by Wylde, Zakk
Note from Eric Hendrikx: Later that day I was back in the studio. Zakk called me and asked if I wanted to come back up to the compound that night to watch Monday Night Football. “Hell yes, buddy!” I said. “See you in a bit.”
About ten minutes later the phone rang again. It was Barbaranne, calling to uninvite me to the house.
New York City Chickens
IN 2003 I WAS OUT IN NEW YORK FOR OZZFEST PULLING DOUBLE-DUTY shows with Black Label Society and Ozzy. My brother-in-arms Chris Jericho was also in New York to promote his band Fozzy and their new record Happenstance. So he and I did the right thing and met in the city at a pub in Times Square for a couple of beers. The joint we ended up in had a really cool vibe and a jukebox loaded with cuts from some killer bands like Zeppelin, Sabbath, the Stones … all the classics. We just drank beer ‘til all hours of the morning listening to these cool tunes, just vibing on the music and shooting the shit. That’s another thing I love about New York City: Most of the bars stay open until four A.M., so you can really get some damage done when it comes to drinking.
Once we left the pub, our plan was to walk down to a convenience store and get some more beer, then head to the hotel, knock out a few more cold ones, and chill. The shop we rolled into had these hard-boiled eggs at the counter (high in protein), so we wound up buying a bunch of them as well. Then we headed back to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where Ozzy and I were staying. On the way, and I’m not sure whose idea this was (probably mine: Chris is generally smarter than I am), we decided to get into a game of traffic chicken. This is where you lie down in the middle of the street and wait for cars to come, and hope that they stop or go around you. Now, I can’t speak for myself, since I was out of my wits and copping a really nice buzz by that point, but Chris always says that this is probably the dumbest thing he’s ever done, especially since we were in midtown New York. But obviously neither of us had any problem with doing it at the time.
After annoying the hell out of countless taxicab drivers, we finally made it to the hotel. Now, Chris was thinking that he was in for a real treat as we headed up to the penthouse suite, hanging at the fanciest hotel in New York, where Ozzy Osbourne was staying. He thought we were about to head into a night loaded with some serious rock ’n’ roll debauchery; there were going to be waterfalls of booze flowing down from the walls, groupies with our pictures and names on their tightly fitted baby-doll T-shirts, strippers snorting cocaine off each other’s asses, midget sex in the bathrooms, the whole nine yards. I think he was in for a bit of a shock, not because of the amount of hookers and booze I was able to cram into my room, but because when we got to the door I told him that we had to be quiet because my daughter and her friends were inside sleeping.
As trashed as we were, we stumbled inside and were seriously trying to be quiet, so we decided to go into the bathroom and close the door. I sat on the side of the bathtub and Chris sat on the toilet, and there we were, whispering so we didn’t wake up the girls. After about five minutes, we both just started laughing our asses off. I mean, here you’ve got one of the most famous wrestlers on the planet and my dumb ass, hiding in a hotel bathroom and talking in quiet voices, trying not wake up the children.
It’s just so funny to compare what people think happens on tour and what actually goes down. If you told someone Zakk Wylde and Chris Jericho were getting together, they’d think it was gonna be a bender from hell, but instead you’ve got two complete idiots drinking in a shit closet with nowhere better to go. Chris and I always laugh about that, but even so, we were really fucking hungover the next day. Well, maybe Father Chris was; I never had a problem with hangovers. I don’t even know what one feels like—I just wake up with a decent glow on, like we’re still at the bar. We didn’t leave the room until we absolutely had to. In my usual pure Black Label fashion I didn’t shower, brush my teeth, change clothes, or even have a thought about a hairbrush. I’m not gonna lie, I absolutely reeked from sweating booze out of my pores all night and was still emitting the smell of the asphalt of New York from our game of street chicken the night before. Chris was appalled that I took no interest in washing up or getting ready; he follows a completely different daily regimen. He did ask me why the hell I wasn’t going to take a shower, and I had to let him know that true Vikings don’t worry about hygiene even when they’re going to the fucking prom.
Yeah, but Vikings never stayed at the Waldorf penthouse in New York City with a showerhead that looks like it was made by Chinese monks—take a fucking shower, you scumbag.
