Ozzy Osbourne hiring a then-unknown 19-year-old by the name of Zakk Wylde might have seemed risky but 1988’s No Rest For The Wicked soon proved they had chemistry together. This coltish firebrand had a flair for the electric guitar – and he proved he had the temperament to handle the gig.
When it was time to record its follow-up, No More Tears, Ozzy, Wylde et al were on a roll.
Speaking to MusicRadar in 2021, Wylde says he explicitly gamed out his approach. We had just lived through the ‘80s. There was a lot of guitar. Everything had been done to death. Three note per string diatonic phrases? Passé. He’d just be another imitator.
“I was wondering how I could sound like me and no-one else. I made a grocery list,” he said. “If you don’t want to sound like Yngwie, who was still at the height of his dominance, don’t do any harmonic minor or classical arpeggios and sweeps. Cross that off the list. If you don’t wanna sound like Eddie, don’t do any taps, harmonics, divebombs or whammy bar stuff.”
Pentatonic scales were all that was left. Wylde decided he was going to rip them like no one had ripped them before.
No More Tears found Ozzy reaching out to Lemmy of Motörhead for help with the lyrics. But the band itself needed little direction. There was Wylde on guitar, the redoubtable Randy Castillo on drums, and John Sinclair on keyboards. Mike Inez had joined on bass guitar, but Bob Daisley was to handle bass on the record.
Left to their own devices they were doing just fine. I Don’t Want To Change The World came together as a joke when they were messing about and goofing off. The songs were coming together nicely. But as they began pre-production, they still didn’t have a title for the record.
They found it from an unexpected source. Inez plugged in and started playing. No More Tears just fell into place. Wylde says it was Inez’s track.
““He pretty much wrote the whole song! Mike instigated that whole thing,” said Wylde. “We were in rehearsals and he just started playing that bass line and we all knew it was killer. Randy started playing drums just like how you hear it in on the record and then John Sinclair came in with that keyboard line. And I did a slide thing based on my love for the Allman Brothers and Skynyrd.”
The Allman Brothers Band would be a leitmotif of Wylde’s playing on No More Tears. Mama I’m Coming Home’s modulation between major and minor is a nod to the Allmans and Dickey Betts. On No More Tears, Wylde was leaning more towards Gary Rossington.
“The part I play is like an ode to Freebird; it’s not too different to the Freebird intro,” said Wylde. “Then we stopped for a bit and wondering what to do next. Ozzy suggested doing something like War Pigs and Black Dog, where the vocal line is followed by guitar – that whole call and answer thing.”
The verse riff owes its shape and form to Tony Iommi. When it came time for a solo, Wylde finally found a use for all those pentatonic runs he had been practising. He let it rip. One take, in and out.
“Yeah, what you hear on the record is just one pass! I constructed it to fit the keyboard part and then go into something else,” he said. “There’s a lot of pentatonic licks in the beginning and then for the big ascend at the end, that’s just me fitting along to the chords going up. So I knew what I was going to be playing and had it ready to nail in one take.”
Pretty cool. But No More Tears, it’s all about that bassline
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