ZAKK WYLDE's Advice To Young Musicians: 'Dedicate Your Life To It, 'Cause You Don't Wanna Have Some Crummy Job That You Hate'

In the debut episode of Gnarly Origins, Revolver's Jimmy Hubbard sits down with heavy metal icon Zakk Wylde to trace the wild early years that led him from a New Jersey gas station to Ozzy Osbourne's band. Wylde looks back on the audition tape that changed everything, the lessons that shaped him and the road that still lies ahead.

Asked what success looked like for him early in his career, the BLACK LABEL SOCIETY frontman said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "With all musicians, for all of us, and of all the musicians in the world, I'm one of them. [Laughs] So I just think, for all of us, [the goal is] just to be able to play and pay your bills. And great. I mean, if you become a multimillionaire or billionaire or whatever playing music, awesome. That's great. But the whole thing is to be able to just pay your bills and just be able to do that all day."

Zakk continued: "When parents come up, they're, like, 'Zakk, do you have any advice for my son or my daughter? They wanna play music.' I go, 'Yeah. Be like Jimmy Page. He's all in. LED ZEPPELIN is his life.' Dedicate your life to it, 'cause you don't wanna have some crummy job that you hate. Who does? Who wants that? Nobody. And regardless, whether it's music or whether me and you wanna be chefs and start our own restaurant or whatever, a food truck business, we're doing what we love. If you treat everything like a mom-and-pop shop, and then you're your own boss, that's where you're gonna thrive and you'll find happiness.

"I never had any problems when I was mowing lawns and when I was working at Fine Fare in the produce department, pumping gas and everything like that," Wylde explained. "I knew I wasn't gonna do that the rest of my life, but I had friends there when I was working, and it was a means to an end. It was helping me get to where I wanna go. So it wasn't like I was stuck in this thing. It was just, like, I had a good time while I was doing it, 'cause I was making money for a guitar and an amp and to do what it is I wanna do with my life."

After Hubbard noted that Wylde "always envisioned" that he would be able to play music for a living, or that it was what he wanted to do, Zakk said: "Yeah, without a doubt. Me and J.D. [John DeServio, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY bassist] talk about it in the band. I've known J.D. since before I started playing with the Boss [Ozzy]. And I just tell everybody, I go, 'If I wouldn't have been blessed to have an Ozzy in my life to put me on the biggest stage in the world,' and then to go, 'Well, Zakk, now the rest is up to you,' if I hadn't been blessed to have Ozzy in my life, me and J.D. would've owned a music store, we would've taught, we'd have our wedding band, we'd have our cover band, we'd be doing our originals. Everything would revolve around music. So just make it your life. It's your book. It's your movie. Write it. There's no sense in being miserable. You can be miserable or you could be happy. Like [late PANTERA founders] Dimebag [Darrell Abbott] and Vinnie [Paul Abbott] would always say, 'We could be miserable or happy.' I was just, like, 'Good.' Well, I think this is an easy decision. Round up the guys and let's fire up a barbecue and watch some football. I mean, it's just — what are we doing? You shouldn't spend one minute, not one second being miserable. It's just, like, why? For the second that you are, you're bummed out about something, write a song about it or write a cool riff, you know what I mean?"

As previously reported, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY will embark on the second leg of the "American Crusade" in August. Notably, Wylde, DeServio and drummer Jeff Fabb will once again be doing double duty on the trek, as support on the tour will come from their BLACK SABBATH tribute project ZAKK SABBATH. DARK CHAPEL, the riff-heavy powerhouse fronted by BLACK LABEL SOCIETY guitarist Dario Lorina, is once again the opener for all of the dates.

BLACK LABEL SOCIETY is continuing to tour in support of its critically praised latest album "Engines Of Demolition", which came out in March via MNRK Heavy. The follow-up to 2021's "Doom Crew Inc." contains 15 tracks, including the four previously released singles, "Name In Blood", "Broken And Blind", "The Gallows" and "Lord Humungus", as well as a tune titled "Ozzy's Song", which is a tribute to the BLACK LABEL SOCIETY guitarist/vocalist's longtime bandmate, the iconic BLACK SABBATH singer Ozzy Osbourne.

Wylde formed BLACK LABEL SOCIETY in 1998 and has kept the band busy in between touring and recording with Ozzy Osbourne, whose backing group he first joined nearly four decades ago.

BLACK LABEL SOCIETY's "Order Of The Black" (2010) and "Catacombs Of The Black Vatican" (2014) both broke into the top five on the hard rock album charts.

Since first joining Ozzy, Zakk had played on all of the BLACK SABBATH singer's solo albums except for 2020's "Ordinary Man", including such classic efforts as "No More Tears" (1991),"Ozzmosis" (1995) and "Black Rain" (2007).