Rex Brown: Hard work paid off for Pantera

Former Pantera bassist Rex Brown says the band’s success was down to hard work and came at a time when the rock scene was changing.

And he credits word of mouth as a major contributing factor to their rise to success in the early 90s as they didn’t have a lot of support from MTV.

He tells Do You Know Jack?: “Everything was kind of changing at that point. All the hair bands and all that kind of stuff. Everybody was kind of stale.

“If you think about just songs in general, there were some pretty good songs that the look took away from all that. We just came around at a time that we saw a crack and we slipped through it, and we put a lot of hard work and did a lot of touring.

“We toured non-stop. We had 32 days off on the Cowboys From Hell tour, and that was the total time period between 18 months on, and then directly back in the studio.”

He continues: “We just came in at a time when people needed us. We would stay out in the parking lots until six in the morning signing autographs. I think that really made a huge difference between us and other bands that were just, ‘Go on the bus and bye.’ You meet one guy, and he goes, ‘Man, those guys were cool.’ And he tells another friend, and it gets around like that.

“We were the biggest underground band of the 90s. We didn’t have a lot of MTV – we didn’t have any radio play. Now you go to any sporting event and hear one of our songs at a football game, which is great, but they wouldn’t touch us back then.

“So we just toured our butts off and worked really, really hard.”

Brown’s Kill Devil Hill released their second album Revolution Rise in 2013. They split with drummer Vinny Appice last year, with Brown insisting there was no fall-out. Johnny Kelly took over behind the kit and Brown says they’ll start work on new material in the coming weeks.

Scott has spent 37 years in newspapers, magazines and online as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. Scott joined our news desk in 2014 before moving into e-commerce in 2020. Scott maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, highlights deals, and reviews headphones, speakers, earplugs and more. Over the last 12 years, Scott has written more than 11,500 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog. He's previously written for publications including IGN, Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald, covering everything from news and features, to tech reviews, video games, travel and whisky. Scott's favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Cocteau Twins, Drab Majesty, Marillion and Rush.