“The doctor told me if I carried on drinking at the same pace I’d start bleeding out of every orifice”: How Zakk Wylde kicked the booze and saved his own life

Zakk Wylde was one of metal’s great hellraiser. But by 2013, this ‘Viking road hog” had quit the booze on doctor’s orders. As his band, Black Label Society, prepared to released their Unblackened unplugged album and DVD, Metal Hammer found a man who didn’t need alcohol or substances to get his kicks any more.

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“He told me if I carried on at the same pace I’d start bleeding out of my dick, my asshole, my eyes, my nose – fucking everywhere, man. Just bleeding out of every orifice and never stopping.”

It’s 9am on a beautiful early autumn morning in California. The temperature is in the mid-70s, there’s a slight breeze and at home Zakk Wylde is roaring with laughter as he relives the moment he told his doctor about his fondness for beer. He’s recalling the moment that, as he puts it, “the pub doors closed on me forever” not with horror or even nostalgia for his drinking days but with the type of garrulous good humour that has come to define him.

“I’d been put on these blood-thinning tablets for the bloodclots that I had in my leg and which then spread,” he recalls of the time in 2009 when it looked like the big man was going to be felled by illness like a Giant Redwood. “When the doctor found out that I was drinking a case and a half or maybe two cases of beer a day and then going out with the fellas and drinking Crown Royal whisky all night long. He was a little taken aback. He was like, [matter-of-fact voice] ‘Zakk, put it this way, if you keep drinking at that pace on these tablets I hope they have some good-looking women in the pub because they’ll be the last thing you’ll ever see!’ He gave me two options. I could either stop the booze or I could give him $20,000 and pretend he was my rehab guy. So I saved the money and stopped drinking. The fellas were very understanding: they lost a drinking buddy but they gained a designated driver.”

Zakk’s life-threatening health scares have been well documented but far from finding a more reflective and earnest man repeating 12-step programme mantras about ‘giving oneself over to a higher power and making amends for past errors’ this morning we find… well, pretty much exactly the same Zakk Wylde we’ve always known and loved. The Viking road hog of modern metal whose presence, back catalogue, bear hugs, big fuck-off signature metal chain and entire life is larger and louder than most is unchanged by sobriety. There are no pious revelations about past sins, just the same straight-talking guy with a hard-on for living.

After years of mayhem – and for a man rumoured to having been ousted from Ozzy Osbourne’s band for being a little out there (more of which in a moment), the stories surrounding Zakk’s drinking antics are legendary – there was no moment of clarity and no hitting rock bottom. No waking-up-in-a-gay-porno-theatre-with-your-pants-down epiphany. Just the very real threat of bleeding to death from his bell-end.

“People say to me, ‘Oh dude, every day without drinking is a struggle!’” he laughs again. “And I say ‘I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about!’ Man, I’ve got so much shit going on in my life that it really doesn’t bother me. I can’t complain anyway. I had a really good run at drinking, and when I drank I made sure I always had a good time, wherever I was. I could just sit quietly in a bar and talk to anyone about sports, politics, religion, music, anything and that was fun for me. It didn’t have to be chaotic. But drinking never affected my writing or recording anyway. People sometimes ask me now if I want to go and talk to groups about the dangers of drinking and I have to say no because my advice would always be ‘Dude, have a fucking blast while you can!’ I mean, just imagine the type of advice we’d dish out at Black Label Rehab: ‘Dude, chill out on the cocaine and booze – that’s it. Fucking simple!’”

Perhaps the only major difference to Zakk’s life today is having to keep taking the same blood-thinning tablets and, 10 years after the release of arguably their career creative high, The Blessed Hellride, finally feeling comfortable enough for Black Label Society to release a live acoustic album and DVD, Unblackened.

“We’d done the Boozed, Broozed And Broken Boned and The European Invasion – Doom Troopin’ Live films but I felt like a lot of our more mellow tunes never see the light of day,” says Zakk. “Or there might be a glimpse of them during a live show but then it’s game on again. So now felt like the perfect opportunity to show the side of Black Label that people don’t always see. I mean, as much as I love listening to Led Zeppelin doing Black Dog I love hearing them play Going To California too. I listen to everything anyway – from Sabbath and Dimebag to Ministry and Meshuggah, but then also Sarah McLachlan and Neil Young or Albert Lee and John McLaughlin. We’ve always had the mellow side to our music and now that people are getting a chance to see it, it opens new opportunities.”

Some people would find the idea of metal’s steak-sizzling, iron-driving ,alpha male ‘going acoustic’ a little… er… how do we put this? Oh yeah. Soft.

