“Dimebag” Darrell Abbott will forever be considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time. In a never-before-published interview, he names the five essential guitar albums he thinks everyone should own.
The interview came to light via The Tapes Archive podcast. The interview itself was conducted in 1992 when Pantera was on tour in support of Vulgar Display of Power. The interviewer was Pete Prown who is currently the music editor of Vintage Guitar magazine.
When asked what five essential guitar albums everyone should own, Abbott began, “I’d have to base that on either whether you were talkin’ like, no to break your question up into two, but like band-oriented guitar albums or like like Steve Vai solo guitar albums?”
Abbott continued, “I’m into band-oriented s—, I’m all for one. F— man, ‘Van Halen I,’ ‘Van Halen II,’ easily. [Ozzy Osbourne’s] ‘Blizzard of Oz.’ ‘On Through the Night’ by Def Leppard is a huge influence on me.”
When asked why Def Leppard was an influence on him, Abbott responded, “Just because those dudes were young, too, and they were tearing it up. I think that’s the best record they ever did.”
Abbott closed out his list with one of biggest influences ever and said, “I would say KISS ‘Double Platinum,’ just because it’s got a well-rounded scan of the KISS records that I really love the guitar playing on. That was my original reason to ever wanna play guitar, Ace Frehley.”