Matt Van Stone

I want to do this while it is still fresh in my mind…

I arrived at Guitar Works at 11:30. I was a bit early but I was about the 20th person there. They started handing out entry wrist straps at 12pm. If you brought your Shot to Hell CD with you they gave you a wrist strap. Then they started another line for people who did not bring a CD. I did not bring a CD because I assumed they would be readily available. So I waited with a group of about 25 people who needed to buy a CD. 1pm rolled around and still no Zakk, 2pm – no Zakk and still no CDs. At about 2:30 we see Zakk walk by the window. A guy comes out and starts handing out small posters for Zakk’s new deal with Dunlop for guitar strings. Apparently the CDs got lost somewhere or weren’t brought to the store or something. No big deal, I didn’t really care that much about the signature.

The shitty thing was I was maybe 5th in line to buy a CD, but when they started giving out the posters they just sort of started from the middle. By the time it was all done I ended up near the very end of the line. I was probably the 10th last person. I was a little choked. I had been standing there for 3 hours already and now I’m behind people who showed up an hour after I did.

By 3:30 I was 3rd or 4th and Zakk just gets up and walks out. I started to sweat a little bit… Where is he going? Then I overhear someone say he had to take a leak – ok, thats fine. Finally I get up to the front, he’s standing in the corner behind a round table. I walk over, put my poster down and he shook my hand and gave me a one armed hug. He asked me what my name was and I told him. He said right on brother or something like that. He asked me if I was coming out to the show tonight and I said yes. I told him it was my second BLS show and that I saw him in Vancouver two years before. He smiled and said right on again. He took a swig of what looked like his 4th Becks and signed and dated my poster. He gave me another huge one-armed hug and said thanks for coming and I’ll see you at the show tonight. For some reason the only thing I could think of to say was “you’re fuckin’ awesome man”, and that was it. The whole thing lasted maybe just over a minute. It was pretty much the single greatest moment ever.

I have been listening to BLS and Zakk Wylde since about 2000. Right away I started to idolize the guy just like I had for Kurt Cobain and Jimmy Page before him. Not only did I never expect to meet him, I didn’t even expect I’d ever get to see him play live. This is one of those events that you are going to tell kids about in 20 years. The kids will be listening to Zakk Wylde talking about how awesome it would have been to see him live just like I did with Zeppelin. Now I’ll get to be the guy who tells the story of seeing him live and meeting him.

On a side note, I was choked at how poorly organized the meet and greet was. I could have shown up at 2:30 and accomplished the exact same thing. I also feel like because it was so poorly managed I ended up at the end of the line and didn’t get as much from Zakk as the first set of guys did, you know, being the 60th or so person he had talked to that day. Nevertheless, it was still amazing and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.