NEWS: Zakk & Ozzy update – Zakk says everything’s cool

Published July 24, 2009 | By Peter Hodgson

Saw this on Blabbermouth. Remember a few weeks ago when it emerged Ozzy was looking around for another guitarist? Well Zakk says that while that may be so, he’s still in Osbourne employ for the foreseeable future, including touring commitments in 2010. Good to know everything’s cool and that Ozzy’s not messing with the awesome vibe Zakk brings to Ozzy gigs, even though he might try a few other guitarists in the studio.

By the way, remember years ago when Steve Vai did some stuff with Ozzy in the studio? It never surfaced (except for the song ‘My Little Man’ on Ozzmosis, but Zakk played the guitar instead of Steve). I wonder if that stuff will ever see the light of day.

David “Gus” Griesinger of BackstageAxxess.com recently conducted an interview with Zakk Wylde (BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, OZZY OSBOURNE). Watch the chat in three parts below.

When asked about the recent reports that Ozzy was auditioning other guitarists for his solo band, Zakk said, “Everything’s cool, man. I mean, Ozzy’s always jammed with other people — since we did ‘Down To Earth’ and all that other stuff. So it’s no big deal. If Ozzy’s gonna play with someone else, what am I gonna do anyways? At the end of the day, when we did the ‘Down To Earth’ record, Oz had other people coming in and writing with him. [I was like], ‘Boss, knock yourself out,’ you know what I mean?! What we’re supposed to do is there’s this date in August — August 20, I guess, down in Anaheim [at the BlizzCon convention] — and then after that, we’re supposed to finish the [new Ozzy] record up in September or something like that. We did 16 or 18 songs or something like that, so we’ll write some more, finish the record, and then we’re supposed to do like a year[-long] world tour.”