During a recent conversation with The Metal Voice, Ozzy Osbourne‘s former guitarist Jake E. Lee shared a few details regarding the financial side of his Ozzy tenure.

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Focusing on his 1983 hiring and the “Bark at the Moon” album that came out the same year in November, Jake said:

“I was young [26 years old], and back in those days there was little information about how the music business works, and I trusted people.

“I was told from the beginning I would get my fair share of the writing credits and publishing, and I took them at their word, which was a mistake – but it was never about the money.

“I’m pretty sure I got paid about $100 a week [when I joined the band] [around $260 in 2018 money], but it would incrementally go up because they weren’t sure about me.

“Then it doubled and it would keep doubling and so on until I proved myself, and I didn’t care. I went from having no money and no band to being in Ozzy.

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“I was going to get $5,000 [around $13,000 in 2018 money] to record ‘Bark at the Moon,’ and get writing credit and publishing. But when I finally got the contract, they threw in another $10,000 [around $26,000 in 2018 money] to make up for the not having writing and publishing.”