If music was the magical elixir that got Zakk Wylde off the gridiron and onto a stage when he was a teenage linebacker, the guitar was the vehicle that got him to the dream gig as an Ozzy Osbourne sideman when Wylde was barely 20.
The next three-and-a-half decades have seen the Jersey native not only serve three tours of duty with Osbourne, but also carve out his own musical path via the bands Pride & Glory, Black Label Society and Zakk Sabbath. He’s also participated in high-profile collaborations running the gamut from being part of Steve Vai’s Generation Axe and a performer on the Experience Hendrix tour to being Pantera’s current touring guitarist.
Given his close relationship with the Osbourne family, Wylde was, of course, hit hard by the news of Ozzy Osbourne’s death in July of last year.
“Thank you for blessing the world with your kindness and greatness, Oz. You brought light into so many lives and made the world a better place,” Wylde said in an Instagram post. “You lived with the heart of a lion. I thank the good lord every day for blessing my life with you in it. I love you, Oz, beyond forever.”
It was only a couple of weeks before Osbourne’s death that Wylde participated in the Back to the Beginning charity concert, which also marked the final live performance of Osbourne and Black Sabbath.
The bill included Anthrax, Mastodon, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool and Slayer, and Wylde played with Pantera and as part of Osbourne’s solo set. While the guitarist now counts playing both sets and watching Black Sabbath’s headlining performance among the day’s highlights, in the moment, he was focused on the task at hand.
“The ‘Mama I’m Coming Home’ performance from that show was on Instagram, and [Pantera bassist] Rex [Brown] asked me what I was thinking when it was going on,” Wylde said. “I told him nothing, because we just wanted to make sure that everything sounded right. When you’re in it, you’re not thinking about it. If you’re playing in the Super Bowl, you’re playing the game. You’re not thinking about how big the game is or whatever. When you get up there, you approach it like another gig, whether you’re playing a club, a phone booth, Madison Square Garden or the show last night. You go up there and you don’t half-ass it because you’re playing before less people. You approach each gig the same.”
Even so, the show still evokes feelings for Wylde.
“A lot of it was like taking a trip down memory lane. It was great seeing everybody and all the other bands playing,” he said. “It was a really beautiful moment. The whole thing was pretty amazing because I had my kids out there. [My wife] Barb[aranne] was there and the kids, because Ozzy is godfather to our oldest son.”
With that event behind him, Wylde is back on the road now, doing double duty fronting Black Label Society while Zakk Sabbath plays an opening set. The tour will hit San Antonio’s Boeing Center at Tech Port on Friday, Sept. 4.
Founded in 2014, Zakk Sabbath is Wylde’s power trio dedicated to covering Black Sabbath, which currently features him on guitar and vocals with a rhythm section of bassist Rob “Blasko” Nicholson and Danzig/Queens of the Stone Age drummer Joey Castillo. While the band originated when Wylde and Nicholson were asked to participate in the Metal Allstars touring concept, the six-stringer’s Sabbath obsession dates back to 6th grade.
That’s when the then-11-year-old discovered the 1976 compilation We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll after his mom offered to buy him an album during a trip to the local mall. Suffice to say, the release left quite an impression on Wylde, who’s also an avowed Elton John fan.
“The running joke is that I say I was Catholic when I put the album on,” Wylde said with a laugh. “When I got halfway through the album, I turned into a full-blown Satanist, and then when I got done with the end of the record, I converted back to Catholicism just so I could thank God for creating Black Sabbath. When I first put it on, I was beyond terrified. After that, I really dug it and I just kept listening to it. After that, it was a matter of trying to collect all the albums.”
By the time Black Sabbath was on Wylde’s radar, Osbourne had departed the band for a solo career and had been replaced by the late Ronnie James Dio. The future Ozzy guitarist saw that Dio-led iteration of the band at Philadelphia’s Spectrum on The Mob Rules tour.
By that time, Wylde was practicing guitar 10 hours a day and learning the Sabbath and Osbourne catalogs along with those of other hard rock icons including Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. The self-driven woodshedding proved invaluable when Wylde eventually won the audition to replace Osbourne’s former guitarist Jake E. Lee.
While Wylde continues to be grateful for that opportunity, the 59-year-old shredder knows that music was always going to be part of his life, regardless of where he landed.
“Any jobs I ever had as a kid, it was a means to an end to buy a guitar or an amp,” Wylde said. “Whatever job I was working at, whether it was at the supermarket or mowing lawns, it didn’t bother me, because I knew I wasn’t going to be doing it the rest of my life. I was doing it to get from here to here and then I’d be good. I’m truly blessed. Me and [Black Label Society bassist] J.D. [DeServio] always talk about it. If I hadn’t been blessed with Ozzy in my life, me and J.D. would still have a cover band, own a music store, teach, have a wedding band and do our originals. Everything would be based around music paying the light bill.”
$114.48-$158.60, Friday, Sept. 4, Boeing Center at Tech Port, TK, Tk, TK.
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