Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on Waste Some Time With Jason Green, Ozzy Osbourne’s longtime guitarist Zakk Wylde opened up about the singer passing away 17 days after his and Black Sabbath’s farewell show at Villa Park in Birmingham, England. Wylde says “it was just like he willed himself to hang in there long enough to knock that show out.”

Wylde said the following:

“It was so crazy, ’cause when we went back to the house — obviously we went home [in early July after the ‘Back To The Beginning’ concert], and then Barb [Zakk’s wife Barbaranne] called me up [when I was on the road with PANTERA to tell me] that Ozz passed away.

Whenever any of this stuff [about Ozzy’s health issues] would always come up with us [in the past], just ’cause Ozz was just so tough and resilient, it would just be, ‘Oh, it’s just another bump in the road or another hurdle. We’ll get through it.’ So it was just always that. So you just always — not that you take anything for granted ever, but it’d be like Ozzy being Evel Knievel [American stunt performer and entertainer] —it’s, like, he survives, he makes a jump, or even if he gets into an accident, we get him to the hospital, [and] he’ll be fine. And then he gets out and he’s all right, and then we’ll do another jump. You know what I mean? So you never think, like, ‘This is the end.’ You’re just, like, ‘Ah, Ozz will be fine.’ Then we’ll either do another record or whatever until Ozz gets better. But truly it was just like he willed himself to hang in there long enough to knock that [final] show out. ‘Cause I was just saying, like, what happens if the show was [scheduled to take place] this month [in August]? He doesn’t make it. That’s what’s crazy about the whole thing. And you just always had that sense that he’s gonna be around forever, just kind of like Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and all the guys.”

He continued when asked about Osbourne’s decision to continue making music amid his health issues:

“Obviously until he get his health back, it was just, like, ‘Ah, just keep plugging away, man.’vAnd either you quit or you keep conquering and climbing. And he never had any quit in them. So, yeah, it was just, like, all right, well, then in the meantime, until you can get better, well, we’ll write and make records or whatever you wanna do, man. I mean, that’s what I just figured. It was, like, ‘Ah, I’ll see Ozz on Tuesday,’ and we’ll start working again or whatever.”

[via Blabbermouth]