“I like to live for today and what’s coming up tomorrow, and I love what we’re doing with Hellyeah. And that’s my focus, and that’s my goal, man.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I really felt like we were gonna be The Rolling Stones of heavy metal, and we could have been.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I did a lot of great things in the past, but I live for today and for the future.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I wanna look forward; I wanna keep moving forward.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I drink almost a bottle of pickle juice every day, man, and it keeps me going great.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Vodka is much easier on your system than dark whisky and stuff.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I’m a rock drummer. I couldn’t sit down and pretend to be a jazz drummer.”
― Vinnie Paul
“They call it a reunion for a reason. It’s called bringing the original members back to what it was. So there’s a lot of these things that they call reunions that aren’t really reunions. They’ve got one dude from the band floating around in them, you know. That’s not a true reunion. With Pantera, it’ll never be possible.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I used to be a free-loving, free-caring person with no worries. We lived with no fear, you know?”
― Vinnie Paul
“I am one hundred percent dedicated to Hellyeah. I love what I do in this band. I’m really proud of this band. Everybody in this band is such a special person, and the music that we make together, I really believe, is very special and the next level in my life.”
― Vinnie Paul
“If you had an ex-wife, and it was a pretty bitter split, you might not ever want to talk to her again. Who cares if everybody in the family and your friends want you to say hello again? It’s your choice whether you want to do it or not.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Honestly, this country was built on freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and when you can no longer do that, then it is no longer based on that, you know.”
― Vinnie Paul
“You have a natural groove inside of you, but the more you practise, the more comfortable you will be with your instrument.”
― Vinnie Paul
“To me, I always felt like drums have to be the support and the driving factor in a song, and there’s places where the drummer has to show off and do things and get the spotlight, but not all the time. You’ve gotta pick and choose. And it’s always gotta be about the song. That’s really the bottom line.”
― Vinnie Paul
“A lot of people are really hung on the past – they can’t get past that – but you’ve gotta get past that if you want any future.”
― Vinnie Paul
“As a drummer, I always approach things as, ‘I want to play just enough to keep other drummers interested, but not enough to go over the average listener’s head.’”
― Vinnie Paul
“’Far Beyond Driven’ was a record that was probably ahead of its time, and to this day, it still sounds as fresh as just about any other band that’s out there. It was a record that was pushed to another level.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Dime knew the importance of every aspect of playing the guitar.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I love cooking fajitas. I’m from Texas, and it’s not a difficult thing to do, but a lot of people burn the chicken.”
― Vinnie Paul
“My playing is always just a little on top of the beat. I can’t lay down the kind of groove that Brad Wilk can. I’d really have to lay back to do that; it just doesn’t feel natural to me.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I don’t live in the past.”
― Vinnie Paul
“The guys from Hellyeah and the incredible music we’ve created have brought me back to what I love.”
― Vinnie Paul
“If you live in the past, you’ve got no future.”
― Vinnie Paul
“It doesn’t matter if you load it on a DVD, if you videotape it, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing more exciting than being at a live show.”
― Vinnie Paul
“When heavy metal was really big in the ’80s, it was huge, and then it kind of waned down and kind of came back.”
― Vinnie Paul
“There’s nothing like having some fresh blood out on the road with you.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I would give anything if it went back to analog age. I mean, music was so real, and you had to sing everything on a record; you had to play everything on a record. There was no cut-and-paste – you couldn’t get the chorus right one time and then paste it every other time; you really had to be good at what you did.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I think that Chad Gray is one of the most honest, emotional, real vocalists there is; he really takes a lot of pride in writing the lyrics, takes a lot of time with them. He writes and re-writes more than just about anybody I’ve ever been around.”
― Vinnie Paul
“It’s unfortunate that people go, ‘Oh, wow, man, they can get Zakk Wylde to jump up there on stage, and it’s Pantera again.’ No, it’s not, you know. It’s not that simple.”
― Vinnie Paul
“People are selfish, man. They want what they want; they don’t care what you want.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I’m a big kid.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I like being able to own things, to not have to depend on music to support myself. Music hadn’t supported me since 2000. I mean, it really hasn’t. I just do it because I love doing it.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I love being on the road; I love traveling. I love interacting with the fans and friends and fans and metal on the way.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I’ve always been a down-to-earth business guy.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I will never take anything away from Pantera. It was great; we had fourteen amazing years together. But it’s no longer here. My brother is no longer here.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I’m really proud of what I do with Hellyeah, and I’m focused on it.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I play in a band called Hellyeah, and I really love doing it.”
