Southern rock and nation music has all the time been a part of Black Label Society chief and Ozzy Osbourne right-hand-man Zakk Wylde’s DNA. However 2016’s solo album E-book Of Shadows 2 discovered Zakk leaning into his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers, as he defined when Steel Hammer talked to him on the time.
For metalheads all over the world, the title ‘Zakk Wylde’ conjures pictures of a hulking, flaxen-haired rock god, swaddled in leather-based, chains and denim, slaying the howling legions of the pit with bone-crushing riffs and dazzling fretboard heroics that appear to defy the supposed anatomical capacities of the human hand.
However lengthy earlier than he claimed his pedestal in Heavy Steel’s Pantheon Of Shredders, Zakk noticed himself as simply one other long-haired child from the South, rapturously dedicated to the barrelling, whisky-marinated jams of Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band and Molly Hatchet. Wait, the South? We thought you had been from… Zakk roars with laughter earlier than clarifying,
“The working joke has all the time been, ‘Zakk, you’re all the time listening to Southern rock. Are you from the South?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, South Jersey!’ Down close to the shore, bro!”
Zakk remains to be very a lot a Southern boy – Southern California now, to be exact – and we’ve arrived at his SoCal manse this morning (he calls it the Black Vatican) to drag out the acoustic guitars, kick our ft up and shoot the breeze over his love of old-school Southern rock, clearly heard on his enthralling new solo album, E-book Of Shadows II – the long-awaited follow-up to 1996’s E-book Of Shadows.
The roots of his obsession lie deep; he found the music in grade college, when he pillaged the report assortment of his good friend’s older brother.
“My buddy Scott had 11 siblings,” he remembers. “His brothers would take heed to all of the cool music – stuff like The Grateful Useless, Van Morrison, Neil Younger, The Allman Brothers – clearly – and Skynyrd.”
In his early days as a guitarist, enjoying with Ozzy Osbourne within the 80s and 90s, Zakk proudly displayed his influences for all to see. “I had the insurgent flag on my guitar as a tribute to the entire Southern rock motion,” he remembers. “So far as the music, even with Ozz, we’d be rolling down the street after a gig and we’d simply be up all night time listening to The Band, the Eagles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bob Seger. That’s the stuff I take heed to after I’m simply chilling out.”
The unmistakable affect of every of those artists rings out loudly all through Zakk’s catalogue, however significantly on his mid-90s Southern rock aspect undertaking, Satisfaction & Glory, the unique E-book Of Shadows and up to date country-infused materials resembling 2013’s unplugged album, Unblackened, in addition to songs like Scars, from Black Label Society’s 2014 album, Catacombs Of The Black Vatican. However what attracts Zakk to those musicians is extra than simply insidiously catchy melodies and syrupy acoustic chord progressions – it’s that he finds all of them extremely heavy. Heaviness, he explains, is available in many varieties.
“To me it’s a mixture of the whole lot,” he says, “however it’s obtained to have a weight to it, whether or not it’s [Simon & Garfunkel’s] Bridge Over Troubled Water or [Neil Young’s] Coronary heart Of Gold. These lyrics have weight. Doing songs like Desperado [the Eagles] or Coronary heart of Gold is completely different than doing one thing powered by a riff, like say, Black Canine or Smoke On The Water.”
In any dialogue of Zakk’s greatest influences, Skynyrd, The Band and The Eagles pop up repeatedly, and he talks about Neil Younger loads, however there’s a conspicuous absence of references to the forefathers of nation music – guys just like the hard-drinking George Jones – arguably the best nation singer of all time. Or Merle Haggard, the godfather of nation’s personal model of the punk motion – the snarling, anti-authoritarian ‘Outlaw’ style – or the person whom many declare as the primary American rock star, Hank Williams, Sr.
“That’s actual nation,” Zakk says. “If you speak to individuals who love nation, there’s a division between the previous guard and as we speak’s nation music, which is an infusion of that and pop. Take a look at [mainstream country megastar] Garth Brooks – he loves Kiss, so he takes the manufacturing and the hearth from them and turns it into a rustic Rammstein present! Clearly you’d by no means see that in a Hank Sr. present. The one factor you’d see in these reveals is numerous booze and numerous brawling! Ha ha ha!”
