they were grateful for. These lists were forwarded to me in an attempt to provide moral support as well as help me maintain a proper attitude while in prison. Tommy had no idea of whether or not I could receive email in Pankrác, but had started and sent this chain of positive energy my way regardless. Humbled, I read several of the lists, then pulled out my journal and typed out the gratitude list I had written during my first few days in prison, and sent it to all the men in the email chain. That digital gratitude list carries on to this day, and has become an important part of my life and my sobriety. When I become disgruntled, I will sometimes stop and write a gratitude list, to remind myself of the reality of my situation, which in truth ain’t so bad. I have become friends with the guys I did not know on the list, and my friendship with the ones I already knew has deepened. We watch out for each other on the road in person, via phone calls, or emails. We listen to each other’s problems, and will offer helpful advice (if we come from a place of useful experience). So shout out to the men of the S.F.G.—I love you guys! (S.F.G. is the name of our small group, and it stands for many different things, but my favorite personal meaning is Sober, Free, Grateful—for me, none are possible without the others.)

  Soon it was time to board my plane for the forty-five minute flight to Richmond, and I climbed aboard, ready to go home. I was excited to see my friends and family, but mostly I just wanted to sit in my house for a bit and be alone with my wife and Henry the cat. However, there would be a brief bit of sanctioned intrusion to get past before I could truly relax. I had sent a message via management to Don Argott (the director of the documentary about my band’s fans that had now taken such a dramatic turn) letting him know that I was okay with him shooting my return to Richmond, but that he should not film the first few moments when I saw my family. It was sure to be an emotional moment, and although I was a public person and was used to being filmed in all sorts of intense situations, my family were not members of my band. They did not sign up for questions and film crews and crazy people bothering them because I scream for a living, and I prefer that they be left alone. If people bother my family, I become quite irate—it’s not pretty. But I had no worries about Don respecting my wishes, as he had become a true friend, and had proven this before, during the filming of the documentary. He had gone to Prague when Cindy had come over, and with her permission had done a small amount of filming. But soon Don stopped filming her, as he felt it was more important to be there for her as a friend, not someone shoving a camera in her face during an already stressful time. He would continue to be respectful of my needs and privacy through the rest of my legal ordeal, and I was and am always happy to have him around, camera attached or not.

  The second I felt the wheels of the small commuter plane touch the runway at the Richmond airport, I felt a great sense of relief. I was home. After deboarding, I stopped by the bathroom in the small terminal, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. I looked in the mirror, and what I saw looked pretty rough. I was running on very little sleep, and due to delays it was well past midnight—according to my European calibrated body clock it was actually approaching 8:00 a.m. I took a moment to compose myself, then walked down the hall. At the terminal’s exit I saw my wife, my family, my band, some friends, and a few well-wishers. They held signs to welcome me home, and a great cheer went up as I walked out of the same narrow glass-walled corridor I had done so many times at the end of a tour. The first person I went to was my grandmother, who I had worried so much about while I was in prison. There she was, a tiny country woman, ninety-two years old and still tough as nails, standing on her own two feet way past midnight and her bed time to welcome her eldest grandson home. I felt a great swell of love for this lady who had helped to raise me, and I have never been happier to hug her, tell her that I loved her, and then scold her for being up so late. She told me that nothing could have kept her from being there to see me safely home, and I knew that old woman well enough to believe her. Then I kissed my wife, and hugged all my family and friends. The most emotional person there was my guitarist, Willie, who cried as he hugged me and told me how much he had missed me. I believe he and I are the most alike in the band in that sense; neither of us are particularly reserved men in nature, and we rarely bother trying to hold back intense emotions. It was good to see everyone, but I felt completely wiped out and unable to communicate well. Luckily everyone was already expecting me to be in less than tip-top shape, so I said goodnight and was soon driving my truck home, my wife by my side.

