In a recent interview with Loudwire, Black Label Society’s Zakk Wylde spoke about the incarceration of Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe, his all-time favorite guitarists, his upcoming book and the arrival of his new-born son Sabbath Page. A couple of excerpts from the chat can be found below.
Wylde explained how he and his wife, Barbaraanne decided on the name Sabbath Page. “I’m a big fan of the Golden Girls, so we were going to name him Maude, but I figured we should just play it safe and stay with Sabbath and Page.”
All jokes aside, Wylde said that it was actually Barbaraanne who wanted to name the child after the legendary band Black Sabbath. “ I picked Page, obviously, because he’s this guitarist of this up-and-coming band. [Laughs] Maybe you’ve heard of them, Led Zeppelin? I expect big things from those guys,” he added.
Unsurprisingly, Page and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi are two of Wylde’s biggest influences. “You know, it’d have to be Tony Iommi, obviously Jimmy Page, Randy Rhoads, Frank Marino and John McLaughlin. A lot of these cats are just massively huge. All these guys, they still inspire me and I’m still a fan. And obviously Father Van Halen, you can’t forget him. He only slightly changed the game, you know?”
Wylde also spoke about the biographical book titled ‘Bringing Metal to the Children?’ that he is currently writing. “When me and Eric [Hendrikx] started writing it, we were pissing ourselves the whole time we were writing it. As soon as we came up with the beginning, we were just pissing ourselves. I mean, I had to buy boxes of Depends to wear while we were writing this thing. We just decided that the whole book had to be like that, just stupid, you know? [Laughs] I was saying, unfortunately, I wish half the stories weren’t true, but they are.”
Wylde closed by discussing the situation currently faced by Randy Blythe, who is being detained in a Prague prison and could face charges of manslaughter. “At Yankee Stadium when someone runs on the field, they don’t escort you back to your seat, they don’t escort you out of the stadium. They lock your ass the f— up. That’s what it’s going to come down to, otherwise Randy wouldn’t be in this situation right now, you know what I’m saying? It’s just a big mess overall. You’re looking at the kid that died and that sucks. You know that he was probably a huge Lamb of God fan, loved the band and loved Randy.”
He added that it wasn’t in Blythe’s nature to cause grievous harm. “Randy is a good dude, he’d never want to hurt anybody, nothing like that. It’s a massive mess. When you have people stage-diving and moshing, Randy is just up there singing, you’ve got to look at the whole thing. After what happened to Dimebag [Darrell], you try getting up on stage again, you know? If nobody went up onstage, Randy wouldn’t even be in this situation right now…The whole game plan is to go to the show with your buddies, have a good time, and then the next time Lamb of God comes to town buy tickets again and have another ass-kicking time. The game plan isn’t to go to jail or die, you know what I’m saying? It just sucks all around. Randy would never want that kid dying.”
Click here to read the full interview.
Click here for the latest on the Randy Blythe debacle.