Wylde's life of yoga instead of hangovers

Zakk Wylde says Black Label Society would would be boring subjects for a tour documentary.

Things have quietened down backstage since the Black Label Society mainman quit drinking after a health scare in 2009.

Wylde tells Guitar Interactive: “If we were doing ‘Life On The Road With Black Label Society’, we’d have to script in all the stories – because there’s really not much going on. I hang out with my yoga instructor a lot. Back in the old days it was Animal House on steroids.”

He jokes: “We always have a blast. Back in the old days there was a lot of boozing going on. Now it’s sniffing a lot of glue and we get the same results. I wake up with my pants around my ankles and the fellas tell me I had a great time, and I don’t remember much of anything.”

BLS are touring in support of their latest album Catacombs Of The Black Vatican, but Wylde says he’s always working on fresh material.

“I’ll sit down with an octave pedal and a Marshall and write riffs,” he says. “Each day you go out there and start writing riffs, until you get something you’re happy with. Then when the fellas come out here you’ve got two weeks, and if you pull something out of your ass in those two weeks then you record that. That’s the way we usually write.

“It’s not like we end up recording for eight months. I don’t know how bands do that to begin with – you’re pretty much done with it by then, or you’ve written a whole bunch of new stuff that you want to use.”

In the three-part interview the axeman also talks about his Wylde Audio range of guitars, amps and accessories. BLS play this year’s Hard Rock Hell festival in North Wales.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.