by Wylde, Zakk
On one Ozzfest tour we headlined the second stage. This meant we were always done at around six o’clock and could head out for the next town. One of those nights we all ended up at a Hooters restaurant to grab dinner and drinks and watch sports. Mark told Pete that we were gonna be there for a while and to go grab a bunk until we were ready to leave. We stayed until the joint closed and then headed to the next town. The next day, Pete wanted to speak with Mark. With his smoking pipe bouncing around in his disgruntled mouth, Pete told him, “I don’t play those games.”
“What games, Pete?” Mark asked.
“When I leave a city, I go straight to the next city. No bullshit like last night.”
So Mark told him, “Well, Zakk’s paying you, so you’re gonna do whatever the fuck we tell you to do. You made four hundred bucks last night sleeping in a bunk. I would do that every fuckin’ day of the week, man.”
Pete unzipped his fly, dropped his trousers, and tucked his Snuffleupagus cock and balls between his legs, exposing a seventy-two-year-old silver man-pussy. “Next time I want to be treated like a pussy I’ll walk around with one,” he said, waving his oversized hands in the air. Mark has never been the same since.
Another time I was woken from a nap to the bellows of Phil cursing at Pete. As it turned out, Pete had removed his false teeth earlier and dropped them into a bowl of water in the fridge so he could grab a quick nap. But it wasn’t a bowl of water, it was Phil’s soup. When Phil came back on the bus he grabbed the bowl, tossed it in the microwave, and took a few spoonfuls before he discovered Pete’s warmed-up choppers in the bowl. Phil went into a volcanic rage of Black Label proportions.
Several years ago we were crossing into North Carolina and we were stopped by the state troopers. It’s not an unusual thing to happen and they usually just make sure everything is fine and the driver has a valid license and insurance and stuff like that. After checking Pete’s paperwork, one of the troopers escorted him off the bus and into the back of one of the patrol cars. Then more troopers showed up. Mark woke me up and told me there was a problem so I came off the bus to talk to the troopers. Apparently they had been looking for Pete for quite some time for his involvement in an actual train robbery that took place in the South back in the late sixties. Pete had been on the run for almost fifty years, under a new name, picking up jobs around the country where he could keep a low profile. This was the last we saw of Pete and a new driver was sent out to finish the tour.
Recently, I was talking to Father Leslie West and he was telling Mark and me some crazy stories about a bus driver from his tour in Canada. Mark jokingly asked Leslie if the driver’s name happened to be Pete. That’s when Leslie exclaimed, “Yeah, his name was Pete!” Mark showed him a picture of Bus Driver Pete, and sure as shit, it was the same guy!
Black Label Ops: Training Day
BY MARK “FERGIE” FERGUSON
WE WERE IN KANSAS CITY, AND IT WAS RAINING OUTSIDE, SO the guys couldn’t shoot their guns outdoors and they decided to do all their shootin’ inside the bus. They had these thousand-feet-per-second pellet rifles, and all the guys were crouched down at the front of the bus and shooting toward the back lounge. I said, “Guys … ,” but Dimebag’s girl Rita was out with us that tour and getting her shots in with the rest of us. They had set up all these blankets in the back to catch the beer bottles and cans that they were shooting at. The scary thing was that Nick and some of the guys were actually in their bunks, in their line of fire. I mean, these guys couldn’t as much as poke their head out of the bunks or someone’d get shot in the eye.
Next thing you know, the bus broke down, because they blasted the fucking bracket to the fan belt. We found out later these shots had gone straight through the seats in the back of the bus and into the engine. So we had to deal with that debacle, which cost about four thousand dollars after repairing the seats, the engine work, and replacing the carpet that had been ruined from all the exploded bottles and cans of whatever they could find to shoot. That was the last shooting gallery we set up in the bus. After that we reserved target practice for outdoors and in the hotel rooms.
In one of our hotel shooting ranges we were getting complaints from the management about us shooting in our rooms. We had the whole thing set up for target practice in the hotel room, shooting from one end to the other, blowing up shit. After finding out that we were actually shooting in our rooms, the hotel called the cops. I went down to the lobby to try to convince the hotel manager that nothing was going on, but they insisted on getting the cops down there. Phil took all the guns and stuck them in between the mattresses in case the cops decided to enter the room, and we figured it would be best for us to slip out of there until the heat cooled down. We timed it perfectly by cell phone so that as the cops came up to our room, we all went down another elevator and headed out.
