Guns N’ Roses once considered at adding Zakk Wylde as a guitarist. The Ozzy Osbourne sidekick claims that the time spent jamming with Guns resulted in him forming Black Label Society.
Zakk was a participant in Musicians Institute’s “Conversation Series” and revealed via Antimusic how he became a candidate to join the rockers. According to the guitarist, both Axl Rose and Slash talked about adding him to the line-up.
Wylde said that he was mates with Slash and Duff McKagan but had never been introduced to Axl before. He said they started jamming. However, a formal offer to join the band never materialised.
He then recounted the time he came to try out: “Axl was just saying, him and Slash were talking, like, ‘Who else would you wanna get on guitar?’ And I guess my name came up.”
“‘Why don’t we ask Zakk what’s going on?’ And Axl was, like, ‘All right. I’ll call him up.’ So Axl ended up getting my phone number and called me up: ‘Hey, Zakk, man. It’s Axl. I just wondered if you wanted to get together and jam with the guys.'”
“And I said, ‘Yeah. No problem.’ So we ended up jamming. We were recording [Ozzy Osbourne’s 1995 album] ‘Ozzmosis’ at the time. And so we were jamming on and off. We were recording the record, we were doing ‘Ozzmosis’, having a blast doing that, and then in between, when I’d come back out to L.A., I’d end up hooking up with the guys and we’d jam down at the rehearsal hall.”
“So it was just ideas floating around. But nothing was happening there with the Guns guys. And then Ozz was going, ‘Zakk, listen, we’re gonna get ready to tour. Are you gonna jam…?’ Ozz was, like, ‘You can do both, but, Zakk, I’ve gotta have an answer, if you’re gonna be jamming with them and me.”
“This ship leaves twelve o’clock Monday. Are you gonna be ready to go or not?’ I couldn’t get an answer from the fellows, and everything was up in the air, and Ozz was, like, ‘I’ve gotta get somebody else in here, man.’ So that was it.”
“So I was just sitting around, going, ‘What am I gonna do? I’ve got all these riffs laying around. I’m not playing with Ozz right now. I’m not doing the GN’R thing. F*** it.’ And then I came up with Black Label Society. So that’s basically how Black Label was born right there.”
DOUBLENECK’n W/FATHER DARIO…tBLSt SDMF – Pic:Father Dustin Jack pic.twitter.com/6gS81EZYD4
— Zakk Wylde (@ZakkWyldeBLS) June 18, 2014
OZZAGEDDON w/The VORTEX BEHEMOTH & The MOSCOW CHAPTER!!! tBLSt SDMF “GRIMMEST HITS” @Spotify @iTunes @AppleMusic @amazon @BestBuy – @WyldeAudio @DeathWishCoffee @zakk_sabbath @OzzyOsbourne – https://t.co/FKCoVGSdMU pic.twitter.com/4EDtxOhsxK
— Zakk Wylde (@ZakkWyldeBLS) June 2, 2018
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