If music was the magical elixir that got Zakk Wylde off the gridiron and on a stage when he was a teenage linebacker, then guitar was the vehicle that got him to the dream gig of stepping in as Ozzy Osbourne’s shredder when Wylde was barely 20. The next three-and-a-half decades have been quite the whirlwind for the Jersey native, who not only served on three tours of duty with Osbourne, but also carved out his own musical path via his own projects (Pride & Glory, Black Label Society, Zakk Sabbath) and high-profile collaborations spanning 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.
This year was bittersweet for Wylde. Given his close relationship with the Osbourne family, Wylde enjoyed the ride of participating in the recent Back To the Beginning charity concert, which also marked the final live performance of Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath and was held on July 5 of this year. Roughly two weeks later on July 22, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer passed away at the age of 76. The earth-shattering loss wound up having the 58-year-old shredder issue the followingstatement on his Instagram account.
“THANK YOU FOR BLESSING THE WORLD w/YOUR KINDNESS & GREATNESS OZ – YOU BROUGHT LIGHT INTO SO MANY LIVES & MADE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE – YOU LIVED w/THE HEART OF A LION – I THANK THE GOOD LORD EVERY DAY FOR BLESSING MY LIFE w/YOU IN IT –
I LOVE YOU OZ
BEYOND FOREVER
ZAKK
XOXO”
Before Osborne’s passing, Wylde chatted about his appearing on a bill that included Anthrax, Mastodon, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool and Slayer. For his part,Wylde played with Pantera and as part of Osborne’s solo set. And while he admitted in hindsight that highlights included both plugging in for both of those sets in addition to taking in Black Sabbath’s headlining set on the side of the stage alongside Axl Rose and Del James, in real time, he was more 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 explained. “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.”
He added, “A lot of it was like taking a trip down memory lane. It was great seeing everybody and all the other bands playing. 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 the biggest gig of the calendar year behind him, Wylde is splitting his time on the road between Panteraand Zakk Sabbath. With the former, it’s a special honor given the relationship he’s had with the band dating back to his first meeting Pantera’s late guitarist Dimebag Darrell while sharing a bill at the 1994 Monsters of Rock Castle Donington festival.
“I remember [Pride & Glory drummer] Brian [Tichy] was playing Pantera for me and I thought they were amazing,” Wylde recalled. “It was all about the aggression and power of what they were playing. I remember first meeting Dime at Castle Donnington in ’94. That’s when we became friends after that. We’d drunk phone call each other and hang out. Whenever we saw each other after that, it was always a great time. Dime was just the sweetest guy on the planet.”
With Dimebag Darrell the victim of an onstage murder by a deranged concertgoer back in 2004, Wylde was understandably devastated by his late friend’s death. When he was asked by Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown to slide into Darrell’s slot on guitar back in 2022, Wylde was both eager and honored to do it. For this current tour, Pantera is on the road with Amon Amarthand a number of bands signed to Anselmo’s HousecoreRecords imprint. Returning to the road with Pantera is a role Wylde doesn’t take lightly, particularly when it comes to the legacy of the band.
‘Meeting Dime back then and becoming friends over the years was incredible,” Wylde recalled. “Being up there now all of us—me, Charlie [Benante], Phil and Rex—get to honor Dime and Vinnie [Paul] every night. It’s a beautiful thing, because it’s a community. You have the Panterafaithful who saw the band playing before eight people in an Irish pub. They you have all the younger kids that never got a chance to see Pantera back in the say and might only know about them because of an older brother or sister who saw them. And now they can hear that music live again.”
As for Zakk Sabbath, Wylde’s power trio is a Sabbath cover band founded in and it 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 has its origins when Wylde and Nicholson were asked to participate in Metal Allstars, a touring concept featuring various metal musicians, Wylde’s Sabbath obsession dates back to sixth-grade. It was at this time the then 11-year-old bought the 1976 compilation We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Rollafter his mom offered to buy him an album during a trip to the local mall. Suffice it to say, it left quite an impression on the 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 left to go solo and was replaced by the late Ronnie James Dio. It was this iteration of the band the future Ozzy guitarist saw at Philadelphia’s Spectrum on The Mob Rules Tour. By this time, Wylde was practicing guitar 10 hours a day, learning the Sabbath and Osbourne canon along with other hard rock icons including Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. This self-driven woodshedding proved invaluable when Wylde eventually won the audition to replace Osborne’s former guitarist Jake E. Lee. While this opportunity is one he continues to be grateful for to this day, the New Jersey native knows that music was always going to be part of his life equation 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.”
Zakk Sabbath will be appearing on November 23 at Warsaw Concerts, 261 Driggs Ave., Greenpoint. For more information, visit warsawconcerts.com or call 929-441-3114.