“Ah but it doesn’t matter what band it is, you can always do an acoustic version, whether it’s black metal, death metal, classic rock or whatever,” he says. “And you can retain the heaviness – or if not heaviness then there can still be power there. Neil Young’s Unplugged is amazing, obviously The Allman Brothers too. Or hearing Elton John with a string section behind him. That can be powerful. If the music has depth then it will stand up. Some pop music just doesn’t have that depth but am I going to get worked up about Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga? Fuck no. It’s a generational thing and whatever happens in pop music there’s always great fucking music being made. I have pals, grown fucking men, who get all bent out of shape about Justin Bieber. Who gives a fuck?! All the ass-kicking music I like still exists. I couldn’t name you one single Justin Bieber song. Take That? I don’t give a fuck, don’t know anything about them except perhaps that I’d like to be a smidgen of success on their fucking assholes. That’s what I aspire to, man.”

Still living in the same ranch house-cum-compound in the mountainous area of Castaic Lake that he and his wife, four kids and seven dogs have lived in for years – and which also houses his home studio the Black Vatican – Zakk is a man at ease with his status as the rock star favoured by barflies and bikers, wrestlers and wranglers, metallers and meth-heads. As we speak it is almost 25 years to the day since the release of No Rest For The Wicked, his debut recording as Ozzy’s guitarist and wingman and the album that marked the beginning of this strange, wonderful journey.

“Wow,” says Zakk after a rare moment of silence. “Wow. Really? I know for a fact I would not be talking to you today without that album. I guess all I can compare that time to is someone like David Beckham growing up being a Manchester United fan and then finding himself playing for them. I mean, I loved Sabbath and then Randy Rhoads, then I was in the stands and then suddenly I’m in the studio wearing the fucking uniform, the team strip. It’s still mindblowing. I’m beyond blessed.”

Zakk’s playing debut with the Double-O had come the previous year when he was famously thrown in at the deep end with a show at notorious West London prison, Wormwood Scrubs. He laughs, recalling: “There was a bunch of lifers in there who were never getting out and I was the closest thing to Farrah Fawcett or Pamela Anderson that these fellas were going to be seeing any time soon. Pretty intense.”

More recently – as seen on Black Label’s new DVD – there’s footage of Zakk returning to a prison to visit inmates.

“I have a buddy who’s a prison guard so he got me in there to jam with some of the guys in there who were close to being released,” he explains. “A bunch of them were Ozzy fans and it was cool to shoot the shit with guys who are trying to turn their lives around.”

For all of BLS’s successes – 2010 album Order Of The Black was their first to go Top 5 in the US – Zakk’s name is still (and perhaps always will be) invariably preceded by the epithet “Ozzy’s guitarist”, despite having been given his P45 and carriage clock back in 2009 when he was replaced by Gus G. Rumours abounded at the time about behind the scenes dissatisfactions – about Ozzy claiming that BLS now sounded too much like him, Sharon trying to persuade Zakk to enter rehab and the man himself confused as to whether he was still in Ozzy’s band. But if there is any lingering rancour then Zakk does not show it. 

“I loved every second of playing with Oz and I thank the lord for everything I’ve got as a result – in the middle of the day and before I go to bed, too,” he says. “I love Oz, man. Regardless of the music, he’s godfather to my son so we’re in each other’s lives and we recently saw Oz and Mom [Sharon Osbourne] in New York City. I caught a couple of the Sabbath shows too and they sound fucking amazing. They changed the game. Our relationship is still good.”

With Zakk rejoining The Boss alongside the likes of Slash and Gus G for the Ozzy and Friends Tour of summer 2012, organised in place of cancelled Black Sabbath shows, you suspect that this longstanding creative partnership may not be over yet. Mainly though Zakk is “writing, writing, writing – all day” for a new BLS album and working on a few new culinary ventures (coffee and hot sauce, anyone?). What, we wonder, is the strangest thing he’s heard about himself over the years?

“That I didn’t play on any of the Ozzy records. And also that I’m not actually in BLS,” he laughs. “Have you seen they’ve started making holograms of dead pop stars? I like that idea. I could be on tour Japan now and still at home talking to you.”

When was the last time he got in a fistfight?

“When I was drinking – it was with myself. Who knows how it happened but it was like something out of Fight Club. It was messy. I beat the shit out myself. I got pretty lumped up, too. But then I made up, we had a drink and I threw my arm around my shoulder and whispered sweet nothings into my own ear for the rest of the night.”

And finally – the true test of any man is asking him when was the last time he cried. When did you last cry Zakk Wylde?

“Last night,” he reveals. “It was when I stubbed my toe while getting a glass of warm milk for my tum-tum. I winced.” 

He hesitates, then beams another big smile.

“I winced but like a man!” 

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 251, November 2013