Quite frankly I’m distressed. In about 20 minutes I’m due to be interviewing one of heavy metal’s great modern guitarists, Zakk Wylde, and I haven’t heard a note of his new album, Order of the Black. This isn’t my fault, and for a change it ain’t the fault of the record company either. For reasons that are still to be fully explained, a week after the event and despite probing phone calls, the post office have still not delivered the album. Usually in one of these pieces I’ll give you some intro blather about ‘so and so’s impressive new opus’ or something. But no. To quote my three-year-old niece Alannah Mae Ruyg: “I’ve got nothing”. As I type, even Wylde’s Myspace page is down. What will we talk about?
I needn’t have worried. After apprehensively dialing the number provided for Wylde, I make small talk for a while. But Zakk is an avuncular interviewee, happy to chew the fat on any and all subjects, and before you know it he’s singing D’yer Mak’er from Led Zeppelin’s cruelly underrated 1973 opus Houses of the Holy down the phone to me. He’s a big Zeppelin fan, and is over the moon to hear your correspondent’s story about meeting Jimmy Page in a Gerrard’s Cross pub in the ‘80s (And Another Thing regulars will of course remember this tale from a few years back).
“Man, why are you even interviewing me? There can’t be many people with a better story than that!”
As we’ve now established, I’m interviewing Mr Wylde because his band, Black Label Society, have a new album out. What’s the response been like? And are you pleased with the way things are going?
“Yes I’m pleased. But it is what it is. If people don’t know what we sound like by now, nothing we do is going to change their minds. So yes, the people that wanted to hear it have heard it and they’re loving it! As far as things are going, well… we still haven’t brought peace to the world or ended starvation, but we’re pretty happy I guess.”
These are the answers of a man versed in this sort of thing, so after making enquiries about the man’s touring intentions – “We’re in the US now, but we’re looking at coming down to Australia with Motörhead sometime next year” – I decide to move away from the album chat and onto, as is the wont of this column, more trivial matters. I comment that, despite never having spoken to the man before, I am extremely au fait with the minutiae of Zakk’s life – his battles with the bottle (he’s newly clean and sober after a bender that’s lasted nearly 20 years) being not the least of my knowledge about him. Does that removal of the mystique of ‘rock star’ life make it harder to get on with the business of being a ‘rock star’?
“Undoubtedly. You know we were talking about Jimmy Page earlier? There’s a man who had a bit of mystique about him. And then Ozzy (who, of course employed Wylde for over ten years as his guitarist and songwriting foil), you know, just as big a star, such an important man in the history of rock. Can you imagine Jimmy Page having a camera crew follow him around whilst he’s doing his rituals in his castle? NO! So we just have to keep it real, you know, it’s a different time. But whatever happens, we’re gonna keep it metal!”
And of course, you know you can depend on Brother Zakk to keep his word in that respect.
