It is a little-known fact that when Zakk Wylde does a phone interview he rises to his feet and puts the caller on hands-free, the better to demonstrate the choke holds, knockout punches, devoured pints and plummeting televisions that form the cornerstones of his war stories. Wylde is aptly named. Describing himself as a “little kid who loved Randy Rhoads” when he joined Ozzy’s solo band in 1987, the Black Label Society guitarist has grown into a bearded berserker with the mouth of a Glaswegian docker and the personality of a runaway train. When he sat down with Classic Rock in 2008 to speak about some of stars who have lit up his life, it wasn’t an interview, it was a verbal battering.