― Vinnie Paul
“We made this mountain with ‘Vulgar Display Of Power,’ and that was a pretty damn tall mountain to climb.”
― Vinnie Paul
“To me, a hockey player has to be every sport rolled into one: ice skater, baseball player, football player, etc. It’s just incredible to watch!”
― Vinnie Paul
“Basically, a band’s first record is them coming together and really learning everything, and then, after they’re on the road and really become a unit, the next record slams.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Slayer is one of my favorite bands of all time, and to be on a tour with them is absolutely a dream come true.”
― Vinnie Paul
“In 1999, we did a thing called the ‘Reinventing The Steel’ tour with Pantera, when I was still with them, and Slayer was part of that, and it was a great tour.”
― Vinnie Paul
“In 1994, we had the first record by a true heavy metal band to ever hit the Billboard top No. 1 slot. We paved the way. And we always waved the heavy metal flag.”
― Vinnie Paul
“So many bands would say that they were alternative, or they were this or that… ‘Heavy metal’ was a pretty uncool word after about 1992; it was almost like, ‘Stay away.’ But it didn’t bother us one bit. And our fans were the best ever.”
― Vinnie Paul
“We played nightclubs for seven years solid before we got a record deal, and then ‘Cowboys From Hell’ and ‘Vulgar Display Of Power,’ we toured non-stop four years for those records, and we developed the most brutal, loyal fan base on the face of the earth.”
― Vinnie Paul
“With the last couple of Pantera records, we kept getting more and more narrow-minded because of Phil. He didn’t want to experiment or take any chances, and it was like being in a tube that was getting to be so small you couldn’t even breathe. Personally, I think the dude was afraid of success.”
― Vinnie Paul
“The bottom line with Dimebag is he got off on making people happy. It didn’t matter if it was about playing his guitar, shaking their hand, giving them a guitar pick. It didn’t matter.”
― Vinnie Paul
“We did everything we could to hold Pantera together and fought for it until the very end, and now that it’s gone we’re 100% focused on Damageplan.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Let me tell you something… If you’re anybody – not just me, but anybody – and you can put an oven that doesn’t work at all on eBay and sign your name on it and sell it for 1200 bucks, and somebody will drive from Seattle to Dallas, Texas, to get it, that’s pretty cool.”
― Vinnie Paul
“The history of Pantera speaks for itself.”
― Vinnie Paul
“With Damageplan, we had to endure the Pantera fans, because Pantera is what they really wanted. But with Hellyeah, at a show in Baltimore, the crowd knew all the words.”
― Vinnie Paul
“We knew Hellyeah had to be a lot of fun. We got into it for one reason: to have a lot of fun.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Sometimes you get too jaded, too seasoned. With Hellyeah, we’ve been having a lot of fun. From the minute we sat down in the studio, there was a lot of energy.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Pantera is a marquee band, with the most diehard fans. We sold over 20 million records without MTV or radio.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Hellyeah have great fans.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I love to gamble!”
― Vinnie Paul
“John Bonham, probably the greatest drummer ever – all of us wanted to play drums like him.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Alex Van Halen… I loved his playing because he had so much energy; he made those songs exciting, along with everything else that went with him.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Tommy Aldridge is the guy that made me wanna play double kick, man.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I think there’s a lot of death metal or doom metal dudes that somehow or another find a groove in it.”
― Vinnie Paul
“That’s where I think a lot of these guys today are just, ‘I’m the drummer, man. Check it out. Here’s my lick. I just learned this new drum lick. I’m just gonna blast all over the place.’ It’s like, ‘Man, you’ve got to let the song breathe.’”
― Vinnie Paul
“I can appreciate people for being able to go that fast with their left hand, man. But I just can’t groove to that beat. I’m sorry. It’s just like somebody sweeping the floor or something – tik tik tik tik tik. It just doesn’t really jam to me.”
― Vinnie Paul
“People ask me all the time, ‘Why don’t don’t you ever do drum clinics?’ And my reply is always that I like playing music; I want to play with a band.”
― Vinnie Paul
“My drum parts are a song within the song; that’s the way I look at writing my drum parts. They follow patterns, and they’re written to interact with the rest of the band. There’s quite a bit of thought that goes into it.”
― Vinnie Paul
“The relationship in Pantera and with Damageplan is the opposite of the traditional rhythm section. It’s me and Dime, not the bass, locking in always. Dime’s such a strong rhythm player that we just walk in, and we’re good to go. We’ve been playing together forever, and when he goes somewhere, I instinctively know where he’s going.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I’m a veteran of Ozzfest.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Nobody knows the pain I’ve been through.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I remember, in 1999, when we did the last Ozzfest that we were part of, and I think Disturbed was on it, Static-X, obviously Ozzy, us, and we were the only band on the tour that had a rider that had any alcohol. Nobody else had it.”