This spring, 20 years after the discharge of the unique, Zakk will launch solo album E-book Of Shadows II, a deeply reverential canon of slow-rolling Southern rock balladry, shimmering with vibrant splashes of piano, lush acoustic texturing and a heat tonal palette that invests his themes of loss and remorse with a trembling sense of intimacy. What prompted this follow-up now?
“First off,” he explains, “I can’t imagine it’s been 20 years. Secondly, we’ve been touring on a regular basis and working into the entire prolonged Black Label household, whether or not it’s the Boston Chapter, the London Chapter, the Australian Chapter, the Stockholm Chapter or no matter, and folks had been all the time asking me, ‘Are you ever going to get round to doing one other E-book Of Shadows report? I actually dig the mellow stuff.’ We toured Catacombs… for the previous two years, so once we did an Unblackened run from New York to L.A. [in April 2015], we obtained to actually give attention to the mellow aspect, and I assumed that because it was the 20-year anniversary of E-book Of Shadows, why not do one other chapter?”
Though Zakk gleefully factors out that his 20-year hole shatters Axl Rose’s 15-year await Chinese language Democracy, he explains that his songwriting course of for E-book Of Shadows II was each natural and uncommonly verdant. By means of instance, he explains how listening to a random tune on the radio within the morning might yield a brand new tune by dinner.
“Should you and I had been making a espresso run and listening to [Neil Young’s] Coronary heart Of Gold, you may come again and say, ‘Man, it will be nice to have one thing like this on the report.’ After we get again to the Black Vatican, I’ll choose up the acoustic, and also you’ll get behind the drums and say, ‘Let’s begin it out like this.’” Subsequent factor you understand, they’ve written a brand new tune. “That’s why it’s a lot enjoyable,” he says. “You’re consistently creating.”
E-book Of Shadows II coincides with a thunderous mainstream resurgence of nation music and, by extension, Southern rock, in North America. Outdoors of the US, nevertheless, the style is barely producing a spark. Is it simply an American factor?
“Properly, the analogy is punk rock,” Zakk says. “Between The Conflict and the Intercourse Pistols, the perspective could be very English. That’s how actions get created – they circulation from a sure spot.”
He factors out that whereas the Southern rock pioneers gravitated in direction of the highest British exhausting rock bands of the day, their sound emerged in Florida – a area steeped in conventional American nation. The convergence of these explicit influences, he explains, couldn’t have occurred anyplace else on the planet. “Skynyrd actually liked Dangerous Firm. It’s blues, however heavy blues. And also you hear Stones combined in there, too. However once you consider Skynyrd, there’s nation in it clearly, due to the place they’re from – Florida. They had been listening to that music on a regular basis. I’m positive that Ronnie [Van Zant, Skynyrd’s original frontman] liked Hank Sr. and he liked conventional nation music.”
Zakk demurs at any suggestion that E-book Of Shadows II, or its predecessor, for that matter, are nation albums, insisting {that a} large distinction separates true nation music from Southern rock, which is simple basic rock enhanced with conventional nation parts.
“[Hank Williams is] actually conventional nation music, which is completely different from Skynyrd and the Allmans. You’ll be able to’t say that’s actually nation. Or when Neil Younger does Coronary heart Of Gold, as a result of it has the pedal metal in there, it has parts of nation music. I like the sound of pedal metal. On Darkest Days [from Black Label Society’s 2010 album Order Of the Black], I used a slide with a quantity pedal to recreate the sound of a pedal metal. It’s a gorgeous sound. That’s nation.”
Past his abiding love of Southern rock, it’s clear that Zakk has no plans to maneuver to Nashville, to launch a full-on nation profession or to distance himself from heavy metallic. He insists that E-book Of Shadows II is just a heartfelt celebration of the music that he’s loved since he first turned on to rock’n’roll.
“This music has all the time been there,” he says. “Even with Ozzy, once we did Mama, I’m Coming Residence, and Street To Nowhere and stuff like that, that’s how lengthy it’s been round. I like the truth that we are able to take a break from it after which come again to it, and I’m positive that once we end touring E-book Of Shadows II, we’re going to be itching to do the heavy stuff once more.”
He pauses for a second earlier than invoking the person’s title one final time. “I’m really blessed to have kind of a Neil Younger factor occurring. Neil Younger can play with Loopy Horse after which he can do Neil Younger with him sitting on an acoustic. No person’s telling me, ‘You’ve obtained to make a report like this.’ I can do any album I wish to do. I wouldn’t change my scenario for something.”
Initially printed in Steel Hammer concern 282, April 2016