As one of the founding members of
Pantera,
Rex Brown was an influential figure in hard rock and metal in the '90s and 2000s before launching a solo career in the 2010s.
Brown was born on July 27, 1964 in Graham, Texas. His first instrument was piano, and he learned to play ragtime tunes from his grandmother. As he grew into his teenage years,
Brown discovered hard rock, and became a major fan of
ZZ Top,
Def Leppard,
Led Zeppelin, and
Black Sabbath. When he was 12, he began learning to play bass guitar, and played in his high school's jazz band alongside drummer
Vinnie Abbott. In 1982,
Brown and
Abbott joined forces with
Vinnie's brother
Darrell Abbott and vocalist Terry Glaze to form a heavy metal band called
Pantera. It wasn't until 1990 that
Pantera enjoyed a commercial breakthrough with their first major-label album,
Cowboys from Hell, by which time
Phil Anselmo had become the band's lead singer, the Abbott brothers adopted the stage names
Vinnie Paul and
Dimebag Darrell, and
Brown began using his own name after being billed as Rex Rocker on the group's early independent LPs.
Brown would record four studio albums with
Pantera following their emergence on the national stage before the group broke up after the release of
Reinventing the Steel in 2000.
In 1998, during downtime from
Pantera,
Brown played bass on the album
Boggy Depot by
Alice in Chains guitarist
Jerry Cantrell, and he would later reunite with
Pantera vocalist
Anselmo in the group
Down, appearing on the albums
Down II (A Bustle in Your Hedgerow) (2002) and
Down III: Over the Under (2007) before parting ways with the group. In 2004,
Brown served as producer and instrumentalist on
Crowbar's album
Life's Blood for the Downtrodden, and in 2006, material
Brown recorded with
Dimebag Darrell,
Vinnie Paul, and outlaw country legend
David Allan Coe between 1999 and 2003 saw belated release under the title
Rebel Meets Rebel. In 2008,
Brown guested on the album
Inflikted by
Cavalera Conspiracy, led by former
Soulfly and
Sepultura vocalist
Max Cavalera.
Brown next co-founded the band
Kill Devil Hill, who released their self-titled debut album in 2012. In 2017, after a recording career that had already lasted over three decades,
Brown released his first solo album,
Smoke on This..., which found him playing guitar as well as bass. ~ Mark Deming