Zakk Wylde talks about his jam sessions with Guns N’ Roses back in 1995

Zakk Wylde talks about his jam sessions with Guns N’ Roses back in 1995

Ozzy Osbourne and Black Label Society guitarist Zakk Wylde was recently interviewed by Eonmusic and spoke about his time kind of auditioning for Guns N’ Roses.

In terms of how it came about, Wylde stated: “Axl was telling me that him and the other guys were talking about getting another guitar player. He said they were just talking about guys and this and that, and Axl just said; “Well what about Zakk?” I know all the guys, but I’d never met Axl before, but I knew Duff and I knew Slash, so it was just kind of just throwing it around as a joke, and then it was; “Why don’t we just ask Zakk what he’s doing and have him come down?” So, I just went down to jam with the guys. It’s not even like an audition at that point; Jimmy Page is not going to audition for The Rolling Stones, it’s just like; “Jimmy, do you want to come down and jam with us?” It’s just like; “Yeah, okay, no problem”. So, it was more that; just a bunch of clowns getting together and jamming.”

With respect to how far those Guns N’ Roses jam sessions went, Wylde advised: “We jammed a bunch of things, but nothing was happening at the time with the fellas. It was Slash, Axl, Duff, Matt, Dizzy was down there; so all the guys, and then I just came in, and it was jamming. We did demos and stuff over at Duff’s house in the studio. We just had a bunch of riffs and stuff like that, but nothing was going on; it was in limbo, it was just laying there, and I was like; “I’ve got such an outstanding booze bill, I’ve got to pay this debt off”, so I said; “Fellas, I’ve got to get back to work, and just let me know what’s going on”.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Wylde at Eonmusic.