Zakk Wylde

Zakk Wylde is the longest-serving guitarist of Ozzy Osbourne's solo career, working with him from 1987 to 1995 and again across several periods until the end. Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1967, he was chosen at twenty in an audition that took him from obscurity to the post Randy Rhoads had held — one of the hardest successions in rock. He settled the comparison by not imitating: where Rhoads came from classical music, Wylde came from Southern blues and country, bringing aggressive pinch harmonics, a wide vibrato and riffs of pentatonic weight. It is the sound of No Rest for the Wicked (1988) and No More Tears (1991), the best-selling record of Ozzy's solo career, on which he wrote a large share of the material. The spiral bullseye guitar became as recognisable as what he plays on it. In 1998 he founded Black Label Society, which stopped being a side project and became his main band — more than a dozen records, among them Sonic Brew (1999) and The Blessed Hellride (2003), with a repertoire alternating extreme weight and ballads on piano and acoustic guitar. He also took over guitar duties in Pantera's tribute performances from 2022, in the place of Dimebag Darrell. He was beside Ozzy at the farewell show in Birmingham in July 2025, days before the singer's death.