—CHRIS JERICHO
Greasy Fingers
BY CHRIS JERICHO
MY BAND FOZZY WAS FILMING A TV COMMERCIAL IN L.A. FOR OUR record and so we were all in Los Angeles. We were invited to come up to Zakk’s compound to hang, but as soon as Barbaranne saw us pull up to the house, she packed up the kids and left for a hotel. It’s not that we ever did anything too crazy, but she knew that the night would involve two idiots drinking and being stupid until morning.
We got to the house, and my other guitar player, who has always been a huge Zakk fan, was so excited to be there and to possibly jam a little with him. Of course we were planning on enjoying ourselves, and all of us like to eat well, so we had brought a bunch of groceries up to the house to barbecue. We had no idea that Zakk didn’t have a proper barbecue. He just had this old, round fucking Flintstones grill. One of those old-school ones you see Mr. Cunningham from Happy Days using. It just had this big bowl with a grill on top of it, where you can only really cook one thing at a time. All Zakk had for meat was this one-pound tube of hamburger that you squeeze out of the plastic. I tried to make patties out of it but it wasn’t sticking together, so then I tried to cook it all at once, but it was just falling through the grill of the barbecue. There was one pound of meat to begin with, but by the time it was cooked we had more like 0.1 pound of beef. And so Zakk was there eating all the meat with his fingers right off the grill. He was a greasy masterpiece with oily crap all over his hands and beard.
As I mentioned, my bandmate was a big Zakk fan, and so he wanted to jam out on Zakk’s guitar. After a while, Zakk took the guitar and started playing something, but he had all this fucking ground beef and grease still all over his hands. Then Zakk went and started playing his Randy Rhoads Concorde guitar, a Jackson pinstripe Flying V, a replica of the one that Randy actually played. And the guitar ended up looking like it had been in a butcher shop, with ground beef all over the stock, pickups, and strings. Here you had this holy grail of guitars and it was all covered in bits and pieces of beef.
After all of that, we decided, for some reason, that we were going to have a tricycle race around the compound. We grabbed a couple of Zakk’s kids’ tricycles and went for it. There we were, two six-foot grown men on tricycles. It wasn’t exactly the fastest race but I was completely kicking his ass; I even lapped him. And as I lapped him a second time, I crashed into his ride with mine and dumped him into the bushes. So I won. When it comes to tricycle races, the score is currently Jericho 1, Wylde 0. Not only did I win, I knocked his ass right off the tricycle and left him lying in the bushes—the scumbag.
Had the night ended in a wrestling match, I believe Zakk would have been the victor, and here’s why: When Zakk was drinking, his finishing move was just talking. He would talk so much and so long that if you were on the phone with him you could literally put the phone down, leave, go have a bite, take a dump, play a little guitar, play some video games, fuck your wife, come back, and he’d still be talking. You couldn’t get a word in edgewise. If the phone rang at three in the morning and it was Zakk, it was like, “Oh no, here it comes,” and Zakk would have these amazing fantastical stories, like “You, me, and Rich are gonna go to a desert island and we’re gonna put on the colors and it’s gonna be a desert island Sharks vs. Jets match. And we’ll get Nikki Sixx and C. C. DeVille to come ashore and then we’ll fight them and beat the living shit out of them, and then we’ll cannibalize them. Brotha, you don’t understand, it’
s gonna be great,” and he’d come up with all these ridiculous plans for movies he wanted to make or fantasy stories he wanted to tell. So if he really wanted to take someone out all he had to do was start talking and everyone would just fall asleep or say, “Please, just leave, go away.” He wouldn’t even need to use any of his Viking physique; he could just use his voice and that deranged mind of his. Any of his friends will tell you the same thing, especially his wife!
The Pub Is Closed
YES, UNFORTUNATELY FOR THE IRISH, GERMAN, AND DUTCH PARTS OF me, the pub is closed. But before its doors were closed for good, let me tell ya, good times were had by all. Which leads us into another episode of Black Label Alcohol-Fueled Masterpiece Theater.