  I spent the next six months in and out of Richmond, visiting family and friends, as well as touring the United States. The last thing I wanted to do was climb up on a stage and entertain people, but my legal bills were piling up very quickly, and my band’s bank accounts were being drained at an equally alarming rate. Beyond merely trying to get me out of prison (and keep me from returning), we all had families to feed, mortgage payments to make, and regular bills to stay on top of just like everyone else. We also employ a road crew, a publicist, a management company, and a booking agent, amongst others—these people had all lost money during my time in prison, money they were counting on to feed their families when we had been forced to cancel our last tour. Lamb of god, like any successful band, is a business, a business with several moving parts beyond its five hairy members. All of these parts need to remain lubricated with money or else the machine ceases to function. I know this doesn’t sit well with a large number of naïve people who cling to romantic notions of what being in a touring rock band is like, but it’s reality—there’s a reason why it’s called the music business, not the music everything-is-free-for-band-dudes party. And like any business that hemorrhages large amounts of money with no foreseeable returns coming in, our business was in trouble. Our friends and fans had come to our rescue though, throwing benefit concerts, making and selling “Free Randy Blythe” t-shirts then donating the profits to a legal defense fund that had been set up for me, as well as bidding on items in an online auction my band had set up to help defray the mounting costs of my court case. These kind people kept us afloat; throughout this time of great expenditure, there was never a time when we missed payroll and we never went bankrupt. Lamb of god remained financially solvent because of these friends and fans, and I am forever grateful to them for their selfless actions during my time of need. I count myself very lucky, for I have no idea how someone without such a generous extended family would have avoided going completely broke had they been in my shoes. But despite the fact that we weren’t filing for Chapter 11, we still needed to make some money, and touring was our only option.

  Although lamb of god already had a very strict security policy, we had talks long before touring started about making sure it was enforced with draconian severity, resulting in immediate ejection from the show of anyone who could not abide by it. If you got on stage, you were out the door—no exceptions, no refunds given, no questions asked, and no explanations accepted (that policy stands to this day). Beyond my recent situation, there was a very good reason for this. Eight years earlier in a club in Columbus, Ohio, things had changed in the metal world forever. After December 8, 2004, audience members jumping on stage had gone from being accepted by some bands as part of the show (but more commonly as a mildly dangerous annoyance by most groups) to a potentially deadly threat. Several people had died violently that night, and one of the survivors of that evening’s horrifying events would be on our upcoming tour. This man was a friend of mine, and some of his words would help me greatly in the months to come.

  Lamb of god was headlining the tour, and one of the opening acts was the rowdy supergroup, Hellyeah. Hellyeah’s drummer was a Texan named Vinnie Paul Abbott. Vinn
ie Paul and his brother, guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, had been the founders of the now legendary metal band, Pantera. After over twenty years, achieving great success, and gathering a rabid fan base, eventually Pantera fell apart like so many bands do—the members stopped getting along. After the group’s dissolution, the Abbott brothers wasted no time forming a new band, Damageplan, recording a new record and hitting the road to support it. On November 3, 2004 in San Antonio, Texas, Damageplan crossed paths with lamb of god while we were both out on tour, and Vinnie and Dimebag showed us great hospitality. It had been an awesome night, and the next day I was already looking forward to running into the Abbott brothers again somewhere down the road, as all touring bands eventually do.

  Just over a month later, on the morning of December 9, 2004, I was asleep in my bunk, our bus parked in Brighton Beach, England. I felt a hand come through my bunk curtain and shake me awake. It was my guitarist Mark.

  “Randy, wake up. My wife just called me—someone shot Dime, man! Someone fucking killed Dime,” he said.

  “What? Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?” I said. It just didn’t make any sense. It still doesn’t.

