Black Label Society – Zakk Wylde

When I think of the word Rockstar, Zakk Wylde is someone who instantly comes to mind. From his first shot at fame playing guitar for Ozzy Osbourne at the ripe age of 19, Wylde has gone on to take his band, Black Label Society, to astonishing heights whilst gaining worldwide notoriety as one of the best guitar players around. 2009 was to be a year of up’s and down’s for the Black Label Society front-man, from health problems to parting ways with Ozzy Osbourne. During his visit to Sydney to promote the new Graveyard Disciple guitar Wylde took the time to talk some shit with Metal Obsession regarding current affairs, upcoming albums/tours and the importance of maintaining a fully functional libido. Upon concluding the interview it is clear that Zakk Wylde is anything but a Rock Star, he is simply a hilarious, charismatic and genuine man who loves nothing more than a good shoulder rub and a blow job.

Zakk Wylde: Holly! Holly, this is just in, Tiger Woods has cheated on his wife.
Metal Obsession: I know I was just watching it on the news.

ZW: Oh my goodness, another one bites the dust, he is not human, he is not after all the perfect species.
MO: I know it’s terrible isn’t it.

ZW: Oh my goodness, Michael Jordan bites the dust and now it’s Tiger, oh my they couldn’t resist the power.
MO: I was just watching the old bags on The View talking about it, the poor guy.

ZW: Oh my god, my wife’s sitting over here with a butcher knife right now (laughs). (To Barbaranne) Wait what am I going to be babe? Did you hear this?
MO: What’s that?
ZW: She said ‘you try that buddy boy and you’ll be six feet under’ (laughs).

MO: (laughs) So how’s it going?
ZW: Everything is going good, we’re just getting ready to hang out with the rest of the Australian chapter over here. We just got back from hanging out with the Singapore chapter and the rest of the China chapter and Japan. So we are just going to knock out this guitar thing today, you know we’re just doing all the promotion for the Gibson Epiphone stuff and then get back and start firing up the new record, I guess in January or February. In March we’ll mix it, April the promotional tour then obviously fire up the Black Label machine for global domination, either May or June we start touring again.

MO: Good to hear. Well coming from someone who doesn’t know a great deal about guitars can you give me a dumbed down version of what’s so great about this new Epiphone Graveyard Disciple guitar you are promoting?
ZW: Well I talked to Gibson about 10 years ago about doing guitars but then they ended up doing it a little while after that. I remember when I was walking through the factory one day I picked up one of the Les Pauls and it had just come out, been cut, and I said ‘it’d be killer if you just kept it like this’ and didn’t even put stain on it or lacquer, paint or nothing. All you hear is just bare wood, so nothing gets in the way of the sound but the guitar. So the only thing that’s on this guitar, there’s no binding no nothing,  obviously you have my Zakk Wylde pick-ups, 81-85 EMG , but the back of the guitar is all tampered out so obviously it’s going to give you more high end on the guitar. But for anybody that ever complained about the Les Paul being too heavy, they should definitely check this guitar out.

MO: So are you down in Australia for long, any plans for sight-seeing etc ?
ZW: Nah man I never get any chance. When we were in China we got a chance to see the Forbidden City and the Great Wall and stuff like that but most of the time everyone thinks you’re on fricken vacation when you’re out here. The other day when we were in China I started doing TV at like 6 in the morning and then we ended up playing a prison in Singapore at like 6 at night, so all day long you’re doing something. I don’t really have any time to get out to the gay brothels and just swing on poles. But I don’t mind it anyways because if we are going to be here I would rather be working.

MO: The last time you were out here was with Ozzy Osbourne and a few years before that with Black Label Society, can you tell us a few of the things you liked most about touring Australia?
ZW: Well you know I have got a bunch of buddies from here now and every time I come down here I always have a blast, of what I do remember (laughs). Well now I’m not hitting the sauce since I had those blood clots.

MO: I know that sucks, how’s it all going staying off the booze?
ZW: Well I mean it’s like you don’t need AA for that, he goes ‘well Zakk you know, let’s just put it this way, if you are on these blood thinners, if you’re going to be hitting the sauce you have to watch when you’re pissing or crapping, you’re either going to be pissing or shitting, which is pretty much not a good sign, because otherwise you start bleeding internally and I go ‘I could think of better things to do’. Then I go ‘does it feel like getting a shoulder rub and a blow job?’ and he said ‘it’s not really enjoyable bro’ (laughs).

MO: Going back a few years when BLS first came out you guys did a signing in Melbourne, myself and a few friends lined up for 3-4 hours in the rain only to be told when we got to the front of the line that they weren’t letting anyone else in. We went and knocked on the window and you turned towards us, raised your fist and nodded. The point I am making is that it seemed like such a genuine gesture of respect, how do you manage to stay so down to earth and connected to your fans when you have reached the level of fame you have?
ZW: Well my whole thing is either you’re born an asshole or you’re one of the guys. It’s like when I had this blood clot thing I was in the doctors, it had gone through my heart and everything and he goes ‘just one of them and you should be dead, you just had three of them dude’ and I looked at Barbaranne and go ‘see now I can torture you’ and she goes ‘Zakk how does it feel when the doctor says you could have died’!  But it’s like when I had my kids and everything , the babies, it’s just like ‘mannnn’ and some other guys are just like ‘dude it is awesome, they change your life man’ so I go ‘well now I’m just cleaning up shit and piss all day. What do you mean?’ but now I see life a different way now, this is the best thing that ever happened to me, getting these blood clots because it made me realise how much I enjoy life, it’s just like ‘dude, I thank the good lord every fucking day for everything I fucking got. Put it this way I didn’t have to be that much of a tool, I didn’t have to rape 50 people and fucking stab them repeatedly, then rob a couple banks before I go ‘it was 18 years I spent in fucking Rahway state prison, that was the best thing that ever happened to me’ and it’s just like ‘dude are you that much of a tool, just go fucking croak anyway you know what I mean’ (laughs).

