Matt Biscay

Zakk Wylde

Zachary Phillip Wylde (born Jeffrey Phillip Wielandt; January 14, 1967) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.

He is best known for his tenure as the lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and as the founder, lead guitarist, and lead singer of the heavy metal band Black Label Society.

His signature bulls-eye design appears on many of his guitars and is widely recognized. He was also the lead guitarist and vocalist of Pride & Glory, who released one self-titled album in 1994 before disbanding.

As a solo artist, he released the albums Book of Shadows and Book of Shadows II.

Wylde played locally with his first band Stone Henge, then later with local New Jersey band Zyris. Later, he auditioned for lead guitarist and co-writer for Ozzy Osbourne. Wylde was hired to replace Jake E. Lee, who replaced Brad Gillis, who had himself replaced the deceased Randy Rhoads. Rhoads remains Wylde’s foremost guitar-playing and stagecraft influence.

Wylde gravitated toward a particular Les Paul guitar, which has become known as “The Grail”; his bullseye-painted 1981 Gibson Les Paul Custom. Wylde lost the guitar in 2000 after it fell from the back of a truck transporting equipment as he was travelling between gigs in Texas. Rewards were offered to anyone that had information about the guitar.

Wylde and The Grail were reunited three years later when a fan bought it at a Dallas pawn shop and saw the initials “Z.W.” carved into the humbucker pickups backs. He contacted Wylde’s former webmaster Randy Canis to arrange its return to Wylde. Grateful, Wylde gave the fan his signature model in exchange.

In 1995, Wylde auditioned for Guns N’ Roses. Wylde was replaced in Osbourne’s band by Joe Holmes from 1995 until his return in 2001.

In January 2006, Wylde was recognized at the Hollywood Rock Walk of Fame, featuring his handprints and signature, in recognition of his successful career as a musician and his contribution to the music industry. The event was open to the public and many rock celebrities were present, including Ozzy Osbourne.

For a time in the mid-2000s he contributed a monthly column entitled “Brew-tality” for Guitar World magazine, discussing his techniques and equipment, as well as transcribing riffs and solo sections.

After auditions in 2004/05, Ozzy Osbourne announced Wylde as the official guitarist for his album Black Rain, which was released in 2007. On stage with Osbourne, Wylde has been credited for lending a high level of energy and passion to performances.

Black Label Society headlined the second stage at the 2006 Ozzfest, with Wylde playing double duty with Ozzy Osbourne on certain dates. He also joined Osbourne for the Ozzy and Friends Tour in replacement of the Black Sabbath tour scheduled for the summer of 2012, playing a range of European dates including Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium.

Wylde played a guitar solo on Black Veil Brides’ cover of Kiss’ “Unholy”, on the 2011 EP Rebels.

Since 2014, Wylde has led a Black Sabbath cover band called Zakk Sabbath, handling guitar and vocal duties, joined by Rob “Blasko” Nicholson on bass and Joey Castillo (Danzig, Queens of the Stone Age) on drums, who replaced original drummer John Tempesta. JP Gaster (Clutch) occupied the drummer’s seat in between, in September 2017. The band tours intermittently, and released a single, three-track vinyl-only live 12″, in 2016.

Wylde, Steve Vai, Nuno Bettencourt, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Tosin Abasi were featured on the Generation Axe tour in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Wylde joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band for a select number of dates during Osbourne’s 2017 summer tour, and then performed as part of the No More Tours II tour.

Zakk Wylde guitar tabs

• Between Heaven And Hell
• Cry Me A River
• Horse Called John
• Lovin Woman
• No More Beers
• Road Back Home
• Sp Shuffle
• Sweet Home Basildon
• Sweet Jesus
• The Things You Do
• Troubled Wine
• Way Beyond Empty
• What Youre Lookin For

Whitesnake

Whitesnake are a hard rock band formed in London in 1978. The group was originally put together as the backing band for singer David Coverdale, who had recently left Deep Purple. Though the band quickly developed into their own entity, Coverdale is the only constant member throughout their history.

Whitesnake enjoyed much success in the UK, Europe and Japan through their early years. Their albums Ready an’ Willing, Come an’ Get It and Saints & Sinners all reached the top ten on the UK Albums Chart.

By the mid-1980s, however, Coverdale had set his sights on breaking through in North America, where Whitesnake remained largely unknown.

With the backing of American label Geffen Records, Whitesnake released their eponymous album in 1987, which became their biggest success to date, selling over eight million copies in the US and spawning the hit singles “Here I Go Again” and “Is This Love”.

Whitesnake also adopted a more contemporary look, akin to the Los Angeles glam metal scene. After releasing Slip of the Tongue in 1989, Coverdale decided to put Whitesnake on hold to take a break from the music industry.

Aside from a few short-lived reunions in the 1990s, Whitesnake remained mostly inactive until 2003, when Coverdale put together a new line-up to celebrate the band’s 25th anniversary.

Since then Whitesnake have released four more studio albums and toured extensively around the world.

