(AP) -- "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, who was fatally shot during a performance, was a frenetic, ear-shattering guitarist whose riffs for Pantera and more recently Damageplan were a staple of heavy metal music. He was 38.
Abbott was shot to death as he took the stage Wednesday with Damageplan and began to play the first song of the concert at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio.
Three other people also were fatally shot before a police officer shot to death the gunman.
The deaths shook the heavy metal music industry as colleagues reeled from the news and fans flooded Web sites to share their grief.
"This is insane and this is beyond travesty," Killswitch Engage frontman and former Damageplan tour partner Howard Jones told MTV. "This is beyond anything I've ever heard. This shouldn't happen in or outside of the rock and metal community. He will be missed and mourned as a person, as a musician, and as a friend."
Rob Blasko Nicholson, the former Ozzy Osbourne bassist, told the music channel Abbott was a legend.
"I'm speechless," he said. "This is totally unreal."
"When you think of '90s heavy metal or hard rock, Pantera is one of these seminal bands. They are quoted today as influences by many bands," said Tom Calderone, MTV's executive vice president. "Hard rock has lost a legendary guitar player."
Abbott and his brother, former Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul, produced Damageplan's debut album, "New Found Power," which was released in February. Other band members are vocalist Patrick Lachman and bassist Bob Zilla.
"Damageplan carries on the tradition Pantera started, the ... hell-raising tradition we were all about," Vinnie Paul Abbott told The Dallas Morning News in October. "We do play some Pantera songs. Me and Dime wrote them, and we feel like we have the right to play them. But the focus is on Damageplan."
Born on August 20, 1966, in Dallas, Darrell Abbott and his brother were introduced to music by their father, country songwriter Jerry Abbott, who owned a recording studio. Although Abbott grew up around country music, he often said he gravitated toward rock music and was influenced by the likes of Tony Iommi, Ace Frehley, Eddie Van Halen and the late Randy Rhodes.
The Abbott brothers and bassist Rex Rocker formed Pantera in 1982. Then Abbott went by the name "Diamond Darrell." Abbott later began to use "Dimebag" and was often referred to as "Dime" by fans and friends.
Pantera's early music leaned more toward hard rock. Joined in 1987 by singer Phil Anselmo, the band began to develop a heavier sound. After releasing a few independent albums, Pantera signed with Atlantic Records in 1990. It was also the period when Abbott came into his own as a guitar player, developing his heavy, frenetic sound that can first be heard on the 1990 album "Cowboys from Hell" and on the 1992 standout "Vulgar Display of Power." It was followed up by 1994's "Far Beyond Driven."
Pantera's manager Kim Zide-Davis, who worked with Abbott 1994 to 2003, was overwhelmed by the news of his death. She told the AP she often told the guitarist he was "a living cartoon character."
"He would do things that you wouldn't believe a real person was capable of," she said.
She said there was a sweet and caring side of Abbott that many people never saw.
"Everything you saw from him was real. That was who he was," she said. "He lived and unfortunately died by his guitar. What you saw on stage was his enjoyment."
Abbott and his brother left Pantera in 2003 and formed Damageplan. In recent years, he also made recording appearances on Nickleback's "The Long Road" and with one of his influences, KISS' Ace Frehley.
Dozens of messages were posted to the Dallas band's Web site after the shootings.
"This is the worst day in metal history," one posting read.
"The metal world feels your pain," another wrote
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- It looked like something out of a macabre heavy-metal video: The lights dimmed in the smoke-filled nightclub, the rock band Damageplan launched into its first thunderous riffs, and then a man in a hooded sweatshirt ran the length of the stage and opened fire, shooting the lead guitarist at least five times in the head.
In just minutes, the gunman had killed three others with his silver pistol before being shot to death by a police officer.
The rampage Wednesday night stunned the heavy metal world and left police searching for answers about what set the gunman off.