Later, we ended up getting busy for the BLS show in New York, and after the performance we left for the next town. It was then that we remembered we had left all the guns back in the hotel room in New Jersey. So I had to call and tell the hotel manager that nothing was going on, in case the housekeeping came in there to change the sheets and found that we left a stash of rifles in our hotel room. I had to explain that we were in Room 405 and not to be alarmed, but we were gonna send someone over to collect all the rifles we left under the mattress. A thousand feet per second; we’re lucky no one lost an eye. We had been in there shooting thirty feet away.
How Black Holes Are Created
AS I’VE MENTIONED BEFORE, THERE IS A TON OF TIME TO KILL WHILE out on the road. When I’m not boozing and goofing off, I while away the hours pondering serious matters of time, space, and the cosmic span of things—for what better place than the laboratory of life itself to lead one to genius? One such discovery deals with, arguably, the most powerful force in the universe—black holes.
There have been many theories put forth on black holes, exactly what they are, and how they have come to exist. But what Stephen Hawking failed to understand is the true secret of how these anomalies are actually created; it is due to the inverse relationship of thrust and launch. I’ll explain:
Not too long ago, before making my way to a show, I found myself at the hotel bar enjoying a refreshing adult beverage. I know, it’s out of character for me to frequent these types of establishments, but there I was nonetheless. I was waiting for Black Label Special Ops security’s “How Ya Doin’ ” Phil to arrive and toss back a few cocktails and relax before heading out to the Black Label cathedral. As his usual slow self, and given his need to spend endless hours combing his long and flowing locks, Phil was late. This gave me ample opportunity to enjoy my adult beverage and engage in interesting rock conversation with the bartender. Then finally Phil got there and, of course, we enjoyed another refreshing adult beverage. Upon his arrival, I mentioned to Phil that his hair didn’t quite look as intimidating as a Black Label Special Operative’s should look, as he had it in pigtails, similar to Wendy—you know, the redheaded girl on the Wendy’s restaurant logo. He immediately dashed back up to his room for three more showers. With Black Label Special Ops like this, it’s a good thing I am well versed in Black Label Five Deadly Venoms kung fu.
When out imbibing heavily, there is always that one Drink of Death that can seriously put you over the edge if it is not consumed properly. Let’s just say that I found that drink, and it didn’t work out as I had hoped. It’s not that it went down the wrong way, it was just wrong. All of a sudden I needed to quickly head to the bathroom. It wasn’t clear whether or not I had to shit or puke, I just knew that things were wrong—seriously wrong.
I made the decision to first try to take a shit, thinking that relieving my bowels would in turn take a load off my mind. So I laid down that flimsy ass protector that looks like it’s made of a giant butt-shaped rolling paper and sat down to see what would happen. As I attempted to take a shit, I began to feel that all-too-familiar warm rush race through my body. You know, that hot sweaty prickly feeling when
you know you are going to fucking puke. Without a thought, I popped off the bowl, spun around, and let the contents of my stomach heave into the toilet. Then, without any warning—it happened. Like Mount Everest itself, my asshole erupted. When it first dilated I knew things were about to go south, but I was so involved with ralphing that I had no time to react. The gasket blew almost immediately, sending a projectile stream of ass soup mercilessly against the door of the lavatory—shit fucking everywhere. And that, my friends, is exactly how black holes are created. Unfortunately for me, JD is still in my life. Some things never disappear.
Of course, being the consummate moral rocker that I am, I cleaned up my shitty mess. I made my way back to the bar, where Phil, unknowledgeable of the deep-space discovery I had just made in the bathroom, had two more drinks on standby for me—pure Black Label Ops! Of course I tossed those down before hitting the road; it would have been rude not to. On the way to the gig I refreshed myself with a cold beer as I and the rest of my Black Label brethren had a great Black Label mass. When you’re in Black Label, things like black holes are just part of another day at the office … you just have to Black Label/Patton up and GIFD.
