As he proved once more at Back to the Beginning, where he performed a double shift by shredding with Ozzy and Pantera, Zakk Wylde is a versatile musician with a deep-rooted appreciation of the classics.
Having already shared his personal riff rundown with Guitar Player, Zakk Wylde sat down with Metal Hammer to discuss the greatest songs ever written, and locked in on a collection of riffs that underpin the history of rock guitar.
His first pick goes right back to the start of most players’ electric guitar journey.
“I think all us rock and metal guys have to learn ‘Smoke on the Water,’” he begins, believing that mastering its double-stop shifts is a rite of passage. “As soon as you hear that riff, it's just like Wow! The simplicity and power is just amazing.”
(I’m sure this writer wasn’t alone in first learning it the easy way — all on the low E string — but Simon McBride, who replaced Steve Morse in Deep Purple in 2022, says many guitarists are actually playing the song wrong.)
For Wylde, the riff also shows why guitarists should put songwriting, rather than outright showboating, first.
“For me, it was Sabbath first, and then I found Zeppelin and Deep Purple,” he says of his earliest rock discoveries. “And aside from the great musicianship of all three bands, they have great songs, they have iconic riffs.”
Another undeniable classic is one he has played countless times in front of an unfathomable amount of people since becoming Ozzy's foil in 1987: Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”
“You can play these riffs on one string — that's how iconic and classic they are,” he explains. “The great thing about Ozzy's singing is that, if the riff is powerful, he'll sing along with it.”
Discussing the origins of the riff with Guitar Player, Tony Iommi said the idea came from Bill Ward’s kick drum.
“I was in a rehearsal room, and Bill started playing this boom, boom, boom,” he recalled. “To the guitarist, the pounding sounded ominous. “In my head, I could hear it as a monster.”
The fact that Ozzy lifts the guitar melody for the vocals is inspired, not lazy. It showcases one of his greatest strengths as a songwriter.
“From all the years of me playing with Oz, whether it was ‘Miracle Man,’ ‘Crazy Babies,’ ‘Perry Mason,’ ‘No More Tears’ or ‘Mama I'm Coming Home,’ it would always be the first thing that came to his head,” he explains. “Very rarely did he go, ‘I've gotta come up with something better.’
“It's mindblowing; he really is the king of melody. Maybe it's because of his love of the Beatles; because Oz wouldn't know if it's major or minor — he'd just like the sound of it.”
The guitarist also believes “Jimmy Page could have quit right after ‘Rain Song’: That’s lights out, game over right there with the tuning and composition.”
He adds that Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” was “a big deal when I learned it,” praising its chord-based composition rather than turning to the iconic guitarist's more fretboard-burning creations.
The quintet of Zakk-approved tunes is rounded out by AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” a riff that had a much younger version of the guitarist stumped when he first tried to master it.
“I was able to play the chords, but I couldn't play to lick,” he reveals. Eventually he can't the hang of it. “You’ve gotta do a little by day by day: put another brick on the empire. Then I could play along to the record like, ‘Oh my god, this sounds amazing.’”
In related news, Wylde has recalled his audition for Ozzy's band, what surprised him about other candidates, and the strange gear quirks that the singer had when it came to writing riffs for him
He could have added another sterling name to his already-stacked resume, but says a Guns N' Roses audition lost him his place in Ozzy's band and sidelined his career.
Last year, he dished out his hacks for more creative guitar playing, and it’s a trick that has been the foundation of his career.
