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Jeffrey Wielandt was just 15-years-old when he saw his first ever live show, a Led Zeppelin covers band called Rat Race Choir playing at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in New Jersey.
"There were lots of older kids around," the man better known to the world as Zakk Wylde recalled to Metal Hammer in 2016, "and I remember smelling weed everywhere and being completely terrified, but I also thought it was like the coolest thing on the planet."
A couple of years later, the teenager was playing guitar in his own band, the Jackson, New Jersey-based Stonehenge, who mostly played keg parties for high school friends. "The damage done to these houses at every one of the parties that we played was ridiculous," he told Hammer.
The most memorable show the band ever played, and certainly the most chaotic, was a night that Wylde refers to as The Bobbi Bush Demolition Derby, where Stonehenge played in the living room of a New Jersey home belonging to high school friend Bobbi Bush.
"The great thing about that gig was it was the end of the school year and the girl was moving house," he recalled, "so she invited everyone from high school over. The house was sold and all the furniture was out of the house, there were tons of kegs, and the majority of our high school was there."
In the book No Encore! Musicians Reveal Their Weirdest, Wildest, Most Embarrassing Gigs, Wylde went into detail about the chaos that ensued.
"I have no idea what the parents were thinking, going off to the Poconos and leaving their daughter in an empty house that was begging to be annihilated by Jersey metalheads," he told author Drew Fortune.
"It was every parent’s nightmare, and as a homeowner now, I think, 'Are you fucking kidding me?'It was a bi-level house and the whole fucking thing was packed to the gills. To top it off, there was a torrential downpour that night, to the point where my feet sunk while walking across the lawn. Every asshole was dragging mud into the place and ruining the carpets. People were putting their cigarettes out on the carpeting, spilling beer everywhere and smashing holes in the walls."
"It ended up like that scene out of Weird Science where there are motorbikes riding round the house and all sorts of crazy shit like that," the guitaristy told Metal Hammer's Matt Stocks. "The house was absolutely demolished by the time we finished playing."
Speaking with Drew Fortune, Wylde recalled the painful aftermath of the gig.
"Bobbi’s parents came home early, just as we were loading up the gear in my buddy Tommy’s truck to leave," he remembered. "The mud was so bad we had to prop it up with 2x4s to get the hell out of there. Between the kegs, hard alcohol, marijuana and the Caligula factor of people having sex in the bedrooms, the house should have been condemned. Her parents walked in and, aside from some drunk stragglers, we were the only people left. We didn’t say a thing, and basically ran out the door. I will never forget the look on her parents’ faces. Anger hadn’t registered yet. They were just gray.
"The last thing I saw on my way out was 'Stonehenge Was Here', tagged on the living room wall in green spray paint."
Wylde's very first gig with Ozzy Osbourne was a low-key gig for the inmates of London’s Wormwood Scrubs prison. By comparison, it was a tame affair, albeit another memorable day.
"The whole thing was bizarro land; we performed in front of these fuckin' lifers," Zakk told Metal Hammer. All I could think was, I hope I pass this fucking audition. I'm the closest thing to Pamela Anderson these motherfuckers are going to see for the rest of their lives!"