At this point you’re probably thinking that I have some kind of bowel disorder and should be branding my own line of Black Label diapers. It ain’t just me. Ozzy one time, right during Randy Castillo’s drum solo, had to make a break for the can. The second he came off the stage he had to shit, and the only bathroom was somewhere way in the back of the fuckin’ arena. Oz and his security guys had to make a break for it. All I remember is seeing Ozzy holding his ass and running with these guys, to make sure he got back onstage before the end of the drum solo. Thank God for drummers, and thank God for solos.
One time in Denver, we were backstage getting ready to play a show. I had to take a shit, so I went in the bathroom to do my thing. While I was in the stall, the guys took all the fuckin’ fruit—apples and oranges and shit like that—and were pitching those fuckers like Nolan Ryan at the bathroom stall while I was trying to shit. There was fruit flying underneath the stall door and hitting my feet, fucking bananas splattering everywhere around me—I was under fire.
I concentrated as much as humanly possible and pushed out this rock-solid shit. As soon as it splashed into the toilet, I yelled out, “You wanna play shit games, motherfuckers?” and reached into the fuckin’ bowl and grabbed this fuckin’ thing. It was like a leather football—the only things missing were the laces and NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle’s name on the fuckin’ thing. I opened up the door, leaned back and planted my feet like Joe Namath. I could already see the horrified looks on their faces as I launched my shit football in their direction. This spiral of shit soared across the room and the guys dove out of the way. John Sinclair, the keyboard player, had been sitting in a chair the entire time and reading a book. My shit soared right above him and stuck to the wall just above his head. John looked up from his book at the shit that was now easing its way down the wall, muttered, “This reminds me of when I was in the Heavy Metal Kids. There was always shit flying everywhere,” and then went right back to his reading like nothing ever happened.
But what happens when a band member needs to build a log cabin and there is no drum solo to save their ass? Well, believe it or not, there is a solution for that as well. It is called the Shit Time Out and was invented by the one and only Father Kirk Windstein from Crowbar.
The Penchant for Violence tour was in support of the second Black Label album, Stronger Than Death. I’m good friends with the all guys in Crowbar, and we took them along as the supporting act.
It just so happened that around this time, I had discovered a product called Ultimate Orange, which gave off these insane bursts of caffeinated energy. This stuff was a workout booster used by bodybuilders. It was perfect for getting in vigorous workouts, and so I turned everyone on the tour on to it, not even thinking that it could, or would, be abused—yeah right. As a side note, Ultimate Orange has since been banned, totally gotten rid of due to its extreme potency. Swallowing four of these things was the equivalent of pounding twenty-eight cups of coffee! And some of the guys were popping four or five of these fucking pills before going onstage each night. The guys would get so fuckin’ wired that they had to continuously drink beer and vodka just to get any kind of sleep. Even with the drinks it was like a bunch of crackheads ready to run a marathon. Then they’d just burn out and crash. All of the guys were jacked up on this shit.
One of the gigs on this tour was in a small hole-in-the-wall place that had no stage, so we had to literally play on the floor. Crowbar went on and our guys all hung out to watch the show. Everything was cruising along as usual until all of a sudden, right in the middle of a song, the music stopped and I heard Father Windstein yelling out, “Stop! Stop!” I didn’t know what was wrong. Then I heard Kirk’s explanation: “We need to take an intermission… I’ve gotta take a fuckin’ shit!”
He didn’t sound like he was kidding around, and right before our eyes Father Kirk had disappeared. The guys were baffled; they were wondering where the hell he’d gone. I relayed to them that I was under the impression that Kirk had encountered a minor emergency and was resolving his bowel issues. I don’t blame him. I mean, the guy’s bowels must have been torn the fuck up from all the Ultimate Orange and the amount of booze we’d all been throwing back.
After some time Kirk emerged from the bathroom, strolled out across the floor like he was walking on air, grabbed his guitar, and just busted back into the song where he had left off. We all just went along with it, and the audience didn’t give them any grief at all. Sometimes shit quite literally does happen. Hey, at least he wasn’t rude; it’s not like he took a massive shit right on the fucking floor. But if he had blown out his pants onstage, which wasn’t out of the question with all the chemistry that was going on that night, whoever was behind him at the time would have been taken out by a cyclone of mud.
It is best to try to avoid any of these onstage emergencies, and so my advice is, whenever possible, clear the pipes before going on. But unfortunately there are hazards to this as well.
