ZAKK WYLDE On RANDY BLYTHE, 'Unblackened' And Next BLACK LABEL SOCIETY Album

Anthony Morgan of Metal Forces recently conducted an interview with BLACK LABEL SOCIETY frontman and ex-OZZY OSBOURNE guitarist Zakk Wylde. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On the paperback release of his book, "Bringing Metal To The Children":

Zakk: "The book all started from me and Eric [Hendrikx, co-author] just sitting around, talking, like any of the guys. It'd be like me and you sitting at the bar, talking about 'You're not gonna believe what happened the other day,' and this and that. It's the music business, where there are no rules [laughs]. There's no qualifications; you don't have to have a Master's degree. You just show up and you're there, but that's where you get the cast of characters, and that's where you get all of the comedy man. Like I always say, it's unimportant people making important decisions. They have no business doing what they're doing, but that's how it gets run. Anywhere else, if you wanna apply for a job welding or being a brain surgeon or any of that, you have to have a degree and you have to have a license, and everything like that [laughs]. Not in the music business, though. But yeah, it just came out of funny stories and us just laughing our balls off, talking about how ridiculously goofy the music business is. That's how the book came about, me saying 'You've gotta write a book about all this crap someday.'"

On LAMB OF GOD frontman Randy Blythe's acquittal for manslaughter:

Zakk: "Dude, what a mess, man. Randy's a good dude and he would never hurt anybody, let alone a LAMB OF GOD fan. It's just terrible, because the whole thing is when you go to extreme metal concerts, extreme rock concerts — like PANTERA, SLAYER, LAMB OF GOD, that genre of music — crowd-surfing, stage-diving, and moshing is actually part of the whole experience. When you buy a ticket for a rollercoaster ride, the 18-storey drop, the three loop-the-loops, and the spiral, that's all a part of the ride. Especially with what happened with Dime's situation [Dimebag Darrell, late PANTERA guitarist], and then now with Randy, it's literally almost to the point where you really wanna stop that and just do this. You go on a soccer field, you go on a football field, you go on a baseball field, you jump on the court, and you go onstage at a concert, then you get two years mandatory in prison. Two years in jail, and that's it. You jump up onstage, you jump on the field at a soccer game, or you run on the field, then you get two years in prison and that's it. Then you'll see how many people will jump up onstage. People will go, 'Dude, I'm gonna spend two to three years in prison if I jump up onstage? Fuck that. I'm not doing that.' I don't give a shit how much you like the band. [laughs]"

On recording acoustic DVD/CD "Unblackened":

Zakk: "The 'Unblackened' thing was awesome, because we had been talking about doing it for awhile. It was just that we were touring for so long, for over two years. That's why it kept getting pushed back, because we were gonna put it in-between there somewhere. I said, 'Dude, we don't have enough time,' because we had to rehearse and everything like that. To actually do the show was great, because we had fans from all over. Canada, from the East Coast, from Boston, from New York, from Texas, from North Carolina. People from all over."

On writing a new BLACK LABEL SOCIETY album:

Zakk: "I have been stockpiling riffs and getting ready in many ways, though. It depends on what I've been listening to that day, whether I've been listening to JUSTIN BIEBER, LADY GAGA, ABBA. All the quality stuff, man. It depends on what side of the bed I've woken up on. I pretty much listen to everything. When I'm in the truck, I'll either listen to Woodstock Radio or usually the same stuff that I listened to when I was 15. Just a lot of classic rock. Maybe I'll put on some MINISTRY, Dimebag, MESHUGGAH, or some [LED] ZEPPELIN, or [BLACK] SABBATH, and then you're good to go."

Read the entire interview at www.metalforcesmagazine.com.