The slain guitarist, "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, 38, was the driving force behind the rock band Pantera, and police are looking into reports from witnesses that the gunman was a fan irate that the hugely influential group broke up.
Some of the 500 people packed into the club to see Abbott's new band initially thought that the gunman was an excited fan or that the shootings were part of the show.
"I figured it was another fan wanting to jump off the stage and crowd surf," said Brian Kozicki, the club's lighting designer. "I think he knew he wasn't going to get out and he was going to take down as many people as he could."
Police identified the gunman as Nathan Gale, 25, who listened to Pantera music to psyche himself up before football games and would often hang out at a tattoo parlor and make a pest of himself by talking to customers about music, the manager of the tattoo shop said.
"We may never know a motive for this, unless he left a note," Sgt. Brent Mull said.
A tattoo artist at the studio, Bo Toler, said Gale was there before the show and asked about having the studio order tattoo equipment for him. Toler told him no, and Gale got angry and started yelling.
"Last night was actually the first time I noticed his temper," Toler said. "After the argument we had he kind of walked out with an attitude. He didn't even say goodbye."
Also killed in the shootings were Erin Halk, 29, a club employee who loaded band equipment; fan Nathan Bray, 23; and Jeff Thompson, 40, a bodyguard for the band.
Two others were hospitalized. The nature of their injuries was not disclosed.
The guitarist's brother, Vinnie Paul Abbott, the drummer for Damageplan, was rushed to safety offstage and tearfully tried to learn his brother's fate from officers who had little information in the confusion.
Ozzy Osbourne: 'Beside myself with grief'
With his frenetic, ear-splitting guitar riffs, Dimebag Abbott created an aggressive sound for Pantera and attracted a cult following in the early 1990s. The band was nominated for Grammys in 1995 and 2001. The Abbott brothers left Pantera last year and released Damageplan's debut album, "New Found Power," in February. (Dimebag profile)
"I'm absolutely beside myself with grief. I can't for the life of me understand why someone would do this," said heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, who often toured with Pantera.
Lines were deep Wednesday night at the Alrosa Villa club -- a popular venue for heavy metal for 30 years -- to buy T-shirts for Damageplan.
As the lights dimmed, club security was trying to catch up to a man in a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey jersey over his sweatshirt, who some witness said was seen jumping the 8-foot wooden fence to enter the club. Others said he must have come from an open door behind the stage. The club has no metal detectors and employs unarmed security guards.
The tall, heavyset man eventually climbed onstage, as many Alrosa headbangers do.
"At first we thought it was a hoax, and then when he fired again we knew it was real," said Jeremy Spencer, 16.
Kozicki, the lighting director, brought up the house lights and ducked under his control table, where he called 911 on his cell phone. Several calls followed, with one male caller saying: "He's on stage right now. He's got a gun. ... He just shot again." Fans surged toward the doors in fear.
Kozicki peeked from his table to see the gunman holding a man in a headlock. Police said the gunman appeared ready to shoot the hostage, who managed to duck just enough for Officer James D. Niggemeyer to take aim and kill Gale with a shotgun.
Makeshift memorial of flowers, beer
All day Thursday, fans left flowers and containers of beer by a boulder at the parking lot entrance, including a six-pack of Heineken with a marijuana bud tucked into the cardboard case.
About 200 people gathered for a vigil in the nightclub's parking lot Thursday night. At one point, a naked young man stood in the middle of the street, arms raised, cursing Gale. He was tackled and arrested by police.
Gale, who was an offensive lineman on a semi-pro football team, had a minor police record in Marysville, near Columbus, but was not considered a trouble maker.
At the Bears Den Tattoo Studio in Marysville, Gale made people feel uncomfortable by staring at them and forcing them into a conversation, manager Lucas Bender said.
"He comes in here and likes to hang out when he's not wanted," Bender said. "The most pointless conversations."
