ZAKK WYLDE Says LADY GAGA Is 'Amazing'

Scott Mervis of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently conducted an interview with BLACK LABEL SOCIETY mainman Zakk Wylde. A couple of exceprts from the chat follow below.

On Lady Gaga:

"Lady Gaga, she kicks [butt]. My daughter's 18, loves Lady Gaga. I think she's amazing, too, because you could put her behind a piano and she'll sing you a song, dude. And she writes all her stuff. She's not some fabricated thing. She's a legitimate artist. You could put her out on an unplugged tour. Madonna couldn't do that."

On whether he had any hard feelings over the split with OZZY OSBOURNE:

"No, not at all. It's like my father passing away in January. The bottom line is, he was 89 years. I just thank the good Lord he gave him to me for 89 years. You never ask, you always thank. The thing with Oz, if you remember, No More Tours, that was supposed to be the last tour. That was 1991, bro. I was on my own then. Ozzy always said, 'Don't be waitin' around for me. If you get an opportunity, take the fame I've given you and use it for something, man.' To me, it's all good, there's nothing bad that can come out of it. Without Oz, there'd be no Zakk Wylde or BLACK LABEL."

On the inspiration for his lyrics:

"I'm a classic rock guy, and I think it's hysterical when you listen to a lot of the lyrics, whether it's the '70s or '80s or '50s. It's all about a guy picking up a girl and partyin'. Then the grunge stuff was just amazing. I remember the guys in SKYNYRD were like, 'Man, what was the deal with the '90s? You guys, man, everybody wants to kill themselves.' I go, 'Yeah, but the lyrics got weight to them, they really meant something.' . . I'll see cool titles or I'll just be watching the Military Channel. You're never going to run out of material, whether it's religion, war, the occult, things you read about that are just so interesting. It has layers and layers of things, it's not about one thing that's black and white."

On the possibility of one of BLACK LABEL SOCIETY songs becoming a classic like "Whole Lotta Love", "Back in Black" or "Welcome to the Jungle":

"You're never going to have an 'Appetite for Destruction' again. If it came out now, it would still be great, be an amazing record, but instead of selling 17 million records, it would sell four. I mean, the first day your record comes out, it's gone, that's it. People are downloading it and the whole nine yards. It's gone. I don't understand. If there's a new thing with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, I'm buying it. I'm not going to download the damn thing. It's not like the album is $6,000. C'mon, man. I don't get it. I go buy it. What are we lookin' at here, man, $14? That it's. For cryin' out loud. We might as well go to a movie theater and sneak in and hopefully we'll be able to steal some popcorn. It's stupid, man."

On the way fans interact with their metal heroes in 2010:

"The ZEPPELIN guys, they'd be on Twitter today. Or it'd be 'Oh my god, I'm writing to Randy Rhoads!' To me, it's all good. One of my buddies said, 'Yeah, but the mystique is gone.' It was a big deal if anyone ever got an interview with Jimmy Page 'cause he's living in a castle in Boleskine doing Aleister Crowley rituals. There's a mystique there. The only time you saw them was in a magazine. So when you saw them on stage, that was it, man. There was weight to it. There was no reality TV. I mean, Ozzy there was a mystique. Now, with reality, there's no mystique. It's gone."

Read the entire interview from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.