  The night before, December 8, Damageplan had been booked to play a small club in Columbus, Ohio, a venue lamb of god had also performed in a few times. One minute and fifteen seconds into the first song of their set, a deranged Pantera fan who had been discharged early from the Marines due to mental illness, rushed the stage and shot Dimebag several times at point blank range in the head, executioner-style, with a 9mm Beretta handgun. He was killed instantly. Dime never saw a thing, as he had his eyes closed and was doing what he loved best—playing guitar. Big, kind-hearted Jeff Thompson, Damageplan’s security who had introduced himself to me as “Mayhem” just a month earlier in Texas, tackled the gunman, and as a result was killed by a bullet to the heart. Club employee Erin Halk was killed as well during a valiant charge to subdue the assassin. Finally, audience member Nathan Bray selflessly lost his life at the young age of twenty-three years old while attempting to perform CPR first on Dime, then on Mayhem. Seven other people were shot and wounded in the chaos, including Vinnie Paul’s drum tech Kat, who took three bullets while trying to wrestle the Beretta from the psychotic fan before being taken hostage. When Columbus police officer James Niggemeyer arrived and ended the rampage, killing the gunman with a well-placed blast from a 12 gauge Remington shotgun, the assassin had 35 rounds of ammunition remaining. Ironically, in 1980, John Lennon had been killed by a disgruntled Beatles fan on the exact same date twenty-four years earlier. A disgruntled fan . . . and the root of the word fan is fanatic.

  There are many theories floating around as to why the gunman, a Pantera fanatic, killed Dimebag. Some say he was upset over the band’s break up, and blamed Dime. There is talk that the fan had become convinced in his twisted psyche that he had written some of Pantera’s music, and felt ripped off. I don’t know, and don’t see much point in speculating, for in the end there are only questions, questions that will never be answered. No one will ever know the exact details of his particular descent into madness; what peculiar delusional knife repeatedly stabbed into his warped mind so sharply that he felt the overwhelming need to publicly execute his hero. Dimebag did nothing wrong; in fact, he was widely known as one of the most down-to-earth guys in the business, an overly generous man who always took time for his fans. And I do not think knowing his mind will solve anything—that is for mental health specialists to analyze, not musicians to figure out. What musicians in our scene did figure out immediately was that no longer would anybody be allowed onstage beyond band, crew, and approved guests.

  To fans of other genres of music, this may seem like a given—people pay money to see a band appear onstage, not the band’s fans. Front row attendees at a jazz festival are generally not worried about getting kicked in the face because some pumped up concert goer can’t control himself and goes flying off the stage and into the audience while Sonny Rollins rips the sax during “St. Thomas.” However, diving off stage is, or rather was, commonplace at metal shows, with some bands even encouraging it. But these days, most anyone stage diving has to sneak their way onstage with great swiftness, leap off immediately before security gets their hands on them, then try to disappear into the crowd before they get thrown out of the show (and depending on who’s doing the throwing, it can be a very unpleasant experience being ejected from a show). While this still happens from time to time, before December 8, 2004 no one really gave it too much thought. After Dime’s murder though, the immediate and overwhelming attitude of most bands towards audience members onstage switched to a very firm fuck that.

  And yes, those of us in metal bands know that the waste of flesh who killed Dimebag was a highly disturbed anomaly. Yes, we know 99.99 percent of fans who manage to get onstage don’t mean us any harm, are just excited, and are trying to have a good time. No, we don’t think the audience is generally out to get us.

  But you never know.

  After all, no one, not in Damageplan, their crew, or in our scene in general, would have ever dreamed that a fan would come to a show with murder in his heart and plenty of ammunition in his gun. Something like that just didn’t happen at metal shows, in our community, especially not to an overly-nice guy as beloved as Dimebag. But the indisputable fact of the matter is that it did happen, Dime is dead, he’s never coming back, and none of us in bands want to be the next one to be attacked and maybe die onstage while we’re just trying to do our jobs. Dime wasn’t a stranger or a news story to me—he was a dude who knew who I was, showed me respect as a musician, not to mention one hell of a good time—and I’ve heard the awful story of that nightmarish evening directly from the horse’s mouth, from the ones who managed to survive it. I’ve seen the sadness in my friends’ eyes as they remember those that died that night, and it’s fucking awful to witness their pain. I can’t imagine what it must be like to see someone coming onstage with a loaded gun, then opening fire and killing those you love. Personally, that’s not what I signed up for when I joined a band—getting shot just wasn’t part of the deal, and I like to do everything I can to keep the odds on my side as much as possible when it comes to my survival. That means stay the fuck off the stage if you aren’t band, crew, or guests. To anyone who has problems with that policy or refuses to understand why it is in place: please, stay at home and save your money instead of coming to our show. I neither need nor want the price of a ticket from some moron who can’t get it through their head that they are not welcome on stage at a lamb of god show, especially in light of not only what happened to Dime, but what happened in Prague in 2010.