The shootings came on the 24th anniversary of perhaps the most well-known assassination of a rock star -- that of former Beatle John Lennon outside his New York City apartment in 1980.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (CNN) -- A 25-year-old man stormed the stage at a heavy-metal rock concert Wednesday night, shooting and killing Pantera founder and Damageplan guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three others before a police officer shot and killed him, Columbus police said.
On Thursday, police identified the suspect as Nathan Gale of nearby Marysville. A spokesman said police had no information about a motive or possible link to the band.
"Right now we don't see any connection at all, but that could change," Columbus police Sgt. Brent Mull said. "Unless he left a note or there's something else, we may never know the motive."
At least two people also were wounded in the attack, which occurred shortly after Damageplan began its performance at the Alrosa Villa nightclub on Columbus' north side.
James Niggemeyer of the Columbus police was nearby and responded to a call about the shooting. He slipped in a back door, and someone directed him to the stage, Mull said.
"We got the call about 10:18, and by 10:20 he was in there," Mull said, adding that "it was probably less than a minute before he engaged" the suspect, who was holding a hostage.
"The officer was able to strategically gun this guy down before he was able to kill his hostage," Mull said. "It appeared he was about to kill his hostage before this officer put an end to it."
Mull said the hostage was unharmed and that Niggemeyer's action saved lives.
"The officer ran in without any backup ... obviously put himself at risk," he said. "The community has a real hero here."
Abbott, 38, and his brother, Vinnie Paul Abbott, 40, formed Damageplan after the breakup of Pantera -- a group they formed in the 1980s. Their father is Jerry Abbott, a country and western songwriter and producer. (Dimebag profile)
Pantera's third release, "Far Beyond Driven," debuted at No. 1 in 1994. The band was nominated for Grammys in 1995 and 2001.
The band dissolved at the end of a tour last year -- amid much speculation on fan Web sites that the split was not amicable. The two brothers, however, played down any bitterness during an April 1 interview with CNN.
"It just kind of got narrow-minded, and we just wanted to bust it open a little bit more and just broaden it up, go for the Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors instead of the one, you know what I mean?" Darrell Abbott said.
Vinnie Paul Abbott said: "We had 13 years of really, really good success. And basically the singer wanted to move on, do some other things and really lost his focus."
At least 1 audience member among deaths
At least one of those killed Wednesday night -- Nathan Bray, 23 -- was a member of the audience. Mull identified another deceased victim as Erin Halk, 29, although it was unclear if he was a concertgoer or an employee.
Mull did not identify the remaining fatality. Abbott was the only band member confirmed dead "at this point," he said.
One of the wounded is in critical condition, the other hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Two others were hurt and treated at the scene, although the nature of their injuries was unclear.
Mull said homicide detectives are checking possible amateur video shot inside the club during the shooting but said they weren't sure if the footage would be useful.
Police roped off a huge area of the nightclub's parking lot as 60 detectives questioned hundreds of witnesses. Police brought in buses to keep the witnesses warm as they waited.
Witnesses described the gunman as a heavyset man, wearing a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey jersey.
Calvin Bota said he saw the shooting from the mosh pit in front of the stage shortly after the band began playing.
"Somebody came -- I don't know where they came from, out of the audience or whatnot -- but they come onto [the] stage and ... he shot the guitarist at first, fired a couple of other shots and then he hid behind the stage a little bit," Bota told CNN affiliate WSYX.
"Everybody started scattering, you know, there's mayhem everywhere. And then a police officer came into the building, you know, came in professional with his gun raised, and then he proceeded to shoot the guy."
Mull said Columbus police have responded to previous incidents at the club, including several he characterized as minor as well as a shooting in the parking lot. He said he was unaware of the club's security practices, except that it had no surveillance camera or metal detector.
"They are in charge of their own security inside," he said. "There are times they hire off-duty Columbus police for parking lot security -- we are prohibited by law from working inside a liquor establishment -- but last night there were none."
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