Ozzy Osbourne and Zakk Wylde discussed music on the Sixx Sense show, with Oz saying about Black Sabbath’s monumental debut album (transcribed by UG):
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Ozzy: Because we have been playing the first album live for some time. We started as a blues-jazz thing. If you listen to the album it’s just a jam, you know? We’ve never been to the recording studio! So we went down to this place Regent Sound, two four-track machines. Two days we were there and it was done. We thought ‘Hey, we just made a record!’ And as it went on we got more tracks, more equipment, and we spent more time. That’s funny because when you got 16 tracks and you don’t know what you’re doing you use 16 tracks because you think it makes it sound bigger, but it doesn’t.
Zakk: Like with The Beatles, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s,’ and with Hendrix… People always say ‘Could you imagine if they had all this gear and Pro Tools,’ and I go ‘Those records wouldn’t have been what they were then. The whole thing is like talking about crayons, you only have five crayons but see what you can do. So you have to be creative. If you mix a couple of crayons together you’ve got a different color. So the whole thing is you really have to use your imagination if you have the limited amount of stuff. Probably The Beatles and Hendrix would have had everything now with Pro Tools, but just because you have it all it doesn’t mean you have to use it.
[metalwani_content_ad]Ozzy: Michael Beinhorn sends me a track home. And I go ‘I never sung it that way. Did I sing it that way?’ I said ‘Michael, is it possible to change the melody?’ And he goes ‘Yeah.’ I said ‘Did you do it on that one song?’ and he goes ‘Yeah.’ They can do all kinds of shit!
Zakk: On all the older records we’d all be mixing at the console, Oz would go ‘Zakk, remember at the end to put that delay.’ We’d get all the way to the end of the song, and if I didn’t do that then we gotta do it again. There was a certain magic when you listen to those records. But nowadays… You still have to have creative people, and you still have to have talented people when you’re making the records. Because think about it, when you had Elvis and Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and all those guys making their records, they were actually around one microphone and were recording. Whereas by the time Cream, Sabbath, and Zeppelin, and Hendrix, and The Beatles, and the Stones, those guys must have been going ‘Look at these spoiled little punks! These four tracks! We never had that stuff back in the day!’ And every generation says that about the generation that is coming along.
Zakk: It doesn’t matter what the technology is, The Beatles are still gonna be creative and they’re still gonna come up with ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ regardless whether it’s Pro Tools, or they have two four-track machines.