“Sharon told him he was out of his f**king mind”: Jake E. Lee recalls when producer Ron Nevison tried to replace him on Ozzy Osbourne’s The Ultimate Sin
Recording an Ozzy Osbourne album should be a dream gig for any guitarist. For Jake E. Lee, however, making 1986’s The Ultimate Sin was a “terrible” experience – largely thanks to clashes with producer Ron Nevison.
In a new interview with Guitar World, the former Ozzy guitarist looks back on the making of the record, and how tensions with Nevison escalated to the point where the producer even suggested replacing him altogether.
READ MORE: “I don’t like the way they look or sound. I have no fondness for them at all”: Jake E. Lee hates Telecasters… but there was one which changed his mind
Asked what it was like working with Nevison, Lee doesn’t mince words: “Terrible. [Laughs] It was butting heads from the beginning,” he says. “Ozzy gave us a list of producers, and it wasn’t my choice per se, but he asked me, and I thought Nevison was a guitar producer since he’d worked with UFO and Led Zeppelin, so he had my vote.”
The problems started almost immediately – beginning with something as simple as studio hours. Lee, who had recorded Bark at the Moon during late-night sessions, insisted that rock music was a “nighttime” affair.
“I’m a nighttime guy, right? To me, rock is nighttime music you play in clubs until closing time. It didn’t feel like a daytime thing to me,” says the guitarist. “I recorded at night, and that’s how we did Bark at the Moon. Max Norman, who produced that, was cool with that. Ron Nevison wasn’t. He told Sharon [Osbourne] that he wanted to start no later than noon.”
“Sharon told me that, and I said, ‘Noon? I’m not even thinking about waking up then. I won’t start any earlier than 6 p.m.’ So right off the bat, we had problems, and Nevison told Sharon, ‘I know a lot of guitar players… we don’t have to use him. We can use other people to come in and play the parts. I have all the demos.’”
The idea was shot down by Sharon immediately. As Lee recalls, “It was ridiculous. He obviously had no idea what Ozzy was. He’s not somebody who brings in fucking guitar players. But Sharon told me that, and I said, ‘Really? And what did you say?’ Sharon said, ‘I told him he was out of his fucking mind. You’re playing the guitar. How about we start at 3?’”
“That was a good compromise, so I said I’d come in at 3, but I never did,” Lee admits. “I’d get up, look at the clock and if I saw it was 3, I’d say, ‘Oh, shit, I better get ready…’ But I never showed up earlier than maybe 4. I just hated the idea of forcing myself to wake up and play during the day. It felt wrong to me to make an album that would last forever that way. It irked me.”
The friction didn’t stop there. Lee says he prefers recording in the live room with his amp cranked “because I like getting feedback”, but his first session brought about another dispute – this time about temperature.
“I went into the room, and it was fucking freezing,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘What the hell? Can you warm up the room?’ Nevison said, ‘No. I like my musicians to be awake. The cold keeps them awake and alert.’”
“I said, ‘Fuck you. You know what it also does? It makes my fingers fucking slow because they’re frozen. I can’t play like that.’ So we argued about the temperature in the room, which I won. I said, ‘I’m just not fucking playing when my fingers are fucking cold. Fuck you.’ [Laughs] He acquiesced.”
The post “Sharon told him he was out of his f**king mind”: Jake E. Lee recalls when producer Ron Nevison tried to replace him on Ozzy Osbourne’s The Ultimate Sin appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