World Tour Survival Technique: Trust No One
BEFORE I ACTUALLY QUIT DRINKING FOR GOOD, I HAD TO MAINTAIN A level of Black Label Special Operations when it came to drinking around the house. Barb was always worried about me and my health, and so when I wasn’t on the road I’d hide my drinking as much as I could. Mind you, I wasn’t drinking beers in the closet and shit like that (okay, maybe I did do that sometimes, fuck it—last time I checked it was my fucking closet). I mean, I was always the ruler of my roost and would drink a beer if I wanted to, but I didn’t want her counting the bottles as I emptied them. What that really meant was a bunch of undercover missions to the liquor store and secret stashes around the compound. It was during one of these covert beer runs that I learned the first rule of hiding your drinking: Trust no one.
A buddy and I had hit up a liquor store nearby my house and grabbed a twelve-pack, nothing major really. After that it was time for me to go pick up my son before heading home. Of course when I got the little guy in the car he saw the twelver, and so I told him, “Son, whatever you do, do not tell your mother that I got this beer, okay?” He agreed, and everything was fine, or so I thought.
We got back to the compound, and after I successfully smuggled the beer in, I thought I was home free. This was not the case. It wasn’t even ten minutes before I heard the Warden screaming through the place, “Zakk! What the fuck! Did you get beer?” I knew exactly what had happened. I just looked at my son and said, “What? You ratted me out? You threw me under the bus?” It was right then and there that I realized, when it comes to drinking, you can’t trust anyone, not even that which cometh from your own loins!
Later that night, I dreamed that I was in the bathroom taking a long, relieving fuckin’ piss. Then I woke up to Barb yelling at me, “What the fuck are you doing?” I had just pissed all over her back and down the crack of her ass. How much did I drink that night? Just the right amount.
In late 2000, Dimebag and I were scheduled to do a photo shoot for the cover of Guitar World magazine. I headed out with Nick Bowcott to Arlington, Texas, to meet up with him and knock out the session. Of course, when Dime and I would get together, we’d end up having more fun than what was usually legal. Such was the case with this felonious visit.
It started out before I got there. Dime had gone down to the army surplus store and bought a bunch of camouflage gear and makeup for the photo shoot. When I arrived, we went right into the bathroom and put this shit on our faces and got all the gear on. Rita was there laughing at us hysterically while filming the whole debacle. You could always count on Dime and Rita to have a video camera on hand to catch any drunken stupid move you made. And this was definitely one of those nights.
We drank and blew shit up all night, got our photos handled, and I even laid down some guitar and vocal tracks on the Damageplan record. My flight out of there was set for five o’clock in the morning, so Rita had called a car service to come take me and Father Nick to the airport. When the driver finally showed up, he came in the house to take a piss and left the SUV running out front. In a split second I jumped in the driver’s seat, Dime sat shotgun, Father Nick got in the back, and off we went.
We tore up the entire neighborhood in this truck, running through fences, plowing through bushes and trees, destroying mailboxes, and spinning doughnuts in a park next to the police station. I even ran over a stop sign and knocked it clear into the street. (We took the sign with us. It’s actually still in Rita’s living room to this day.) This adventure ran clear into another county and back. We annihilated the undercarriage of the truck, tore off the mirrors, and you can imagine what it looked like after driving through endless barbed-wire fences.
The one thing I didn’t know about the SUV was that it actually belonged to the driver. Instead of picking up a company cab to drive us to the airport, he had brought his own brand-new SUV for the trip. His new ride was fucking demolished. Thank God for Rita and Barb; they fixed all the horseshit with the destroyed SUV, the park we wrecked, and all the rest of the absolute insanity we brought into the neighborhood. We ended up hooking the guy up with some guitars and of course took care of the damages. We also had to give the police station a couple of guitars and mend a few fences and things around town.