  Incredibly, during that first tour after I had been released from prison, a few audience members still attempted to take the stage. Considering what I had recently been through, I had no idea how anyone coming to see us at that time could be so self-centered and/or clueless, but a handful still succeeded in making jackasses out of themselves. Those that weren’t immediately wrestled off stage and ejected from the venue by our crew or side stage security were caught and thrown out by other club security soon after landing on the dance floor. But for the overwhelmingly greater part, the tour went very well, although it was extremely emotionally exhausting for me. Every single day of the month and a half tour, before and after gigs, our fans would express their support for me, telling me how glad they were I was out of prison, then they would ask if I was going to be called back for trial. I had no answer for them until a month into the tour, when the Czech State Attorney formally indicted me on November 30, 2012, and a beginning trial date of February 4, 2013 was set. I was actually relieved when the news came, because after four months of constantly saying, “I don’t know,” I finally had some sort of definitive answer to give the endless people who asked me what was going on with my case. Yes, there would be a trial. Yes, I would go back for it. The vast majority of people told me in no uncertain terms that they would not go back if they were in my position, and though
t I was crazy for doing so. But my mind had been made up long before I had ever left prison. I appreciated their concern, but it was time to honor my word.

  Towards the end of the run, on December 6, the tour was in Houston, Texas. I was sitting on the loading dock behind the venue enjoying the warm Texas afternoon when Vinnie Paul walked over and sat down beside me.

  “Hey brother, what’s up? I got something to ask you if you got a second,” he said in his usual friendly voice.

  “Of course man. What’s up?”

  “In two days it will be December 8, the anniversary of us losing Dime. We’ll be in Kansas City that night. Do you think your guys would mind if we went overtime a little during our set so the whole tour can come up and do a shot onstage for him?” he said.

  “Dude, of course it’s cool. Take all the time you need, I don’t give a fuck. I know my guys won’t either. I’ll sort it out, no problem,” I said.

  “Thanks brother, I really appreciate it,” Vinnie said. It was at that point that I decided to finally ask Vinnie for a favor, not in return or as a tit-for-tat sort of thing, but because the time seemed appropriate. I had been thinking about what I had to ask him for quite a long while, since well before the tour started, but it just never seemed like the right time until that moment. Even then I was very uncomfortable asking my friend for what I did, but I was in trouble, a whole lot of trouble, and I needed his help badly.

  “Bro, I really hate to ask this of you, but I need you to do me a big favor if you can,” I said.

  “Of course man, whatever you need. What is it?” Vinnie said. I felt slightly sick to my stomach as I spoke the next words.

  “You know I’m going to trial in February. These judges who will be running the trial, they are not going to understand our world at all. They won’t know a thing about metal shows, or what goes on at them. They grew up in Communist-era Czechoslovakia, where there was no metal scene. I have to somehow make them understand what a metal show is like, what happens during one, because they are going to be looking at a video of that show that night in 2010, and they are going to think we are nothing but a bunch of violent freaks. I also need them to understand why no one is allowed on stage. Man, I know this won’t be easy for you, and I’m asking a lot, but I’m in deep shit and don’t know what else to do. If you could, would you write a letter to the court explaining why bands don’t allow audience members on stage anymore? You know, after what happened to Dime?” I said.