We were on the tour bus getting ready to play a show at Harpos in Detroit on the same fucking tour. I was sitting on the bus drinking a beer and feeling the urge to shit my brains out. Now, there is nothing more uncomfortable than trying to keep your guitar-picking steady while clenching your ass cheeks tighter than JD in a prison cell. And, in compliance with the bus rules, I needed to find an alternate location to deposit my payload. The closest bathroom was in the venue itself. So I grabbed a roll of paper towels and made a break for the back of the building. Thankfully I found myself concealed in the pitch-black darkness of an alley, with no one in sight, and so I proceeded to unleash hell upon the pavement below. Unbeknownst to me, when I dropped my trousers, my chained wallet fell directly below my hovering ass and smack-dab into the line of fire. I shit all over it and because it was so dark, I had no idea that I had just painted my black leather wallet brown. All I remember is just shitting everywhere, wiping my ass, and feeling like the weight of the world was just lifted off me. Then I picked up my wallet and stuffed it into my back pocket and went straight into the venue to play the show.
It smelled like shit onstage the whole time and none of us knew why. I figured I must have stepped in shit outside or something. After the gig, I rolled back onto the bus, grabbed another brew, and thought to myself, “Man what smells like shit?” I figured it was on my boots but I found nothing. As I thought about it, a horrifying suspicion slowly crept into my mind. And that’s when I realized that once again, being in Black Label, nothing can just be simple. Once you put on the colors, the simplest of things becomes a Herculean effort. Even taking a shit can’t just be taking a dump and calling it a day. I had shit all over my wallet, credit cards, and everything else.
I ended up spending an hour washing off my credit cards. Afterward I hung my pants up in the back lounge. That’s how the Febreze Lounge got its name, for t
he industrial-sized bottle of Febreze we had to keep back there to mask the smell of my ass that permanently saturated the bus for the rest of the tour—and so, the very evil we were trying to evade had, perhaps through karma, found its way in, poisoning our food, our water, and the air within.
The Guitar Tech, or as I Call Him, My Personal Foot Massager
I MET KEITH “MOBY” LANOUX, BACK IN 1990–1991, THROUGH FATHER Mike Inez while we were recording No More Tears. Moby was working with Ugly Kid Joe at the time and came down to hang with Mike and listen to some of the new tracks. It was funny because pretty much every band he was out with either opened for Ozzy or was on Ozzfest, so I saw this guy who was completely obsessed with mail-order brides from Russia all the time.
Besides his own work as a prominent DJ and dance-oriented electronic musician—isn’t that the technical term for a guy who works at fucking tit bar?—Moby’s been out as a renowned tech with Stone Temple Pilots, Rammstein, Sepultura, Motörhead, and Marilyn Manson, and also took care of our favorite guitar god, Saint Dimebag, along with a bunch of other bands that forge the metals of Valhalla. As the Black Label Armada rolled out on the Mafia tour, we were in need of a general to command the Black Label guitar army. And I was in need of a high-quality foot masseuse. So out came Father Moby and his growing list of numbers for mail-order brides throughout Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Jersey shore, as he had already run through all of the girls at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Hollywood—and all the guys on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Moby’s been at my side for every kind of performance, whether it’s an Ozzy show, BLS show, national anthem performance, prom, bar mitzvah, circumcision, circle jerk, or whatever family fun awaits the almighty Black Label Order! If I’m plugging in, I have Father Moby with me to make sure everything goes smoothly with the guitars. The only drawback to having a “Moby” around is that I had to change the name of my dick … it got way too weird when Barbaranne would ask to pleasure “Moby Dick” (it just sounded too close to “Moby’s dick”). So that’s how the name the Vagina Masher was bestowed upon Barb’s relentless wrecking-ball-of-flesh pleasuring device that is conveniently located between my legs. I like to rampage her womb with my jackhammer and pile-drive her body into realms of orgasmic submission, only to leave her conquered and bathed in vaginal defeat by my just and noble cock—not to mention the redecorating of her anal cavity I do with my Nobel Prize–winning man-plow. I’m planning on discussing these techniques in full detail in another literary masterpiece I’m working on, entitled Just Give Her a Stiff Cock and a Platinum Credit Card and She’ll Shut the Fuck Up.