Whitesnake’s early sound has been characterized by critics as blues rock, but by the mid-1980s the band slowly began moving toward a more commercially accessible hard rock style.

Topics such as love and sex are common in Whitesnake’s lyrics, which have been criticized for their excessive use of sexual innuendos and double entendres.

Whitesnake have been nominated for several awards during their career, including Best British Group at the 1988 Brit Awards.

They have also been featured on lists of the greatest hard rock bands of all time by several media outlets, while their songs and albums have appeared on many “best of” lists by outlets, such as VH1 and Rolling Stone.

Whitesnake guitar tabs

• Aint No Love
• Crying In The Rain
• Fool For Your Loving
• Give Me All Your Love Tonight
• Guilty Of Love
• Here I Go Again
• Is This Love
• Is This Love2
• Love Aint No Stranger
• Slide It In
• Slow An Easy
• Still Of The Night

The Wallflowers

The Wallflowers is an American rock solo project of American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jakob Dylan.

The Wallflowers were originally a roots rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by Dylan and guitarist Tobi Miller. The band has gone through a number of personnel changes but has remained centered on Dylan.

After releasing their eponymous debut album in 1992, the Wallflowers released what would become their best-known and highest-selling album, Bringing Down the Horse (1996), which featured the songs “One Headlight” and “6th Avenue Heartache”.

Their next album, (Breach) (2000), would feature their first and only single—”Sleepwalker”, at number 76—to reach the Billboard Hot 100. “One Headlight” did not chart due to not being released as a single in the U.S.

The group later released an additional two albums before going on hiatus. In 2012, the Wallflowers reunited to release their sixth studio album, Glad All Over. Nearly ten years later they released their seventh studio album, Exit Wounds, in July 2021.

The Wallflowers have won two Grammy Awards: Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Rock Song for “One Headlight” in 1998. “One Headlight” is also listed at #58 in Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Pop Songs.

The Wallflowers guitar tabs

• Another
• Heroes
• Hollywood
• Invisible
• Josephine
• One Headlight
• One Headlight2
• Sixth Avenue Heartache
• Sixth Avenue Heartache2
• Three Marlenas

Turin Brakes

Turin Brakes are an English band, comprising original duo of Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian, and long-term collaborators Rob Allum and Eddie Myer. They had a UK top 5 hit in 2003 with their song “Painkiller (Summer Rain)”.

The band was started by long-time friends Knights and Paridjanian. The two met at a young age and spent much of their childhood together, both receiving guitars as Christmas presents at the age of 10.

Although they split after Knights went to film school and Paridjanian attempted to form a band in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, they soon reunited and collaborated on what would later become their first EP, The Door, which was eventually released through Anvil Records in 1999 as a limited vinyl release. This led to the band attracting the attention of larger record labels.

Source Records would eventually release two more EPs, The State of Things EP and Fight or Flight, prompting NME to proclaim “Turin Brakes inhabit a space which is entirely their own, fully formed and brutally emotive… give them the devotion they deserve.”

Source reissued the song “The Door” before releasing their first album, The Optimist LP, in 2001. The album, which was released in the United States by Astralwerks, was greeted with critical praise, spawned several modestly successful UK singles, “Underdog (Save Me)” (reaching no. 39 in the UK Singles Charts), Mind Over Money (reaching no. 31) and “Emergency 72”, and received a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize.

In August 2001, the album was certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry. A planned tour of the United States opening for the Stereophonics and Matthew Jay, was cancelled due to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Still, the band played at over 80 venues in Europe and the United States that year.

Turin Brakes have often been compared to many of the new acoustic movement bands spawned in the late 1990s such as Elbow, Starsailor, and the Norwegian band Kings of Convenience, whose 2001 album entitled Quiet Is the New Loud is a helpful indicator of the band’s first album.

With each record, Turin Brakes try to change their sound. While the first album features a lot of acoustic guitar, Ether Song featured more electric guitar and was, in total, a lot darker. The third album, Jackinabox, can be seen as a combination of the first two albums, with some funk influences.

While Dark on Fire featured a bigger sound produced by Ethan Johns, 2010’s Outbursts can be seen as a return to the sound of The Optimist LP. Turin Brakes formerly performed live as a five-piece outfit to achieve a full band sound, and were joined on stage (and often also in the studio) by Rob Allum (drums), Phil Marten (keyboards) and Eddie Myer (bass).

Following Marten’s departure, they now perform as a four-piece band, with Gale’s guitar playing being more prominent and more richly contributing to the live sound.

On 6 September 2012, all four Turin Brakes members played at a “Spirit of Talk Talk” evening at 229 Great Portland Street where they joined some former members of Talk Talk to play a few hits including It’s My Life, with the band then playing a set of their own afterwards.

Before playing the song “Painkiller” Gale announced to the audience that although it wouldn’t be obvious to most people the song was heavily influenced by Talk Talk and by the work they did with producer Phill Brown in the Kent countryside some years ago.

