ZAKK WYLDE Shares Opinion On SHARON OSBOURNE, Tells What OZZY Is Like Off-Stage

Zakk Wylde

In a new interview with Kerrang! magazine, Zakk Wylde talked about Ozzy Osbourne and his off-stage behavior, while also touching on Sharon Osbourne, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, and more.

After interviewer noted, “Everyone has an idea of what Ozzy is like based on his larger-than-life public persona, but how is he in private?”, Zakk said: ​”Friends who’ve known Ozzy ever since he was eight years old have all said the same thing, that no matter how much money he’s had or how much fame he’s had, he’s always been the same as he was back in school.

“He takes the pi*s out of himself all the time,” Wylde continued. “Even if you just sit around watching TV with him, you’ll be on the floor crying and laughing. It’s a miracle that any work ever gets done. He’s hysterical all the time. We get together, we jam and we go home.”

When asked what sort of influence Sharon has had on his life, Zakk responded: “I lovingly refer to her as Mom. She’s been like a mother figure to me since then. My life wouldn’t be what it is without them, that’s a fact. I wouldn’t have BLACK LABEL and I wouldn’t have been able to do PRIDE & GLORY or anything. Everything I have, I owe it to them. They took a 19-year-old kid and gave him the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Speaking on how BLACK LABEL SOCIETY came about, he said: “I’d done [debut solo album] Book of Shadows — and that whole thing was just me sitting around in limbo. I wasn’t ready to be a singer-songwriter. I was like, ​’I’ll just take these riffs, the heavy things and the mellow stuff,’ and that’s pretty much how BLACK LABEL was born. It all came out of that. I was just like, ​’What am I going to do here? I can’t be sitting around for the rest of my life,’ so I thought, ​’I’ll just sing on it myself.'”

Asked if he will record with Ozzy ever again, Zakk said: “If he wants to do it, without a doubt. He’ll say, ​’Zakk, if you have any riffs lying around, then let me hear them and we’ll take it from there.’ [When my daughter got married] Ozzy and his family were there. They remember the day she was born. It’s pretty crazy how time flies, man.”