Zakk Wylde reveals more insight about his relationship with Ozzy Osbourne

Zakk Wylde, who joined Ozzy Osbourne as guitarist in 1987 after mailing the singer a demo tape, recently reacted to the death of the iconic Black Sabbath frontman in an interview with Waste Some Time With Jason Green.

It was so crazy, ’cause when we went back to the house — obviously we went home, and then Barb called me up that Ozz passed away. Whenever any of this stuff would always come up with us, 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 —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 show out. ‘Cause I was just saying, like, what happens if the show was this month? 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.

Osbourne continued to create songs in recent years despite his health problems.

Obviously until he get his health back, it was just, like, ‘Ah, just keep plugging away, man,’ and 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.