PANTERA paid tribute to Ozzy Osbourne during the band’s concert last night (Tuesday, July 22) at Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
While performing a cover of BLACK SABBATH‘s “Planet Caravan” — during which the PANTERA normally shows archival footage of the band’s founding members “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott and Vinnie Paul Abbott on the big screens — PANTERA displayed photos and animated images of Ozzy, some of which included PANTERA‘s current guitarist Zakk Wylde, who had been a member of Osbourne‘s solo band, on and off, for nearly four decades.
Last night, Zakk shared the following message via social media: ” “THANK YOU FOR BLESSING THE WORLD w/YOUR KINDNESS & GREATNESS OZ – YOU BROUGHT LIGHT INTO SO MANY LIVES & MADE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE – YOU LIVED w/THE HEART OF A LION – I THANK THE GOOD LORD EVERY DAY FOR BLESSING MY LIFE w/YOU IN IT – I LOVE YOU OZ. BEYOND FOREVER”.
Ozzy and Zakk first teamed up 38 years ago when Zakk (whom Ozzy described as “a fucking absolutely amazing guitar player”) joined Ozzy‘s band in 1987; they last recorded in 2022 on Ozzy‘s acclaimed album “Patient Number 9”.
Back in 1990, Ozzy told Guitar World magazine about why he picked Zakk to be his guitarist: “This is a bizarre story, but it’s the God’s honest truth. It was a bad period for me because I was sick of auditioning people – drummers, bass players, keyboard players, you name it. Now it was time to audition yet another guitar player. The spark had gone out of it, probably due to my various battles with drugs and alcohol. I had a lot of personal hang-ups about a lot of things, plus I was tired.
“I asked the guys who were in the band at the time to put out the word that I needed somebody and to have people send me résumés. I auditioned about 50 guys. Some of them were hilarious. I asked one guy to play something in a specific key. He said, ‘I think it would be better in another key.’ I said, ‘No it wouldn’t. Just play it in the key it was written in.’ He protested again and I just thought, What the hell am I doing here? I’m jet-lagged to the max, arguing with some idiot guitar player. Then there were all these Eddie Van Halen clones on steroids. They played like Van Halen while standing on their heads and hopping on one leg. One guy even played like Eddie while eating a fucking sword!
“One morning I was confronted with a mound of tapes and I remember picking one up out of thousands and saying, ‘Look here, a Randy Rhoads clone.’ It was a picture of some guy with long blonde hair playing a Les Paul Custom. I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to his tape. I tossed it back in the pile and forgot about it. Then about six months later, my drummer, Randy Castillo, walks in and says, ‘I found this great guitarist from New Jersey, and his name is Zakk.’ I walked into the audition and I knew I had seen him before, but I couldn’t remember where. He plugs in and plays my whole catalog, note for note. I then asked him to play something of his own and he played some acoustic stuff and some classical stuff. He had a bounce and a spark about him. Then I realized where I saw Zakk before: he was the Randy Rhoads clone in the photo, the one tape I had picked out of thousands. Only it turned out that he wasn’t a Randy clone at all. Randy would’ve looked like an ant next to Zakk.
“There were lots of benefits to choosing Zakk. He had followed my career and he knew my songs better than I knew them myself. We knew it wouldn’t be hard to break him in.”
In a 2022 interview with Revolver magazine, Wylde reflected on the first time he listened to BLACK SABBATH‘s music as a kid, saying: “I remember being in art class. My one buddy Tommy — he must have been like 11 years old — he had a sculpture of a jawless skull, which is basically the BLACK LABEL [SOCIETY] skull now: Skully. It was a jawless skull with a lightning bolt going through it that said, ‘Black Sabbath 666.’ I was, like, ‘Wow, what is that?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, it’s just a rock band my older brother listens to.’ And I thought it looked so cool. I just wanted to figure out what it was. So, I was at the mall with my mother and my mom was, like, ‘You can get a record.’ Okay, so obviously, I ended up buying ‘We Sold Our Soul For Rock ‘N’ Roll’ — but we know it’s a double album. I had never heard a SABBATH song before in my life. So, I put the record on and I was beyond terrified the whole time I listened to the album. I was Catholic when I first put the needle down on it, and halfway through the second LP, I was a full-blown Satanist. And by the end of the album, I converted back to Catholicism just so I could thank God for creating BLACK SABBATH.”