― Vinnie Paul
“The most important thing about drinking on the road is just you’ve gotta do it in moderation, first of all. You’ve gotta know your limits.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I’ve been married to music my entire life. I’ve been dedicated to it. I know what it takes to do it. And ever since my brother has been taken from me, I feel like I have to live for both of us.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I still feel like a 19-year-old kid, man.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I’m not married.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I don’t have any kids.”
― Vinnie Paul
“It’s a dangerous world, man. You’ve gotta keep your eyes and ears peeled and be on the alert all the time.”
― Vinnie Paul
“You don’t get anything easy when you come from a big band and you go and start another one. You learn real fast that, ‘Wow! I went from the top of the mountain to all the way back to the bottom, and I’ve gotta start over.’”
― Vinnie Paul
“’The Will To Survive’ is a great track.”
― Vinnie Paul
“We like to play to a lot of people – that’s what it’s all about.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Music is made to be heard, whether you hear it in concert, you hear it on the radio, or you hear it in your car. It’s not for two people to sit in a closet and go, ‘That’s my band, the only band I’ve ever heard, and I’m the only person that’s going to hear it.’”
― Vinnie Paul
“We are firm believers that the first time somebody hears a brand new song from the band, it shouldn’t be on a cell phone camera with the distortion or anything where you can’t make it out. We want to present it right.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I think the sound that I have had on all the records that I’ve been a part of have been important and special.”
― Vinnie Paul
“There are numerous different kinds of drum sounds – some are more ambient and roomy and this, that, and the other, the John Bonham kind of thing. Then there’s kinda what I did with Pantera, which was much more attacky, and then with what I did for ‘Blood For Blood’ on the Hellyeah record is kind of a combination of all of that.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I don’t understand why somebody would wanna scratch their name in somebody’s tombstone or anything. But fans are rabid, man; they do unheard-of things.”
― Vinnie Paul
“It’s called the music business. We’ve all gone into it ’cause we love the music, and a lot of people end up with nothing at the end of the day, after they’ve done all of this great music, ’cause they never learned any of the business side.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Jacques Cousteau was my hero.”
― Vinnie Paul
“When I was a little kid, I always wanted to be an oceanographer.”
― Vinnie Paul
“When I have parties, I have little sandwiches. I always make sure I have two or three fresh habaneros, and I only put them on one or two. There’s always someone who comes running around the corner, ‘Oh my God! I don’t know what was in those, but my mouth is on fire! What do I do?’”
― Vinnie Paul
“My dad was a country musician, so we had David Allan Coe and lots of other country music playing around the house all the time.”
― Vinnie Paul
“If you take the riff from the song ‘Cowboys From Hell’ and really break it down, it’s almost a hillbilly guitar riff: dekka dekka dekka dekka dekka dekka dekka dek.”
― Vinnie Paul
“The first time I heard Kiss, I knew that was the type of music I was attracted to.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Even though Peter Criss is a pretty simple player, he played with great feel and made the music get up and go.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Probably some of the most impressive drumming I’ve done is on the ‘Far Beyond Driven’ record.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I had some proper training, but that was only on snare drum. Learning all the techniques in marching bands and realizing how important it is to play tight set a standard for me for when I did get into a band.”
― Vinnie Paul
“That was one thing I wanted to win because, my mom, she didn’t really know much else in music, but the Grammys were special to her.”
― Vinnie Paul
“My life has been one gigantic comic book, and on the other hand, it’s been one gigantic book of laurels and amazing accomplishments, and on the other hand, it’s been a book full of horror stories. It’s a big book.”
― Vinnie Paul
“A lot of young drummers have a tendency to really overplay. Sometimes simple is better, and the notes that aren’t played between the spaces are bigger than the notes that are.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I don’t ever have any bass in my monitors at all; I instead like to lock in with the guitar. I know the bass player has got to be locked in with the drummer, but to me, metal music is about the guitar and drums locking in and operating like a machine together. I played with my brother forever, and we were magically locked in together.”
― Vinnie Paul
“I wouldn’t want my funeral to be a sad, sappy thing.”
― Vinnie Paul
“Oh, man, the first concert I ever went to was Boston and Sammy Hagar, and it was absolutely incredible. I was just blown away by both bands, and, once again, it was my first concert, so that made it super, super special.”
― Vinnie Paul
Leave a Reply