Turin Brakes guitar tabs

• Emergency 72
• Feeling Oblivion
• Mind Over Money
• The Door
• Underdog Save Me Solo
• Underdog

Traffic

Traffic were an English rock band, formed in Birmingham, in April 1967 by Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason.

They began as a psychedelic rock group and diversified their sound through the use of instruments such as keyboards, like the Mellotron and harpsichord, sitar, and various reed instruments, and by incorporating jazz and improvisational techniques in their music.

Initially, they released three non-album singles, including “Paper Sun”, “Hole in My Shoe”, and “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” in early and mid 1967.

Their first full album Mr. Fantasy was released in December of that year, and while it was never released as a single, the track “Dear Mr. Fantasy” from the album became a signature song for the band.

Dave Mason quit the band shortly after the release of the first album. He rejoined briefly during the recording sessions for the band’s self-titled second album, but was in and out of the group at various times over the next several years.

The three-piece Traffic (with Mason appearing in limited capacity) released one more album, 1969’s Last Exit, which contained only one side of new studio material.

They disbanded in 1969 when Winwood co-founded the short-lived supergroup Blind Faith, with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech. They then reunited in 1970 to release the album John Barleycorn Must Die, their highest charting album in the U.S.

In 1971, the band reshuffled the lineup for the album The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, with Capaldi moving to secondary percussionist and backing vocalist as the band added drummer Jim Gordon, percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, and bassist Ric Grech to the official line-up.

For their next album, 1973’s Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory, Gordon and Grech were replaced by members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Roger Hawkins and David Hood respectively.

For their next studio album, 1974’s When the Eagle Flies, Capaldi had returned to the drum kit, bassist Rosko Gee had replaced Hood, and Rebop Kwaku Baah had left. The band broke up shortly thereafter.

A partial reunion, with Winwood and Capaldi alongside several new musicians, took place in 1994. In the intervening years Steve Winwood had a successful solo career, with several hit singles and albums during the 1980s.

Dave Mason had his own solo career that produced a few minor hit songs in the 1970s, played as a session musician with a number of bands, and was briefly a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1995 and Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band in 1997.

Jim Capaldi also had some minor solo hits in the 1970s in his native UK but was less successful abroad. During the 1990s, Capaldi primarily worked as a songwriter, working with Santana and The Eagles.

Chris Wood did sporadic session work after the breakup of Traffic in 1974, and died in 1983.

Traffic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

Traffic guitar tabs

• 40000 Headmen
• Cryin To Be Heard
• Dear Mister Fantasy
• Feelin Alright
• Forty Thousand Headmen
• Hole In My Shoe
• House For Everyone
• John Barleycorn Must Die Intro
• John Barleycorn Must Die
• Low Spark
• Medicated Goo
• Paper Sun
• Pearly Queen
• Shanghai Noodle Factory
• Smiling Phases
• Who Knows What Tomorrow

Thin Lizzy

Thin Lizzy are a hard rock band formed in Dublin, Ireland, in 1969. Their music reflects a wide range of influences, including blues, soul music, psychedelic rock, and traditional Irish folk music, but is generally classified as hard rock or sometimes heavy metal.

Two of the founding members, drummer Brian Downey and bass guitarist and lead vocalist Phil Lynott, met while still in school. Lynott led the group throughout their recording career of twelve studio albums, writing most of the material.

The singles “Whiskey in the Jar” (a traditional Irish ballad), “The Boys Are Back in Town” and “Waiting for an Alibi” were international hits. After Lynott’s death in 1986, various incarnations of the band emerged over the years based initially around guitarists Scott Gorham and John Sykes, though Sykes left the band in 2009.

Gorham later continued with a new line-up including Downey. In 2012, Gorham and Downey decided against recording new material as Thin Lizzy so a new band, Black Star Riders, was formed to tour and produce new releases such as their debut album All Hell Breaks Loose. Thin Lizzy plan to reunite for occasional concerts.

Lynott, Thin Lizzy’s de facto leader, was composer or co-composer of almost all of the band’s songs, and the first black Irishman to achieve commercial success in the field of rock music. Thin Lizzy featured several guitarists throughout their history, with Downey and Lynott as the rhythm section, on the drums and bass guitar.

As well as being multiracial, the band drew their early members not only from both sides of the Irish border but also from both the Catholic and Protestant communities during The Troubles.

Rolling Stone magazine describes the band as distinctly hard rock, “far apart from the braying mid-70s metal pack”.

AllMusic critic John Dougan has written that “As the band’s creative force, Lynott was a more insightful and intelligent writer than many of his ilk, preferring slice-of-life working-class dramas of love and hate influenced by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and virtually all of the Irish literary tradition.”

Thin Lizzy guitar tabs

• Cowboy Song
• Dancin In The Moonlight
• Dont Believe A Word
• Emerald
• Jailbreak
• Southbound
• The Boys Are Back In Town
• The Boys Are Back In Town2