MO: Well at least it’s given you some good perspective on life then, that’s a positive that’s come out of the whole experience.
ZW: Yeah, put it this way I think the glass is always half full, I’m still breathing, my dick still works.

MO: Well that’s the most important thing after all.
ZW: If that thing stops working Barbaranne is fucking gone.

MO: So do you want to tell us a bit about the studio you are building near your home in Southern California?
ZW: Oh yeah well we got the compound of the house and this will be the Black Label bunker. So you know it’s like a state of the art fucking studio the guys are putting in there so you know you figure after all the years, when you record a record the amount of money that you put in to making a record. Any studio costs usually around $1-1200 a day, so you figure if you’re in there for 70 days, you’re in there for 2-3 months, mixing and all that you’re looking at right there already $70-75,000 thousand dollars gone right there, paying the people that are already in there, the engineers are like $500 a day, so you’re already up to about $150,000 then the cost for the tapes , eating in there , you’re looking at minimum of $200,000 to make a fucking record. So this way you can just put the money in your pocket and it’s not like I’m going to stop making records anytime soon but because I have that there I can do movie soundtracks, I can do everything right there in the studio.

MO: On the topic of movies, you have a role in an upcoming movie named ‘Bones’.
ZW: It’s pretty cool, whenever I get asked to do these movie things I always have a good time anyways, like that Sons of Anarchy, when I get back I think I’m going to do a reading for that. There’s a whole bunch of things going on right now that I’ll be doing, we’re going to be doing this Black Label book, like a Black Label tour survival guide, so you can imagine the fucking comedy that’s going to be in that.

MO: So do you want to tell us a bit about the recording process for Black Label when you’re in the studio, writing new material etc?
ZW: Well everything just fires up as soon as we get in the studio , like I don’t sit around the house writing or when we are out on the road, we have done that before with stuff that we put on Hangover Music , I think we had like 5 days off and I was like ‘dude let’s just go into the studio and record some fucking acoustic shit’ you know, something different than what we’re doing cause we were doing the heavy stuff for so long, so we have done that before. Usually when we are on the road we are in ‘road mode’ so you’re doing a show every night and sometimes the last thing you want to hear after a while is fucking music. It’s like watching porn all day long then coming home to the wife and she’s like ‘come on lets go’ and you say ‘are you kidding me? I’ve got like 5 shots of Novocaine in my dick right now , I can’t feel from the waist down, stick a fucking broom up my ass and I won’t know what the hell is going on’ but the whole thing is when we get in the studio everything sounds great and it inspires you to want to fucking play.

MO: So nothing is really pre-planned, it’s just sort of spontaneous.
ZW: No I don’t go, ‘this one’s going to be real heavy, it’s like a box of crackerjacks, you never know what you are going to get till you get in there. Cause the minute we start doing the heavy stuff that will be cool and then once that starts getting boring ‘dude let’s do some mellow shit’ and I’ll sit behind a piano, then when that gets boring ill sit behind an acoustic and its back into the heavy shit so you just record whatever the hell you want and its always spontaneous.

MO: Do you think you will ever do something along the lines of Book of Shadows again now that you have a bit more time because you are not playing with Ozzy anymore?
ZW: Well Hangover Music was pretty much mellow music all the way from the beginning to the end but I love the mellow stuff as much as I love the heavy stuff. Especially the older I’m getting it just lends itself to doing a whole Neil Young unplugged kind of thing (laughs), so I’m not jumping around like a fucking jackass, it already takes me fucking 20 minutes to roll out of bed as it is.

MO: Aw that’s sad.
ZW: Between the broken back and the broken knees, fucking shoulders blown out, necks killing me, two hernia operations, blood thinners, at least my dick still works, that’s the bright side (laughs).

MO: Well it sounds like you are just going to keep playing music until you physically cant anymore right?
ZW: Well yeah, it’s just like with Barbaranne, I’ll just keep going until my schlong doesn’t work and I’ll have to get patio furniture and just stick it in her.

MO: So while we are waiting for the new Black Label album you’ve released some re-issues of some of the older material yeah?
ZW: Yeah, it’s pretty much just to hold everybody over until we bring out the new one.

MO: So is there much bonus material or just better sound quality etc?
ZW: Well obviously we remaster them sound quality wise, but they put all the bonus tracks on all of them, then there’s behind the scenes footage , all that goofy ass stuff, the videos and all the crap that goes with that stuff .

MO: So when you have finished up the album you will definitely be returning to Australia?
ZW: Yeah, without a doubt.

MO: Lastly, if the opportunity never came about to play with Ozzy which catapulted you to where you are now, what do you think you would be doing?
ZW: I’d just be a beer tester, that would be about it. I’d be sitting in an Irish pub about now (laughs), beer would just explode out of my body.

MO: Well as long as it involves alcohol it will do.
ZW: Exactly.

MO: Alright, well I won’t keep you much longer because you’re heading out to your signing soon, but I’m glad to hear that everything is fine, that you’re doing well and I look forward to seeing you guys when you come back out again.
ZW: Appreciate it Holly, tell the Australian chapter to keep bleeding black and we can’t wait to see them again.

MO: Of course I will! Thanks very much.
ZW: Alright Holly see you.

Band: Black Label Society
Date: 3/12/2009
Origin: USA
www.blacklabelsociety.net
www.zakkwylde.com

Interviewer: Holly McBride
Interviewee: Zakk Wylde (Vocals and Guitar)