Longtime Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde has revealed what the late Prince Of Darkness wanted his next solo album to sound like.
In a new interview with NJ.com, the Black Label Society leader, who played with Ozzy’s solo band on-and-off from 1987 to 2025, says that the singer wanted to work on something “heavy” but “more melodic” than usual, in the vein of his 1991 album No More Tears.
Wylde says: “He was texting me, ‘Zakk, let’s do another record. Because I really loved it when you were going through your Allman Brothers, [Lynyrd] Skynyrd phase when we did No More Tears, it’s heavy but it’s more melodic, it’s not pummelling heavy.’ So I said, ‘Alright Oz, whatever you want.’”
Ozzy died at the age of 76 on July 22: 17 days after he played his retirement concert Back To The Beginning at Villa Park football ground in Birmingham, a short distance from where he grew up in Aston. He performed two sets at the event, one with his solo band (including Wylde) and another with his fellow founding members of Black Sabbath. It was the first time the four-piece had been onstage together since 2005.
Wylde looks back on being invited to appear at Back To The Beginning in the NJ.com interview. “Whatever things that we’ve run into, any obstacles or whatever, it’s always just a speed bump and we’ll get through it,” he says. “So I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, this is the last time I’m going to see Oz.’ I just figured we’ll do the gig, and then who knows? You always stay positive on all this stuff.”
Ozzy’s second memoir, Last Rites, was posthumously released on October 7. In the book’s final chapter (written shortly after Back To The Beginning), the singer revealed that he had plans for his next solo album, his first since Patient Number 9 came out in 2022. “Although I won’t be performing again, I’ve already got an idea for a new album,” he wrote.
Shortly after he died, Ozzy’s cause of death was confirmed to be a heart attack. In Last Rites, it was revealed that he knew he had a potentially “life-or-death” heart problem, caused by a sepsis infection following a recent spinal surgery and a “dodgy heart valve”.
“The valve is 80 percent blocked, apparently,” Ozzy wrote. “The sepsis also gave me something called arrhythmia – when your heart can’t keep time, like a drummer in a bad pub band – so cheers for that.”
On July 30, Ozzy was laid to rest at a private ceremony on the grounds of his home in Buckinghamshire. Before the funeral, his cortège passed through the streets of Birmingham and over Black Sabbath Bridge in the city centre. It was reported that tens of thousands of fans came out to see the procession go by.
Wylde continues to perform with Black Label Society and fronts a Black Sabbath tribute band called Zakk Sabbath. Zakk Sabbath are currently touring North America and will play at the Bourbon Theatre in Lincoln, Nebraska on Tuesday (November 11).