And that wasn’t the only time I got into trouble while in Dime country. Another time I was out there with Father Nick during the holidays. I had to make it back to Los Angeles and meet up with Barb and the kids. We were going back to Newark for the holidays, and she had the little ones in tow, with all the toys and diaper bags and crap that you have to carry when you travel with kids. So Dime and Rita dropped me and Nick off at the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight. A little too much time, as we soon found ourselves waiting it out in the airport bar. As was our habit, we spent the time most unwisely, and before long I was feeling no pain—mind you, I was thoroughly enjoying myself, enough to miss my flight to L.A. and then the next two flights after that.
The best part of the whole thing was Barb tearing Father Nick a new asshole over this ordeal. We were all supposed to be getting together in New Jersey for the holidays. “Nick, you better get his fuckin’ ass, I need him fuckin’ here with the family…” Finally, she was just like, “Fuck him! He’s so wonderful, you can fuckin’ keep him!” She left with the kids, took the rental car, and got them to Newark.
I got to the point of just saying, “Fuck all this,” and went to a hotel room near the airport and passed the fuck out. Nobody knew where I was because I didn’t have a cell phone or anything. I just checked myself into a hotel and crashed. So I was completely off the grid, they couldn’t find what hotel I was in, nothing. Dime and Rita had gotten me to the airport, I missed three flights while drinking at the fuckin’ bar, and I was officially MIA.
I slept it off and eventually went back to the airport, got onto a plane, and made it down to Jersey. When I walked in, Barb was on the phone with Rita, and as I opened the door I could hear her say, “He just fuckin’ walked in right now”; she was not a happy camper. It was like three o’clock in the morning or something. Drinking with Dime also meant that you had to be prepared to sleep in the doghouse for a while.
Whenever I hung out with Dime it was nothing but good times. Over the years, he and I spent endless nights hanging out whenever we could, mostly on the phone, talking about how much we loved Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, all the bands that we loved, and how much we loved music in general. I’ve also had some great times with Father Van Halen.
In 1998, Van Halen was performing at Budokan in Tokyo, Japan, while on tour in support of the Van Halen III album—the album with Gary Cherone singing on it. It was perfect timing, because I was also in Tokyo promoting the first Black Label Society album, Sonic Brew. Barbaranne and I were staying at the Four Seasons, and as it turned out, so was Eddie. I ran into him in the lobby, and we bullshitted for a bit and ended up in the bar together later that night with Father Anthony and the rest of the Van Halen crew, talking about war stories from the road and some of Ed’s adventures from back when Van Halen toured with Black Sabbath. We were laughing our asses off and having a great time.
After a few cocktails, I had to go take a piss and Father Ed had to go too. As I got up, Ed started following me to the pisser. I told him that a gui
tar god should never have to walk himself to a bathroom, so I hoisted him up on top of my shoulders and headed through the lobby toward the restrooms. On our way, Ed punched me in the back of the head and told me to stop for a minute so he could light his cigarette on the candlelit chandelier above us. Once we got into the bathroom I pulled out my dick and started pissing in one of the sinks. Eddie saw what I was doing, laughed, and said, “Fuck it, man,” and pissed in the sink next to mine. Then Eddie was back up on my shoulders as we headed back to the bar for more drinks and storytelling with the rest of the Van Halen gang.
When the bar closed down, we went up to Eddie’s room to check out some guitars and keep drinking. Eddie picked up my mirror Les Paul and put it on. The strap was so low, because I play with my guitars really low, and the guitar ended up down near Eddie’s knees just like on Jimmy Page. He instantly started playing all these Led Zeppelin riffs. I was having the time of my life watching one of my guitar heroes, and my friend, act out his versions of Jimmy Page’s stage moves. He was playing the guitar solo to “Heartbreaker” and all this other shit he knew—it was fucking awesome and absolutely surreal.
Later that night, after I went back to my room, the phone rang and Barb picked up. “Hello, Barb, it’s Edward. If Valerie calls, you didn’t see me at all tonight, okay?”
We had been up most of the night having a killer time. I had to be up at eight o’clock in the morning for press interviews. Lucky for Ed, he had a show that night, so he could sleep all fuckin’ day. I remember doing my interviews half-asleep while switching between coffee to wake up and beer to keep my buzz going. But you know the Black Label code:
Drinking all night, hanging out with your guitar hero, and feeling like prison ass the next day—fuck it, MERCILESS!