ZAKK WYLDE: 'I Haven't Been Drinking The Last Three Months'

I Heart Guitar blog recently conducted an interview with Zakk Wylde (BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, OZZY OSBOURNE). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

I Heart Guitar: Zakk! How ya been?

Zakk: Everything's going good, man. We did an in-store the other day, now I'm just hanging out with the rest of the Sydney chapter of BLACK LABEL. Just chillin' out today, doing a batch of interviews, hanging out with the guys from Guitarist magazine over here. So everything's cool, man. Heading back to the States tomorrow, have the holidays with the kids, then fire up the BLACK LABEL machine in January, start working on the new album. So that's about it, brother.

I Heart Guitar: I saw your posts on Twitter from China. That looked awesome!

Zakk: Oh, yeah! We actually had one day that we could actually go sightseeing, so we went up to the Great Wall and then the Forbidden City. But usually there's never any time to go anywhere because you're workin', you know what I mean? Most of the time, especially when I was drinking it was like, "Let's go sightseeing," but it's like, "Dude, if we've got a day off, you and I are gonna go hit an Irish pub," you know what I mean?

I Heart Guitar: You gave us quite a scare a few months ago!

Zakk: Oh, yeah. Totally, man. Between the blood clots and all that shit… we were out on the road with MUDVAYNE and STATIC-X on the Pedal to the Metal tour and we were having a blast out on that thing. Then next thing you know I'm sitting there hanging out and my leg was friggin' killing me, my left leg behind my knee. I just figured maybe I'd pulled my calf muscle, I'd pulled something behind my knee. It wasn't like I fell or anything, like maybe I dislocated my knee or fucked up my ankle up or anything. It wasn't like I was doing David Lee Roth splits off the drum riser. I'd be icing down my leg and everything like that… just in the middle of the night it was a major production to take a leak. After that, we had like a 24-hour drive and I said, "Before we do this, I just wanna get an ultrasound…" The guy goes, "Dude, you've got two huge blood clots behind your knee." I was like, "Dude, you fuckin' kidding me?" He says, "No, do you do a lot of travel?" I said, "Well, yeah, of course. I'm either on a tour bus or I'm flying or I'm on a ferry or something. I'm always travelling. I'm a musician, that's what we do for a living." He said usually airline pilots get this shit, or truck drivers, you know what I mean? I said I'm not usually stationary, I can move around on a tour bus — it's not like I'm driving the damn thing. But he said that's probably where I got it from. I said, "Would drinking have anything to do with this?" He just goes, "No, dude, if anything drinking was thinning your blood." I said, "Well, good, alcohol is a good thing," and my wife says, "You're fuckin' dreaming, buddy-boy. The bar's closed for you, jackass." So I'm takin' this Coumadin shit, and I had to get myself shots and everything. I haven't even been drinking the last three months or whatever. I haven't even had a beer, because if you drink alcohol on this shit you start pissin' blood out your ass and your dick.

Read the entire interview from the I Heart Guitar blog.