ZAKK WYLDE: OZZY OSBOURNE 'Can't Do Any Wrong In My Eyes'

Darryl Sterdan of QMI Agency recently conducted an interview with Zakk Wylde (BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, OZZY OSBOURNE). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

QMI Agency: Was it tough to quit drinking? It seems to have been a big part of your image.

Zakk: People ask if I'm on a 12-step program. No. I have a one-step program: I'm done, dude. I mean, I still go to bars. I hang out with my buddies and watch "Monday Night Football" at Hooters. I just drink the fake stuff. After all, what am I supposed to do for the rest of my life? Stay home? Everyone I hang with gets hammered out of their minds. So many of my friends say, "I couldn't quit." But after I had the blood clots, the doctor told me that if I went out berzerking with the guys and was throwing down like nobody's business, I'd literally start bleeding out of every orifice — my mouth, my nose, my ass, my eyes, my dick. It would be a tsunami of blood, dude. And I'd be dead. Right there. I'd be leaving Hooters on a fucking gurney, dude. So it was easy to quit after that. And my friends just say, "We lost a drinking partner — but we gained a designated driver. Come pick us up, jackass."

QMI Agency: Ozzy said your drinking was part of the reason you parted company. Is that true?

Zakk: Well, he was also saying for a couple of years that he wanted to change things up. So I don't know. And whatever reason it was — my drinking, my beard, my weightlifting — I still love Ozzy. He can't do any wrong in my eyes. When I do interviews, people want me to say something bad about the Boss. But without him, there'd be no Zakk Wylde. There'd be no BLACK LABEL. I wouldn't have my own brand of coffee and hot sauces and beef jerky. These wouldn't be any Doom Crew pubs, which is this new sports-bar venture I'm working on. I wouldn't be starting my own record label. I wouldn't be writing the Black Label Guitar Bible or this coffee table book I'm writing or the movie script I'm working on. I wouldn't have my Black Label Bunker, my studio. I wouldn't have any of that without him. So yeah, I really hate the guy. (Laughs)

QMI Agency: If Ozzy called you up, would you go back?

Zakk: Gus G. is the guy now, man. And he's playing his ass off, dude. But if he sprained his wrist in a bizarre whackathon mishap — and I've had several of those injuries myself — and Ozzy asked me to fill in for a couple of weeks, I'd say yeah.

Read the entire interview from QMI Agency.