ZAKK WYLDE Talks Christmas In New Interview

Steven Rosen of Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with Zakk Wylde (BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, OZZY OSBOURNE). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Have you ever dressed up as Santa Claus?

Zakk: No, I haven't done that yet. We've never done that but we've done stuff for the kids where they'll put out carrots and vegetables and stuff like that for the reindeer. Where like me and you will just munch on the stuff and the kids will come out in the morning and they'll go, "Oh, my God, the reindeer at them!" Then I'll take my Rottweiler Dorian who's like 150 pounds and I'll take his footprints and put 'em outside the house and everything so it's like there were reindeer all over the place. I mean, Barb [Zakk's wife Barbaranne] clued 'em in, 'cause now the kids are in college but they were like, "I can't believe dad did that all those years ago." We got 'em all the time with that.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Did you believe in Santa when you were a boy?

Zakk: Yeah, of course, man. It's awesome. My parents always made sure we had killer Christmases. And being a parent now it's always awesome with the kids and everything like that. We always made sure that whatever stuff they had, every Christmas 'cause they're getting new stuff, we'd always go down to Goodwill and give tons of this stuff that they had laying around over the years back to the kids.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What was your favorite present as a little Zakk Wylde?

Zakk: I remember at one point I really wanted the "Six Million Dollar Man" doll [laughs]. It was over at my grandmother's and my aunt's; they were the ones that had it 'cause they knew I wanted that thing the most. We went over to grandma's and they said, "Santa left something here for you." I opened it up and I just went ballistic because I had my "Six Million Dollar Man" doll.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Did you ever get a guitar for Christmas?

Zakk: No, I think the first thing I had was an acoustic guitar or something like that. Yeah, with the action five feet off the neck and the whole nine yards. But you don't know you know what I mean? It's like going to buy a car — you'll buy anything because you don't know. Unless you're going to go get a guitar and it's like, "My nephew wants to get a guitar." And I'm like, "Dude, let me go down there with him and make sure he's getting something where the action is good on it and it's actually a decent guitar. So he's not miserable after a week of it and going, 'This sucks. I don't wanna play guitar. It's no fun, man.'"

Ultimate-Guitar.com: When you were in school did you ever sing Christmas songs in the choir?

Zakk: No, I didn't do any singing in choirs or anything like that. Or maybe I might have when you're in kindergarten and all that stuff. But not when we were getting older or anything like that. I took a music class and theory but that was high school.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What is your most savage Christmas memory?

Zakk: I remember one OZZY tour, mom came out to the one show and it was on the "Merry Mayhem" tour with ROB ZOMBIE. I remember they remember had Santa up on the crucifix and then the crucifix would go on fire. I remember they had the fire marshals there and it was a big deal and the whole nine yards. And all I remember was right before we were coming out to do "Crazy Train" at the end of the show, all of a sudden the next thing you know we just look over to the side and the fuckin' backdrop caught on fire. You wanna talk about Keystone Cops shit, bro. Mom is sitting there looking, "What the fuck is going on?" and our production guy, Opie, and the fire marshal is going fuckin' ballistic 'cause this fuckin' thing is torching up like it's nobody's business, man. Just to see the fuckin' look of sheer panic and terror on fuckin' everybody. I mean, we weren't gonna burn the place down but it's like sitting at the dinner table and the fork is slightly out of place and everybody goes fuckin' nuts. I'm just sittin' there havin' a chuckle out of this bullshit [laughs].

Read the entire interview from Ultimate-Guitar.com.