JOHN 5 & BLASKO - A Pair Of Talking Zombies Page 3
by Martin Popoff

"In the middle of the record I actually was gone for a couple of weeks, because I went to Europe with Ozzy. He got inducted into the UK Music Hall Of Fame, and he did the Royal Variety Performance for the queen, and I went out there with him to play those shows. So I was gone, and like I said, I don't really get involved in the writing process. I leave that to the guys who are creative, like John and Rob. They came up with all the stuff, and they just showed them to me later and I played."

"We rehearsed one day," says Blasko, asked for more detail on this Ozzy situation. "The thing is, the three things I did with him, were all just one song, literally one-off things. We rehearsed for one day for the UK Music Hall Of Fame thing. You know, if you don't know Crazy Train by now, you know... you don't have to rehearse Crazy Train all that much. We did Crazy Train for the UK Hall of Fame, we did Crazy Train for the NFL kickoff, and then we played a Beatles song that is on his cover record that came out, In My Life, for the queen, at the Royal Variety Performance. Zakk was the guitarist for the first two shows, and then at the Royal Variety Performance, he had to leave, because he was on tour with BLS or something, and Slash was in town, so Slash hit the road with us, over to Wales where we did the gig, and he played with us."

"And the queen f**kin' hated us, man. She wanted Over The Mountain and had asked for Over The Mountain and was I guess expecting it. You could see her air drumming the intro for people around her and I guess she was sort of surprised when the Beatles thing happened."

OK, OK, Blasko didn't say that, but he did say the Zombie tour's been executed without a hitch thus far, except in Montreal... "I suppose the funniest mishap, so to speak was last night in Montreal. You know, whenever you roll into Canada, you really don't feel like you're in another country. You can just roll right in and you don't feel like you're in another country, so there's that comfort level. And we're only here for two days anyway. So John 5 does a guitar solo in the middle of Thunderkiss, and then at the end of the solo he always plays the Star Spangled Banner, but he plays it with his teeth, Jimi Hendrix style. Now, I guess we didn't realize - he didn't, or none of us did - that we were in a foreign country last night. So when he played the Star Spangled Banner last night, it didn't go over so good. Yeah, a couple of boos there. That was the biggest, you know... whoops! (laughs)."

JOHN 5 & BLASKO - A Pair Of Talking Zombies Page 4