HOW ZAKK WYLDE INVENTED HIS SOUND BY BANNING HIMSELF FROM EVERYTHING COOL

HOW ZAKK WYLDE INVENTED HIS SOUND BY BANNING HIMSELF FROM EVERYTHING COOL when zakk wylde got the ozzy gig around 20 years old, he was a total unknown stepping into randy rhoads' legendary shoes. to not get lost, he needed his own sound. so he did something strange: he wrote a list of things he was forbidden to play. no tapping. no whammy bar. no sweep picking. no fancy arpeggios. all the flashy 80s tricks everyone else was chasing, banned. he forced himself to build his entire style out of the humble pentatonic scale, the "beginner" scale, and make it sound brutal. then there's the squeal. that screaming sound that jumps out of his solos is a pinch harmonic, where his thumb brushes the string the instant the pick hits it. and he picks every single note individually, no smooth hammer-ons, which is what gives his playing that machine-gun, choppy aggression. even his famous bullseye guitar was an accident. he had the same blond hair and the same les paul as randy rhoads, and didn't want to look like a copy onstage, so he slapped a bullseye on it. the most recognizable guitar in metal exists because he was trying not to look like someone else.