As Black Label Society prepare to unleash their tenacious 12th album Engines Of Demolition, Zakk Wylde reflects on losing his father figure Ozzy, why being a metal lifer is all he knows, and how “there’s always a new song to write…”
Last July featured both a highlight and a lowlight of Zakk Wylde’s life. On the first Saturday of the month, he did double-duty at Black Sabbath’s Back To The Beginning show in Aston, first saluting Sabbath with Pantera, and then taking his place stage left with Ozzy Osbourne, as the man of the hour made his emotional, heroic return to the stage for the final time, a stone’s throw from the street on which he grew up.
Less than four weeks later later, Zakk was back in Birmingham, doing an equally honourable task. Along with his son Jesse – himself with the middle names John Michael in the Double-O’s honour, and a man who also called him his godfather – the guitarist was a pallbearer carrying his friend to his final rest.
“He was one of those guys that was always just there, man,” Zakk says today. “Like Keith Richards or Lemmy. And I’m a fan of those guys, but I played with Ozzy. He was a huge part of my life.”
It needn’t be said that Ozzy was something of a father figure to Zakk. It was he who first discovered the guitarist in 1987, when Zakk was just 19, the start of a partnership that would yield some of the finest metal songs of the following decades, and a genuinely touching bond. He still affectionately calls Sharon “mom”. Though he hadn’t appeared with Ozzy for years, “If mom called and said they needed me, I’d be willing to drop everything and go.” At Back To The Beginning, it was a homecoming for him as well as Ozzy.
Straight after the funeral, Zakk returned to America, continuing on the road with Pantera, where he says memories of visiting the arenas with his old partner in crime came to him every night. “I remember one place, when I was there with Ozzy, the crowd was up to their knees in mud and water. I was remembering all that while I was up there with the fellas in Pantera.”
When that run ended, “I came back home, and I sat in our library room with the fireplace going. I just was thinking about Ozzy, because we had some of his books in there and everything like that. That’s when I wrote those lyrics.”
Those lyrics are for Ozzy’s Song, the final track on Black Label Society’s new album Engines Of Demolition. The music had actually been done a while, but the words were very much in the now. ‘I saw you yesterday before you went away / Remember when, never thinking it would end?’
When Zakk talks about Ozzy today, slurping his way through a gallon of coffee at Soho’s swanky Sanctum Hotel, it’s with love and affection and positivity. He says Back To The Beginning was like “a fuckin’ high school reunion or some shit”, and recalls watching his master’s final turn with Axl Rose, who’d been humbled by meeting The Prince Of Darkness for the first time ever at the show. Ozzy himself was made up at this. “He was like, ‘I can’t believe I just met Axl Rose!’”
Grinning fondly through his unruly beard that makes him look like an oak tree in a leather biker vest, he calls the show “the perfect send-off. I mean, Freddie Mercury didn’t even have that! You know what I mean?”
He grins a lot, actually, and most things he says come with a chuckle. In his drawl, the frequent swears become charming punctuation. He calls his bandmates – whatever band he's in, though in BLS' case referring to guitarist Dario Lorina, bassist John DeServio and drummer Jeff Fabb – as “the fellas”.
Between BLS, duties with Pantera, his Black Sabbath cover band Zakk Sabbath and “doing laundry and dishes and shit”, he’s also a spectacularly busy man. He fiddles constantly with a guitar customised with the album’s artwork, “So I remember what fuckin’ band I’m in today.”
There’s also an unstoppable energy to Zakk Wylde. Even the name Engines Of Demolition is drawn from an idea of not letting the worst of times drag you down. This, he says, is how his old mate approached life as well.
“The whole Engines Of Demolition [title], it adds to the mindset of strength, determination, being merciless, destroy, conquer, repeat,” he explains. “You know, you get lemons, so you make lemonade. What are we supposed to do? Well, let’s make some lemonade. If you have to do something you hate, just do it. Don’t complain. Do it and then go to the pub.
“Ozzy had that. Considering all the adversity that had ever happened to him, when Sabbath ended [after he was sacked in 1979], you understand how bummed out he was. He was like, ‘The fuck am I supposed to do now?’ And then he meets Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslakend, and they made Blizzard Of Ozz [1980] and Diary Of A Madman [1981]. And those weren’t just records. They made two template masterpieces for the whole generation.
“And whatever came up, he retained his goodness and had a heart of gold throughout it all. He was never bitter or jaded or an asshole, he always remained Ozzy.”
For Zakk, what matters in all this is camaraderie, being a team. It’s this that makes you unstoppable, he reckons, whether as a band, or when he was on his high school football team, before “music immediately put an end to that”.
“If you’re Black Label or you’re David Beckham, it’s about the camaraderie of the guys, the ‘us against the world’ thing,” he continues. “When you’re getting ready to go out there, it’s like you’re all paratroopers and you’re getting ready to jump out of the plane together, and you’re all counting on each other.
“I always think about that every time I look at the rest of the fellas before we go onstage. Every time I’d look at Ozz when we about to run out, I give a thumbs-up, and then our fearless leader would walk out onstage, and we’d follow. That camaraderie and that energy and that life force, that’s what you miss the most.”
Engines Of Demolition is very much a Black Label Society album. But it’s this quality that fills it with vibrant energy, the sound of people who just love riffs absolutely going for it and not being too clever about it. As ever, they’re counterpointed by mellower moments, “Like the difference between Sabbath’s Into The Void and The Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses.” It depends on how Zakk’s feeling when he picks up a guitar or a pen.
“You can never run out of ideas to write lyrics about,” he shrugs, as if he’s just been told being a rock’n’roller has a small window of time in which to work. “Ozzy’s Song, I would have never written those lyrics if Ozz hadn’t passed away. But then, Lord Humungus, that’s just about the dude in the mask from Mad Max!”
It could be about you…
“No, it’s just basically my little book report because I was watching Mad Max,” he laughs. “If I hadn’t named it Lord Humungus, probably no-one would know what it’s about. And then we rented these sumo suits for the video, so it’s even harder to tell, man!”
Lord Humungus himself would probably be on board with the never-say-die philosophy of Engines Of Demolition. Ozzy certainly would. And having been at this for almost 40 years now, this is all Zakk knows, but it’s also how he’s able to celebrate the good times, and get through the others. As he says himself, he wouldn’t know how to navigate the world otherwise.
“That’s just it, man. I’m always playing, always writing, always finding something to write about,” he grins again, finishing his coffee. “There’s always a new song to write. And when life gives you lemons, you fucking make lemonade, and you’ll get through it.”
Engines Of Demolition is due out on March 27 via Spinefarm. Catch Black Label Society live at Bloodstock in August.
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