Zachary James Baker was born in Orange County, California on the 11th of December 1981. Although he traveled to Egypt and lived there as well as in New York for a few years, his parents brought him back to Orange County where he attended a public primary school and moved on to Huntington Beach High which he attended with childhood friends Matt Sanders (M. Shadows), Jimmy Sullivan (The Reverend Tholomew Plague), and Brian Haner Jr.(Synyster Gates)
His passion for music and guitar came in at quite an early age when he began teaching himself guitar on his dad's old acoustic at thirteen, He managed to learn the riffs to many of his favorite songs even though he had to play the guitar upside down due to the fact he is left handed and his father not.
While still in high-school he began playing guitar for MPA, a band he and some other friends had started; the name came from a night of watching porn, hence the name Mad Porno Action. Although they played one concert in the quad at school they were unsuccessful and Vengeance was blamed for stealing all the microphones and was arrested but no charges were made.
In the Avenged Sevenfold All Excess DVD, Baker talks about how he and M. Shadows formed Avenged Sevenfold. Later on Shadows goes on to say that when they all picked their stage names, Zacky adopted the stage name Zacky Vengeance because "There were a lot of people he really had a problem with back in high school."
"I still love the heavy bands. I love Danny Elfman and Elvis Costello. [It's] all over the place - I think that's the best way to be." States Zacky when talking about musical influences.
Vengeance has been sponsored by Schecter Guitar Research since 2004, and has a custom Cherry Schecter S1 Elite out. As for pickups he uses Seymour Duncan Pickups in all of his guitars and is currently a featured artist on the company's website along with Johnny Christ and Synyster Gates.
