Zakk Wylde has revealed that his “Grail” Les Paul Custom came out of retirement to make a starring cameo on the new Black Label Society album, Engines Of Demolition, as he put the finishing touches to his tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne – and it brought his career with the Prince of Darkness full circle.
The Grail was the electric guitar Wylde wrote Miracle Man on, the first song he ever wrote as Ozzy guitarist when he made his debut on 1988’s No Rest For The Wicked. It had, however, been out of commission for 10 years. Wylde had been exclusively playing guitars from his own gear brand, Wylde Audio, on the record.
But when it came time to put a solo on the song, Adam Fuller, Black Label Society’s engineer, suggested that maybe this was one track that demanded a different approach – a guitar that spoke to the history between Wylde and his former boss.
“I used it for the last song. I ended up using it on the solo on Ozzy’s Song,” says Wylde, speaking to MusicRadar. “Adam Fuller, who does the records with us, Adam was like, ‘Well, Zakk, for the solo, you should get the Grail and play it on this thing, man – ‘cause it’s Ozzy’s Song, so it makes sense.’ The first song I ever wrote with Ozzy is Miracle Man, and obviously, this is the last thing in tribute to him.”
Wylde had been writing for Engines Of Demolition ever since he set out on the Pantera tribute tour in 2022. Between each leg of the tour – any chance he’d get – he would squirrel away ideas for songs, riffs, lyrics, then he’d get BLS back in session and get them finished.
“Usually, when Black Label would do it, it was just one implosion of ideas, and we record it, mix it, and ship it out,” says Wylde. “But now it was, like we would go out for a year, I’d come back, and it’d be, like, a quarter of a bunch of songs.
“I’d write some other riffs, and go, ‘Maybe we’ll get the guys to come back out and we’ll track some more stuff.’ And then I’d write an acoustic thing or whatever. ‘Oh, well, bring the guys back out and we’ll put some stuff on this one.’”
And so it went on. Wylde says the years went by a flash. By the summer of 2025, the Pantera tribute tour was still going strong, bearing down on Villa Park for Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s farewell show, Back To The Beginning on 5 July. Wylde was pulling a double shift, playing with Pantera, then with Ozzy.
When he finally got home, maybe they could get the album mixed down and Fuller would do a mastering job on it and then that would be that, the long-awaited follow up to 2021’s Doom Crew Inc. would be complete.
Ozzy’s death on the 22 July changed that. Wylde had some music but it wasn’t until after Ozzy’s funeral that the song came to him.
“I had the music but I wrote the lyrics after we laid Ozzy to rest,” he says. “It was when I came home, and I sat in the library at our house. I was just sitting there with the fireplace going on, and there was actually one of Ozzy’s books up there, Last Rites, and I ended up writing the lyrics.”
The Grail is a guitar with a lot of history. It has had a life. This is the guitar that fell out of the back of a truck, survived thanks to the indestructible nature of a Gibson 'Chainsaw' guitar case, ended up in pawnshop, was then in the ownership of someone who recognised it was Wylde’s and sold it back him three years later. Kismet.
Wylde acquired the Grail after he landed the Ozzy gig and Gibson added him to its artist roster. Would it have been easier to have asked Gibson for a Les Paul? Maybe. But Wylde had his designs set on a particular Les Paul, the 1981 Custom owned by his friend Scott Quinn.
He told Guitar Player that Quinn worked at Garden State Music at the time and was up for a trade. Wylde had just the thing.
“Scott, a huge John McLaughlin fan, said that if I could get him a double-neck, he’d trade the Grail for it,” said Wylde. “Gibson hooked me up, and I made the trade.”
Wylde set about customising it, adding a set of active EMG humbuckers to it after one of his guitar students turned him onto electric guitar pickups.
There was nothing wrong with the guitar but when you are taking a spot in Ozzy’s band that was first occupied by Randy Rhoads – who famously favoured an Alpine White ’74 Les Paul Custom that had aged to a deep cream colour – you need something to differentiate yourself.
Wylde put the guitar in for a custom graphic finish. He had Saul Bass’s psychedelic art for Hitchcock’s Vertigo in mind. Unfortunately, the artist Wylde found was not a big film buff. It came back with a bullseye finish and it turned out to be a happy accident.
“I realised it was pretty cool anyway, and I’ve made it a signature look ever since,” he told Guitar Player. “Most of the records I did with Ozzy featured this guitar.”
Engines Of Demolition is available to pre-order, out on 27 March via Spinefarm. Black Label are on tour in the US from February. See Black Label Society for more details.
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