“Around Vulgar, he would get frustrated with me because I couldn’t keep up with what he was doing, guitar-wise – Dime was so far beyond me musically”: Pantera producer Terry Date on how he captured Dimebag Darrell’s lightning in a bottle in the studio

World-renowned metal producer and engineer Terry Date hasn’t just amassed a profoundly impressive discography (Soundgarden, Deftones, Prong, White Zombie, Slipknot, Dream Theater, Limp Bizkit); he was also the man behind the desk for Pantera’s first four major-label albums – Cowboys from Hell (1990), Vulgar Display of Power (1992), Far Beyond Driven (1994) and The Great Southern Trendkill (2000).

He looks back at his fondest memories of working with Dimebag Darrell in the studio – and why sometimes he was just trying to keep up…

How quick was Dimebag in the recording studio?

“He was incredibly fast. Walk is a really good example of the way he worked in the studio. Once we were done with Vinnie’s drums, Dime laid down his first rhythm track really quickly; I mean, he probably did it in about half an hour. Then it took us the rest of the day to do the double and then the triple of it.

“We spent massive amounts of time making sure the double was the same as the first one. All the attacks were exactly on time, and all the palm-mutes on the back of that main riff were also dead on time. This way, when you listen to that riff, the thump when he palm-muted the strings at the end of it almost becomes three-dimensional.”

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“In fact, if you’re sitting in the right spot, you could almost hear it behind your head. We spent hours making sure that was exactly right, and then we had the triple to do on top of that. And then Rex came in and basically quadrupled that riff on the bass. [Laughs] That song took a whole day to do the rhythm guitars and bass, I believe.

“That’s typically how it went as far as his rhythm; the first track would be recorded pretty quickly, and then mirror imaging took longer because Dime wanted it so tight. Plus, because we were recording on tape, you couldn’t get it close and then use a computer to manipulate it. This was real hands on strings, so it took a while. But it sounds real too, and that’s always a good thing!

“All those years I worked with Pantera, we recorded those songs on 24 tracks of tape, and that was it; we didn’t link two machines together. I was looking at the track sheet for Walk the other day, and it was pretty amazing – seven tracks of drums, three tracks of rhythm guitars, one track of lead, maybe three tracks of vocal and a bass. And that was it!”

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What was the recording approach when it came to Dime’s solos?

“On the early records I’d be with him while he did them, and Vinnie would be in the room, too. On later ones, I would back off a little bit and let Vinnie and Dime work together, because their level of communication was non-verbal.

“Dime would play a part; Vinnie would just give him a look and Dime knew exactly what he meant! Or Vinnie would go, ‘Do that Randy Rhoads part there,’ and Dime would know exactly what he was talking about. So I was like, ‘I’m not getting in the way of that!’

“I’ll sit in the back of the room and make sure the technology was on their side, but that brother-to-brother communication was really special. That probably started on Vulgar, and it was definitely Vinnie and Dime working on the leads together on the next two.”

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“Our basic formula – the way we worked on his solos – was always the same. And, once again, remember we were working on tape. We would dedicate four tracks for the lead and get three really good takes of the whole thing. We would then go through them and comp the best parts of each of those takes onto the fourth track.”

“It was always a comp situation; you and I know what that means, but the kids nowadays probably have no idea what I’m talking about! [Laughs] [Note: Comping means to combine the best parts of multiple recorded performances onto a single track.]

“We’d always be experimenting, too. I remember one time he wasn’t getting a sound he liked for a solo, so I said, ‘Maybe we get a different pedal.’ Dime goes, ‘Gimme 15 minutes.’ He ran home and came back with a grocery sack full of old, rusty pedals he had lying around his rehearsal place at his mom’s house. He just plugged them all in, turned them all on and goes, ‘How does that sound?’ And, I said, ‘That’s perfect!’ [Laughs] It was that kind of shit.”

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What was your favorite moment working with Dime in the studio?

“The one that always sticks with me is probably more of a ‘me’ thing than a ‘him’ thing, and I apologize if it is! Somewhere around Vulgar he would occasionally get frustrated with me because I couldn’t keep up with what he was doing, guitar-wise. He’d be playing a part, and I wasn’t able to recognize what notes or chord he was referring to.

“Even though I don’t play guitar, I’d watched so many hands over the years I knew what was going on; but Dime was so far beyond me musically, I was doing everything I could to just keep up with him and make sure he was moving as fast as his mind worked. For the most part it was fine, but there were times where I’d get stuck and hold him up.

“So, one day Dime finally said, ‘Alright, every night from here on in, after we’re done recording, I’m gonna give you guitar lessons.’ I said ‘OK,’ and we started that night. We sat down and he started to teach me how to play Johnny B. Goode. We did it for about five minutes and he looked at me and said, ‘Fuck it, we’re done!’ [Laughs]”